Just what does "certified" mean for fitness instructors who teach "killer" workouts?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Global Medicine Hunter News

Dr. Meg Jordan

mjordan@ciis.edu

       Is the Lack of Practical Skills Testing and Accreditation to Blame for New Era of Injuries and Even Deaths from Popular Killer Workouts that Push the Limits?

(SAN FRANCISCO--CA)  After three decades of safe and sane fitness workouts, a new era of insane, killer workouts is pushing the workout injury rate sky-high again. It's time to look deep within the fitness industry to understand what went wrong with fitness education itself.

"Show me what you know.  Let me see your moves," said Charles Atlas to his first student of dynamic tension.  The man who would become the face of fitness in the 1920s knew that a physical demonstration of correct technique was a prerequisite to getting results.

That common sense permeated the next 90 years for anyone interested in exercise programs or training techniques for fitness, dance, body building, weight lifting, cycling, running, group exercise or personal training—anything to do with moving the body.

But something happened with the explosive popularity of aerobic exercise and dance exercise in the early 1980s. According to sports medicine studies, the injury rate soared beyond 70% for enthusiasts suffering from shin splits and overuse syndrome. Suddenly anyone who looked good in a leotard and could keep up with 120-beats-per-minute music was teaching group aerobic classes. They never had to learn basic knowledge or demonstrate any proficiency or skills.

Hence the birth of AFAA, the Aerobic and Fitness Association of America, which

developed its first workshop and certification exams in 1983, when the fitness industry was in its infancy. Right from the start, AFAA had both a written exam and a practical exam, performed in front of three independent testers.  To be an AFAA Certified Instructor, you had to know safe and effective exercise guidelines and demonstrate your competency with a practical examination. 

Instructors were asked, "How would you modify that move for somebody with knee problems? Or back pain?"  Show us what you know, let me see your moves…rang loud and clear at AFAA exams.

It made sense to Linda Pfeffer, the administrative RN who started AFAA, and her national advisory board.  "Just imagine if surgeons only had to take a written test,

and never was observed in the operation suite performing surgery? Would you want that guy hunting down your appendix?"

Likewise, what if your hair stylist never had to demonstrate their knowledge of a decent haircut?   What if your psychotherapist never had a supervising therapist debrief a session or listen in to a first conversation?  Even computer coding experts have to take practical exams, demonstrating their expertise.

So the fitness industry was brought into a sane and reasonable balance from 1980s for the next couple of decades. Injury rates went down. I reported on this self-regulating correction within the fitness industry in a news story that was picked up by 1200 newspapers in 1987, based on published studies at the time (1987, Topics in Acute Care and Trauma Rehabilitation: Aerobic Dance Injuries.  Aspen Publishing. Issue Editor of 8-chapter anthology. Angsten, Peg, "An Overview of Aerobic Dance-Exercise Injury Studies.")

But lately, devastating injuries are back on the fitness scene, and some are blaming the return of "killer workouts." Rhabdo is a term you'll hear mentioned in places that offer workouts like Insanity and CrossFit. It's back and badder than ever. Rhabdomylosis is the debilitating constriction of hypertrophied muscle tissue within its overly tight wrapper – the fascia--as a direct result of excessive overload or too much exercise too quickly, with without safe progression, adaptation and recovery.

Many industry experts believe that the renewed injury rate is the result of fitness instructors and personal trainers not having to "show me your moves."  A new crop of celebrity trainers and overnight-hot-body-exercise stars has popped up, with their own "soft certifications" which are workshops and quickie tests without oversight or accreditation.

Let me back up a minute to expose a deep dysfunction within the fitness industry.

Back in 1983, AFAA, the oldest, largest and original training and certifying professional organization for exercise leaders and fitness trainers began transforming the fitness industry, elevating the bar for safety and excellent instruction and conducting 3000 workshops a month, certifying with written and practical examinations.

A few years later, a competitive organization, IDEA, launched a written exam, and after some controversy, responded by spawning a nonprofit, ACE with former IDEA leadership. ACE began an independent organization, while IDEA retained membership and convention and some training aspects.  ACE initially had a written exam only, but attempted a practical demonstration for a brief period, then surrendered the hard work of offering a practical, and returned to written exam only, which it continues to offer to this day.  ACE has convinced many a club and instructor that its written test is not only sufficient but the only certification worth getting.

Since those early years, a number of other training organizations have arisen with their own take on fitness competencies, trainings, and certifying tests—again all written: NASM, ACSM, ISSA and more.   It's a split industry; half the instructors getting AFAA, with its written and practical exams. The other half going with ACE, with its written-only exam. About a decade of peaceful co-existence was in play. 

Until the "accreditation wars" were launched, primarily on the part of ACE, as it tried (and fairly well succeeded) to convince  the fitness industry that the accrediting body it chose to go with, NCCA, was the one and only supremely proper accreditor, and that if your organization or certifying body did not have that accreditor, avoid it, don't hire it, don't cross limbs with it.

So what's an accrediting agency? Isn't it enough to just have a certification?  Why does the certifier need to be certified?  When a new trade moves along the process of gaining its footing and advancing its professional standing, it often go through a process where its content, educational processes and testing mechanisms are scrutinized by third parties.

It was the next step for the fitness industry.

AFAA took this step seriously back in the early 1990s. The advisory board of AFAA knew that the next logical question in the mind of the consumer  (if the consumer really cared or understood the process of competency-testing), would be:  Who checks out the certifiers? Who stands over the testing process to see if it's actually valid, if the questions asked are posed properly, if the test is truly measuring what it sets out to measure?

Those "test overvseers" are known as accrediting bodies, and the fitness industry has unfortunately, undergone another split.

AFAA took the high road, and underwent a two-pronged accrediting process. The content of AFAA's numerous workshops and trainings, materials, textbooks, instructor manuals, and more, was submitted to an independent, quasi-governmental agency known as the DETC, which is under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education.

The actual examinations (written and practical) were reviewed and accredited by Vital Research, Inc., a 30-year old respected test accreditation organization.

ACE organized a major recruitment effort to pose the NCCA as the chief accrediting body for its written examination. NCCA is a respected accreditor of many professional written examinations, such as those in construction, health care, and accounting. But the problem is that those professions or trades arise from trainers or educators that test the physical competency of their subjects before they sit for the NCCA-accredited exam.

In order to graduate from a trade school or health care profession, you have had to demonstrate our physical competency with certain skills – from wiring a house to performing a tooth extraction.

The accrediting body for ACE and others, the NCCA, never actually checks to see if physical demonstrations have been performed. NCCA only checks to see if the ACE written test is decent—and it is a decent, valid test of intellectual skills.

But now we are seeing a wave of dangerous instructors – instructors who never had to "SHOW ME YOUR MOVES." Hence the escalating injury rate. Hence the deja vue of 1983 all over again!

And if that were the only problem, it would be bad enough. But ACE has put up a smoke-and-mirrors game and spread a misleading campaign that "AFAA isn't accredited" to health clubs, essentially black-balling AFAA Certified trainers and exercise instructors throughout many parts of the country, the only trainers who hold dual certification: the content of their training course, and the test itself are both accredited by separate agencies, the DETC and Vital Research.

AFAA is the organization that held the highest standards, and earned international recognition for establishing the gold standard for over 30 years.  AFAA has accredited content, accredited written tests and accredited practical tests.  No other organization has ever provided all of that.

According to AFAA spokespersons on their training and education board, AFAA leadership invites the rest of the certifying and training organizations to take a hard look at the lack of education and practical testing within the fitness industry that has spawned a new era of killer workouts taught by instructors who have not had their practical skills or competencies fully validated by accrediting bodies.

A backlash of consumer complaint is about to be heaved onto a generation of uneducated, untested instructors with "soft certification" – certification that's not based on comprehensive education of exercise science and safe standards, and practical testing.

It's time to wake up, avoid the rhabdo, and show us your moves.

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