NBFE - National Board of Fitness Examiners

Education, Training, Examinations and National Standards:A Historical Time for the Fitness Profession

Sept 24, 2005

Consumers, whether as individuals or members of health clubs, are entitled to assume that personal trainers who hold themselves out as “certified” have mastered the same basic skills and possess the same core knowledge as other “certified” personal trainers no matter what certification program they completed or where they reside.

Because there are nearly one hundred different certification organizations that use their own different standards and approaches to certify these trainers, consumers, as well as the medical and allied health professions, have no real way of judging a personal trainers qualifications or competency other than trial and error. Many personal trainer's are trained, well qualified and provide excellent care. Others have little or no education or training and put the public at risk for injury and even death.

For that reason, the education, training and certification of personal fitness trainers — and the accreditation of the organizations that issue certifications — must be based on a standardized, well defined set of skills that all personal trainers must possess in order to safely and competently counsel and instruct their clients. The tasks that a personal fitness trainer must be able to perform, and the skill set that is required to perform them, should be determined by conducting a “job task analysis” which can be used to judge what knowledge, skills and competencies they actually need.

The fitness industry has been faced with a serious problem when it comes to the issuance of certifications and the accreditation of organizations that issue certifications. One of the most critical obstacles has been that each certification organization uses its own job task analysis for establishing trainer competencies. As a result, a different set of skills is tested by each organization, and thus a certification issued by one organization means something different than a certification issued by another organization, no matter who accredits them.

Similarly, because various accreditation agencies rely on the job task analysis utilized by a particular certification organization, an accreditation means something different for each organization as well. The problem is further compounded when universities and colleges develop curricula for personal training based on the department or chairpersons opinions or yet again, different job task analyses. Simply put, there are no national standards for becoming a certified personal fitness trainer.

The good news is that a solution is finally now available to address this problem. The National Board of Fitness Examiners (NBFE), a non profit organization was founded in 2003 specifically to define scopes of practice and develop standardized national board examinations for the fitness profession. As a result, it is now possible for instructors, health clubs, universities, colleges, certification organizations and accrediting agencies to rely on the same job task analysis to develop curriculum, education, practical training programs and to test such trainers.

This is possible because for the first time in the history of the fitness industry, many national certification organizations, although competitors, at the invitation of the NBFE, began working together. These industry leaders agreed that national standards, similar to virtually any profession, provide a critical component that has been so desperately needed to help legitimize the fitness profession. They also agreed to participate in an industry-wide effort to develop the largest personal fitness trainer job task analysis ever conducted. By having accomplished this task, these organizations have helped the NBFE establish the industry's first formalized standards of practice. Today, the fitness industry has the benefit of a standardized job task analysis for personal fitness trainers, created by many leading national certification organizations working collaboratively with the NBFE.

The NBFE engaged LaserGrade and their team of renowned psychometricians, to guide and assist the NBFE every step of the way. Today, this one definitive job task analysis is now available for all affiliated educational and certification organizations to use, whether they educate, test, certify or accredit. By utilizing the same nationally conducted job task analysis in education, certification, accreditation of organizations, and for national board testing by the NBFE, there will be a consistency and continuity in the fitness industry that has not existed before.

The NBFE also enlisted the services of some of the nation's leading experts in the fitness industry, the National Board of Fitness Examiners (NBFE) Fellows , who hold certifications, degrees and awards not from just one organization, but from virtually every nationally recognized organization, including AFAA, AFPA, ACE, ACSM, AAPTE, ISSA, NAFC, NASM, NESTA, NETA, NSCA, PFIT, WITS. The NBFE Fellows diverse certification training and educational background in addition to their years of practical experience as some of the nations leading personal trainers, led to a truly well rounded group of subject matter experts needed to help create national standards for the fitness industry.

The NBFE then began the arduous task of beta testing. This process led to the final production of the first standardized national board examination, now known as the NBFE Personal Fitness Trainer Examination. Similar to all medical and allied health professions, we can be proud to say that our industry now has national standards.

For the first time, because of the National Boards, it will be possible to compare “apples with apples” — that is, consumers and employers can count on the fact that all certified personal trainers who successfully complete the National Boards will have the same core knowledge and skills regardless of which organization provided educational, training, certification or accreditation services.

Part I, the written portion of the National Board Examination for Personal Fitness Trainers is now available at any one of the hundreds of LaserGrade testing centers.

The planning and development of Part II, the practical, hands on portion of the National Boards, is soon to begin and with the help of industry leading experts, will set new standards for assessing the practical skills of fitness trainers.

For more information, please contact info@NBFE.org

National Board of Fitness Examiners