How would our facility get someone certified to teach land based exercise class?
We offered an arthritis exercise class open to the public that met two days a week. The therapist proctoring the class decided to not renew his certification. The facility would like to continue to offer this program to the community, this is a free class. We would like to get another therapist involved to continue.
Hi John,
did the previous therapist have a certification with the Arthritis Foundation? AFAA has partnered with this organization to provide arthritis-specific training http://www.afaa.com/arthritisfoundation.htm.
I hope this helps.
Karin Singleton
www.meltnc.com
As Karin suggested, I think the first thing you might want to do is determine what certification your therapist had. In addition to arthritis specific training like she linked you to, you might also want your next person to have a group exercise certification such as AFAA primary group exercise or ACE primary group exercise.
It typically takes someone who is new to fitness about 3-4 months to study for a group-ex certification, although a highly motivated person or someone with fitness / anatomy / experience could do it much quicker.
When you use the word ‘therapist’ do you mean ‘physical therapist’? And are you looking to hire someone to work for you as a therapist (physical or otherwise) and also to teach the class? Or are you looking to hire someone just to teach twice a week? Or are you looking for a volunteer?
You could offer to pay the cost of the original certification to someone in your group who is interested. As mentioned, it would probably take them some time to locate a program, and study for and pass the test.
You could post a job on whatever site or in whatever format your facility normally uses asking for someone with the certification you want.
You don’t say what type of facility you have, or your geographic location, and those factors can also affect how easy it is to find someone. Generally, however, there are so many people who teach these things now, you are unlikely to have trouble finding someone, assuming you are offering the industry standard for compensation in your location.
And definitely check the web sit Karin lists. You might also check the ACE fitness site, where you can search by zip code and then by specialty, experience, etc….
