Got my ACE certification, thought the exam was a joke - Personal Trainer Community - Forum

[Christina]

I was able to salvage Jason's original post.

I recently took and passed the exam with a score of 506, 500 was passing so I just barely made it. This exam was a complete joke however, that had little to do with actual personal training.

Questions like:
1. What is a lacto-ovo vegetarian?
2. What do you do if you see someone in the gym bouncing the bar off their chest while benchpressing?
3. A female client of yours tells you she is interested in dating another trainer at your gym, what do you do?
4. What artery pumps the most blood in the human body?

These are just some examples that I remember from the exam. Most of the questions on the exam had nothing to do with training a client, and many of them were opinionated questions that you couldnt quantitatively prove right or wrong. The test was basically designed so that someone 5ft tall and 400lbs who has never set foot in a gym before could pass it if they studied the book enough and memorized all the scientific terms, allowing them to be a CPT without having any practical experience at all.

I thought the two simulation problems at the end of the test were good however, they actually tested what you are likely to encounter while training clients.

Brian responded...

Perhaps this is one reason why the ACE CPT certification is often recommended to those seeking an "entry level" certification that isn't has hard as NASM, ACSM, NSCA, etc.

That said, to an extent, it is going to be true of all of the accredited exams -- in order to be accredited they have to meet objective testing standards, and so they can't have the kind of essay questions that would really let you probe someone's knowledge and experience.

Unfortunately these were the only 2 posts from the thread that I was able to salvage (they were cached in my browser). If anyone wants to continue to discuss this please feel free. I know John, Brian, and Jason had additional comments.

[BrianB]

Wondered what happened. Figured maybe the topic got nuked. Bummer about the lost posts and users. Life in the technology age...