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We are going to be going over the ACE Certified Personal Trainer program in detail to help you determine if this is the best personal training certification for you.
ACE CPT certification is very popular in the fitness industry, and that popularity is well deserved given how solid the CPT certification program actually is.
Topics covered in this top-notch ACE certification review include:
Upon reading this certification review, we promise that you will make a well-informed decision regarding if you should choose the ACE-CPT certification and the right way to begin studying for the ACE personal trainer course.
Let’s dive in and take a look at ACE and its program design in more detail.
We highly recommend that you take our helpful quiz to find the best personal trainer certification for you.
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A.C.E., or the American Council on Exercise, is one of the most prominent personal trainer certifying agencies globally. Ace is so wide-reaching in fact that the ACE personal training certification is offered in multiple languages including English, Arabic, Thai, Finnish, and simplified Chinese. The certification is even formally recognized in over 100 countries.
With a strong reputation in its native North American market, the ACE personal trainer certification is most often associated with the United States and Canada, where a large number of personal trainers certified through ACE build their careers.
Founded in 1985, it has a heritage that dates back to the dawn of modern fitness instruction as we know it today. This makes ACE two years older than NASM, another very well known certifying body for personal trainers.
ACE training gears their education towards preparing trainers to work with the average client in a way that meets them where they are at. Most clients will have difficulty staying motivated and generally want to improve their overall health and wellbeing, although they may have other more specific goals, like to build muscle. ACE strives to prepare trainers for working with these sorts of clients because it is what most trainers will actually do when they get out there to practice in the field. Trainers who want to work with a very specific type of client, such as athletes, would benefit most by getting a CPT certification that focuses more on that specific population, like the NSCA CPT. In line with what ACE emphasizes in their personal trainer education program, the organization itselfit broadly aims to help trainers impact the community they serve by increasing their overall health and wellness in as effective a manner as possible. This differs a bit from other certification agencies like ISSA that are more focused on optimizing training to accomplish discrete training goals like building muscle.
The ACE personal trainer certification program produces trainers who are well suited to improve the health and wellness of their clients. This prepares them best to work with adults 30 and older, who make up a majority of clients at the average commercial gym.
That being said, ACE personal trainers are still adequately prepared to support the attainment of specific fitness goals independent of overall wellness. For example, ACE personal trainers can still modify acute programming variables in their client’s workout to shift its focus from strength to hypertrophy, hypertrophy to muscular endurance, or whatever other training goal the client may have. It’s just that ACE trainers won’t be the most well equipped to program at an advanced level, which is the sort of skill that is necessary when working with athletes or regular adults who are already very well trained. These sorts of clients are more likely to be found at a private gym than a commercial gym, which isn’t as relevant to newer trainers because many new trainers work at commercial gyms when starting out their fitness careers.
This doesn’t mean ACE fitness trainers are unable to work with other populations, though. Your certification is a starting point for your career and education as a personal trainer, not an ending point. The quality of education and resources provided by ACE allow trainers to have a solid foundation and starting point, from which they can branch their careers out from down the road.
Accreditation is one of the most important considerations when looking at what certification to get when you are becoming a personal trainer.
Accreditation is, simply put, a certificate of authenticity for a certification.
It validates that the content of the curriculum and delivery methods of knowledge and education administered by a certifying agency meet a minimum standard. This minimum standard is typically defined as the minimum level of proficiency required to safely practice within a field at an entry level. This minimum standard is not reflective of the average standard of practice in the industry, nor the average standard of practice that personal trainers should strive for. It reflects a minimum.
To that end, we highly recommend making the most of your study materials and study resources to learn as much as you can about becoming a personal trainer when you prepare for the ACE CPT exam. Even though earning a higher score than the minimum for the test won’t matter as far as the exam goes, because you’ll pass either way, it matters for how effective of a trainer you will become. Keep studying and do your best to truly learn and understand the materials. The passing score is a threshold for minimum competency, and if you invest in yourself in such a way that you far exceed that minimum, you will be setting the stage for a more successful and lucrative career.
Decisions about a certification are typically made by a board of experts with extensive practical experience and formal education in the industry. These experts operate on a board that is managed by an organization that specializes in education and testing, in order to make sure decisions reflect best practices in terms of content choice and exam design. If the process by which a certification is made and run meets the appropraite standard, an accreditation agency that involves experts in education fully accreddit the certification.
In the North American fitness industry, being the US and Canada, the gold standard for accreditation is the NCCA.
ACE is a NCCA accredited certifying agency. This means that having an ACE CPT means you will be regarded as legitimately having met a standardized minimum standard of proficiency as a personal trainer. This signals to employers that you are a safer hire than someone who did not receive a fully accredited personal trainer certification.
It also helps that ACE is a popular certification in general, since although being NCCA accredited is a gold standard, some fully accredited organizations are seen as higher quality than others. This naturally also impacts your early career prospects as well.
Going with a well known certification like the ACE CPT is also helpful because it can help protect you from getting a certification that is in effect almost meaningless. Some personal trainer certifications that are not accredited hold very little weight, to the point that employers at gyms will often completely disregard them. If you spend the money on a certification that does not help you practice or legitimize you as a full personal trainer, you will not see a meaningful return on your investment. If you don’t have enough knowledge about the personal training industry to discern which certifications are seen as more legitimate for yourself, it’s best to just go with one of the most well known ones out of the gate in order to stay safe.
The ACE personal trainer certification usually takes 4-8 weeks to complete, depending on your background, time dedicated to studying, and how well you can learn, retain, and recall the information in the ACE curriculum. Naturally this can vary a bit, since if you just completed a Kinesiology degree you can take the exam with little to no prep. On the other hand, some people who prefer to study at a slower pace and really absorb the information take as long as 5 or 6 months.
On the note of certification options, keep in mind that just because a website says their own certification is legitimate, it doesn’t mean that it is. Always do your best to fact check by referencing a third party to see if the certification you’re looking at actually holds weight and can help you in your career. Many certifications out there that appear to be accredited are not actually accredited.
Fortunately, ACE CPT is a nationally accredited personal training certification and will likely remain that way for a very long time.
Gyms and other employers prefer to hire trainers with NCCA-approved certifications, so having one helps you get your foot in the door, so to speak.
Check out other highly recommended certification programs in the links below.
The ACE CPT basic package costs $850, the ACE Plus package costs $945, and the ACE Advantage costs $1,175. If you want to purchase the exam only, you can do so for $499, but this is not recommended.
These prices place ACE in the middle of the scale as far as the overall cost compared to other certifications.
The ACE CPT is worth it if you value a research-based certification with an emphasis on behavioral change and high quality study materials. ACE’s NCCA accreditation also helps your chances of getting a job after earning your certification.
ACE is able to charge as much as it does because it offers a personal trainer certification that is in direct competition with some of the other biggest personal trainer certification names out there.
With all things considered, what you end up paying, despite the high price tag, is totally worth it. Although its price point is middling, ACE often has sales that bring its study packages down to as low as 50% of their base cost. When this is factored in, ACE is one of the cheapest personal training certifications out there. You just have to time when you purchase their study packages to align with one of their sales. ACE is also known to change up their baseline package price pretty often, so its actual cost does fluctuate from time to time.
The ACE personal trainer manual, or study companion as it’s also called, is very useful in your studies.
ACE offers robust study packages that come with a variety of resources to help you succeed in your personal trainer exam prep. This is similar to most of the other major personal trainer certifying bodies out there, so you won’t miss out on much by going with ACE over some of the other choices out there. It does, however offer more hands on guidance than its competitors, so the overall studying process will feel pretty easy with ACE.
The lowest tier “Basic” package is pretty standard given that it comes with a textbook, study companion, a practice test, and exam date. But, it also comes with ACE University, which is ACE’s platform for guiding you from day 1 all the way up to your exam date. ACE University is especially helpful for you if you know that your study skills are a bit rusty or have any concerns about your ability to pass a personal trainer test by a major NCCA accredited organization.
What ACE offers in its Basic package is pretty standard for what you’d expect from a certification company, with the exception of ACE University, which helps ACE stand out from its competitors. But higher level packages offer even more support than this, even offering live webinars and facilitated study groups to really help you have the highest chance of passing your exam possible. ACE is more committed to helping its candidates pass than many of the other major organizations out there. You just need to be willing to take advantage of their study materials and to put in the effort.
As mentioned, the ACE personal trainer certification online program has done a decent job of providing good amounts of supporting study material to complement the standard stuff.
Let’s take a look at what each package brings to the table!
| ACE Basic | ACE Plus | ACE Advantage |
|---|---|---|
| ACE University | ACE University | ACE University |
| ACE Certification Exam | ACE Certification Exam | ACE Certification Exam |
| ACE Practice Test (1) | ACE Practice Test (2) | ACE Practice Test (3) |
| ACE Personal Trainer Textbook | ACE Personal Trainer Textbook | ACE Personal Trainer Textbook |
| ACE Personal Trainer Study Companion | ACE Personal Trainer Study Companion | ACE Personal Trainer Study Companion |
| ACE Answers (Basic) | ACE Answers (Plus) | ACE Answers (Advantage) |
| Exercise Science 101 | Exercise Science 101 | |
| Dedicated Advantage Team |
Looking at this, it’s easy to see why ACE-CPT can be considered a top-tier cert.
The breadth and depth of the range of study packages will help you stand a fair shot, even with the Basic option. Many organizations structure their offerings so that their basic package is a home study solo option. ACE is similar, but ACE University will help you feel like you’re not in it completely alone.
The layout of the study materials and resources is also something to talk about.
The ACE student portal is immersive, interactive, and user-friendly with great videos which take you through the content.
This allows us to give ACE study materials a clear 97/10. It’s great for helping you pass the exam.
Going a step further, I’ll be introducing to you the free ACE personal trainer cert study guide with its simplified method of learning and the practice exam to help you get a feel of the real exam environment.
Using a combination of study resources can help you pass the ACE exam in less time than you otherwise would.
The ACE-CPT exam questions are as straightforward as they come.
It consists of 150 questions that span the various study topics. 25 of the questions are experimental, so you’re only graded on 125 questions.
That score is then converted on a 200 to 800 scale. You will need to score 500 points on that scale to pass.
The exam will require you to focus on certain aspects more than others to really increase your odds of success.
Let’s have a look at which parts of the exam warrant more attention and which require less.
ACE, as we have previously discussed, is a general certification that will effectively prepare you to work with the average client at the average gym.
So compared to other personal trainers programs, the emphasis is on what is most healthy rather than what is the most effective way to achieve a specific training outcome that is tangential to health like building muscle or increasing strength. Though, the ACE CPT still teaches trainers to do this.
One area of focus for ACE is related to posture. It will cover topics like spinal lordosis and kyphosis, both of which are common postural issues that normal people develop by living modern lives and engaging with technology in the way that people most often do. Learning how to train a client who is dealing with either issue is important because it will come up fairly often. Most other major CPT exams will also test you on this information, but ACE will gear its education towards helping you better understand exactly what is going on with the client’s posture and why what you do helps. Although, this is something the ACE CPT is able to adequately prepare you for, it is worth noting that this is something the NASM CPT is the best at doing: addressing postural alignment and deviations through exercise prescription.
ACE also covers biomechanics to some degree, despite it not being a big focus area when compared to other certifications out there like the NSCA. Even though that is the case, many candidates tend to struggle in the biomechanics section. So it can help you to get ahead of this by making sure you really understand the fundamentals of biomechanics and functional anatomy before you actually sit for the exam. It can help you earn a few extra points which can be the difference between passing and failing.
Next, we look at a few things you should spend less focus on, not because they are not important for practice, but because they either make up a small portion of the exam or are easy to intuitively deduce the answer to on the test in real-time.
But first, let’s talk about a common misunderstanding that comes with preparing for the ACE CPT. Although there are usually only a small number of questions on the test that directly ask you about muscle actions, it is still important to understand them. This is because understanding muscle actions allows you to infer the answer to other questions on the test that indirectly rely on you having knowledge of muscle actions. This can help you better pick out the nuances of more complicated questions and boost your score.
Additionally, chapters 12 and 13 are ones to avoid spending too much time on. They are pretty dense with info in the textbook, which may lead you to believe them to be prominent in the exam. A lot of the information here requires you to strictly memorize a large number of facts. Although it helps to read these sections so you can pick out information that is familiar on the test, it is hard to memorize everything, especially when considering that a small number of questions will come from these sections.
You also don’t have to spend too much time learning about ethical practices and behavioral recommendations. A lot of this information is intuitive and can be learned somewhat quickly if you use the right tactics to do so. Focus on understanding the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ when it comes to these parts of the ACE CPT, since it helps you problem solve. This will allow you to apply those problem solving skills directly to the ACE exam when you take it, rather than having to spend the time to memorize a bunch of different facts that may or may not show up. That being said, it is still helpful to learn the proper names of psychological constructs and concepts, like the names of the stages of behavior change.
To simplify the study process for you, there is a premium study package from Trainer Academy that addresses the areas of concentration and guides you to the right topics to study, alongside the study technique to apply for better assimilation.
You won’t regret using the ACE MVP Study Package. Give it a try today! At Trainer Academy we also have some more ACE CPT Exam Info.
The ACE personal trainer test is no walk in the park; however, it’s not going to rattle your brain to the same extent as something like the NSCA CSCS certification.
While ACE is not the hardest personal trainer exam in the industry, it is still not an easy exam. You will need adequate preparation to ensure you can answer each exam question within the roughly 80 seconds allotted time per question.
With a pass rate of 69%, you stand a fair chance on the ACE certification exam, but you will be tested, so don’t take it lightly; a 31% chance of failure is no joke either! Most candidates who sit for the test have spent a long time studying for the exam and believed they had a shot at passing. The overall amount of time you spend studying, the way you study, and the study materials you use will be an important factor in determining which side of the pass rate statistic you will fall on at the end of the day.
But you also have to consider that the passing grade is a 500 out of 800 on a scale of 200 to 800, although you cannot calculate the number of questions you got right or wrong from a scaled score. Most other certification exams require between 70% – 75% to pass.
The scaled score allows for the pass rate to be matched to industry standards, which is why it hovers around 69% which isn’t too far off from many other big name personal training certification exams out there, such as the NASM CPT exam.
Focusing on the areas we highlighted can help give you a bi of an edge when it comes to preparing for the exam, but remember that it’s important to tailor your approach to your own personal weak areas. Be honest with yourself about what you are good at and what you struggle with. Then take action to improve the areas you most need to improve. It’s the best way to increase your odds of success.
But iIf you really want to boost your odds further, we suggest you grab some third-party study materials such as the ones we offer here at Trainer Academy. The more exposure you get to the information, the better you’ll do in the end.
That’s because these materials have been designed by an expert who has gone through the works, taken the exam, and passed with flying colors. Experts who work on our products also have an extensive professional background and bring decades of experience working in the field that help inform the way our materials are made: to be practical, realistic, and efficient.
Who better to guide you on the difficulties of this cert exam than people who’ve already Aced ACE?
