This past February, I successfully passed the ACE Personal Trainer Exam and became a certified personal trainer.  If you’re reading this, most likely you are seeking to become certified and are looking for tips from others who’ve already done it.

Before I go any further, I want to encourage you with this.  I was relatively nervous before taking the test, but it really wasn’t that bad at all.  As long as you make sure that you study the most relevant stuff, and that you study in the way you learn best, you have nothing to worry about.

The Design of the ACE Test

I give kudos to ACE for how they set up the questions for the personal trainer test.  In my opinion, they seem to do a good job with the weights they place on the different areas of personal training.  The four areas they split personal training into four “domains” as follows:

Client Interviews and Assessments

Program Design and Implementation

Program Progression and Modifications

Professional Conduct, Safety, and Risk Management

After taking the exam, I felt like they put the most emphasis on questions concerning how to design programs for different individuals (Program Design and Implementation), and less emphasis on the business side of things (Professional Conduct, Safety, and Risk Management).  This isn’t a surprise though, because if you look at Appendix B in the personal trainer manual, you’ll see that this is how they weigh the test out.

All I’m saying is that the test really does ‘feel’ like it’s designed that way.

Appendix B was somewhat hard to understand for me. I guess I would have preferred to see specific chapter numbers listed for each domain, but once you understand the breadth of what’s in the book, you’ll know where each chapter fits.

How do I study that thick manual?

Naturally, the next question is, “how in the world do you go about studying that big ‘ole book?”  The ACE Personal Trainer Manual (4th Edition) is over 700 pages, and can be pretty intimidating.  With my background being engineering, I was a bit nervous because I had never studied concepts like anatomy and kinetics/kinematics in such depth.

However, I finally found a way to study for it that worked for me and helped me pass the exam.  Here’s what I did:

• I read through the entire book over 6-7 months.  This was extra hard, especially with the earlier chapters that focus moreso on what to do when getting new clients – a lot of psychology-type stuff – and the anatomy stuff was challenging.  Once I got into specific training articles, it was easier.  I mean hey, I read about that stuff all the time anyway because I’m interested in it.
• I practiced on myself.  In other words, when I had to learn about certain movements and muscles, I identified those things on myself.  This helped me a lot, because I was able to make sense of what the book was talking about, instead of just reading the words on the paper.  I comprehend better when I see demonstration.
• I used ACE Academy Elite somewhat.  The main way that this extra service helped me is by keeping me on track with studying on my way to the exam.  The videos helped a bit too, but once I got to the last 3-4 lessons, I stopped watching them.
• I used the flash cards.  The flash cards were especially handy for helping me learn muscles and movements.

Other Helpful Tidbits

Aside from the materials that ACE gave me (for a cost, of course) to prepare for the exam, the following other things helped me (and I believe they’ll help you too):

• I already had a big interest in health and fitness.  I’ve been reading articles about health and fitness since I was a teenager.  Much of the knowledge I attained from years of leisurely reading helped me pass the exam.  Keep reading about the healthy living stuff that interests you in general; don’t just read the manual.
• My engineering background helped me with the math.  Studying how to use the formulas and trying to understand the mathematics of physical fitness was honestly not a challenge on my end.  When you have to take math classes for four whole years of college, I’ll just say that math gets a lot easier.  I believe that anyone will do just fine with the math portions of the test, but if you have a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) background, it’ll be especially easy.
• I was always training people.  Because I continued helping others with working out, many concepts were easy to learn.  There’s no better experience than getting out there in the field and doing the stuff.  So even if you’re not certified yet, I say to at least find somebody to help.
• Know how to design programs for folks with health issues.  I gathered from the way that the exam was set up that ACE really wants you to know how to get folks fit who are dealing with issues like high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.  And we should know how to help folks with these issues, right?  Again guys, they’re serious about trainers knowing about this.  Really serious…hint, hint. 😉

Hey, I know you’re probably nervous about taking the exam.  Don’t be, though.  Seriously.  Consider the pointers that I’ve given you, and make sure you study in the way that best suits you.   Then, go and pass that exam!