Which personal trainer certifications are most respected?
I'm considering pursuing Personal Trainer certification, and I quickly realized there are a large number of organizations that offer personal training, including:
ACE
NPTI
NASM
ACSM
NSCA
NCSF
...?
This random website lists these and a bunch more (it's where I got the above organizations from, to be honest), but I don't even know whether that site is trustworthy, particularly for the "industry recognition" row. Which certification, if any, is the best to pursue?
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Certificates themselves only make your services more marketable, they don't make you a better personal trainer.
Where do you plan to work? If it's at a gym, ask them what certificates they respect the most. Some organization will require specific ones, and others don't really care, and will give you more pay based on the number (not quality) of certificates. In that case you might as well get the cheapest ones you can.
If you going to market yourself to the general public, almost nobody you talk to will know the difference between NCCA and ACE. They might ask "are you certified?" (and they should), but that's about it. In this case, the decision is really up to you: what do you think will make you a better trainer? These certificates will only help get customers in the door, not retain them.
If you really, really want your question answered then ACE and NCCA are the two I hear mentioned the most and are probably the most recognizable. This is only my personal observation and yours might differ.
The certification that matters the most is the type that also gets you liability insurance where you're practicing. I'm not sure how it's handled in the US, but in Canada it's on a province by province basis.
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