What is a “Fully Accredited” Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) Certification?

The Brookbush Institute explains what it means for a Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) certification to be “accredited”.

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES, April 27, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ — What “accredited certification” should mean does not match how the term is being used in the fitness industry. For Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) certifications, claiming “accreditation” has nothing to do with the quality of the content.

The increase in the number of Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) certification programs with 3rd party approval or accreditation is part of a continued effort to set higher standards for education in sports medicine and exercise science. In particular, the fitness industry has made a larger effort to demonstrate that personal training and fitness professional education programs are progressing toward evidence-based practice. “Policing” the quality of educational materials, and ensuring that content is evidence-based, is the type of job that is accomplished via an accreditor or approver with a peer-review process. Unfortunately, to say that most “accreditation initiatives” related to CPT certifications are failing the fitness industry is a bit of an understatement. Most accreditation initiatives have resulted in little more than confusion, and maybe a little collusion. So, the Brookbush Institute has published an article explaining what “accreditation” and “3rd party approval” should mean.

Summary from “What is a Fully Accredited Personal Trainer Certification?“

What “fully accredited” should mean:

1. Advocate on behalf of the learner

2. Ensure the learning objectives and curriculum are in alignment with post-secondary education or professional needs

3. Ensure content accuracy (evidence-based), quality, and completeness (comprehensively covers relevant topics) via a review by a group of experts in the subject matter taught (3rd party objective peer-review)

4. Ensure instructional design and delivery meets evidence-based teaching standards.

5. Promote evaluation procedures (student assessments) that enhance learning, are matched to learning objectives, and assess successful completion of learning objectives.

As the term is currently used in the fitness industry, “accredited” does not mean high quality, it just means something was reviewed. Unfortunately, the standard for CPT certifications is an “accredited” exam, that tests on content that has not been reviewed at all. To be blunt, the industry would be better off removing this type of accreditation (e.g. NCCA accreditation). This type of accreditation is obstructing education progress in multiple ways including slowing improvement processes, adding exorbitant variable costs (that are passed on to students), making iterative testing impossible, promoting assessment standards over education quality standards, impeding a transition to more online education, etc. Many approvals for continuing education credits do a far better job at reviewing content and they could be used in part as a new standard to maintain certification quality; for example, NATA-BOC approval, TPTA approval, AOTA approval, and AusActive approval. However, the current best recommendation is likely the adoption of the American Council on Education (ACE) approval. American Council on Education (ACE) approval enforces what most people believe “Accredited” implies.

The Proud and Very Few: As far as we know, the Brookbush Institute is 1 of only 2 personal training certifications in the industry that have been approved following a comprehensive, systematic review, by a panel of 3rd party, subject matter experts (peer-review), and whose learning objectives have been matched to the post-secondary education curriculum and/or professionals skills and competencies. The result of this review on the Brookbush Institute’s CPT has been published in the ACE National Guide including College Credit Recommendation & Competencies.

Brookbush Institute: What is a Fully Accredited Personal Trainer Certification?

CONTACT: Media@BrookbushInstitute.com

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Brookbush Institute
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