What is the gold standard certification in personal training?
This is a wonderful question because it will undoubtedly elicit a lot of different responses! There is no doubt that some certifications (those that are accredited or otherwise “officially recognized” by an industry standard) are better than others, but I think that a lot also depends upon the actual trainer. I love analogies, and one that I will use here in answer to your question is as it relates to law schools or medical schools. Undoubtedly, within both of those industries, there are schools that are recognized as “the best.” But, as a law school graduate myself, and one who went on to practice in a large prestigious law firm that hired from those ‘best’ law schools (which I didn’t attend by the way), I quickly recognized that I could hold my own with those other attorneys despite the fact that I had not attended those same ‘best’ schools. It wasn’t so much WHERE I went to law school as it was how I applied what I learned, and how I took advantage of the opportunity to learn that I was given.
Bottom line to me is HOW you use WHAT you know. There are great trainers out there that come from a wide-variety of certifications, as well as there are some very poor trainers out there from that same wide-variety.
I hope that this helps.
LaRue, CSCS
www.lecfitness.com
larue.co[email protected]