Improving the Integrity of Health and Fitness Training, Education, and Certification in the United States

I received the following email response from a friend and esteemed colleague Fabio Comana, MA, MS, Exercise Physiologist and spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise. With his permission, I am reposting his comments here. I thought he raised an important point regarding the "weeding out" of the fly-by-night personal trainer certifications from the market.  This is less about so-called "patch protection" and more about enhancing the integrity of the health/fitness industry. I have underscored a couple of eyebrow raising points below.

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Good to hear from you and read your blog. I agree 100% with your suggestions and would like to add some points. 

• In 2003, the initiative for NCCA accreditation was driven out of the existence of over 70 different fitness certification agencies in the US alone.  IHRSA’s initiative was implemented in Jan 2006 and to date only 12 have achieved NCCA accreditation.  The good news is that over a dozen other "certifications" have become CEC providers, no longer offering a certification, but a bunch of kettlebell certifications have entered the market instead.

• On the career point, we find the lifespan to be longer with women and with older fitness professionals.  Females and older trainers invest more into professional development, willing to spend $15-25 / CEC, usually attending conferences where it is most expensive. Younger trainers, males in particular, do not make that same investment and hence fizzle out faster.  I can speculate key reasons (ego, arrogance, lack of vision and planning, etc.).  

• I would love to see a study / survey to investigate this further. I am trying to have our IT department track recertification (renewal) differences between male/female and younger/older trainers.