So You Want to be a Group Fitness Instructor [Part 2]

If you missed part one, catch up here.

The AFAA Group Ex cert is pretty easy to obtain, but it is well respected since you can’t just take it online like many you’ll see out there. When you go online to schedule your exam date, you’ll need to pay for the certification and study materials which will be shipped to you. The certification is $300 and the study materials are around $40. Pricey, I know, but you’ll make it back once you start teaching. [I will tell you about a cheaper AFAA Group Ex cert option in a future post so look for that if you want to save moolah.]

In the study materials will be a study guide – fill it out! It basically outlines the written exam. On your scheduled exam day, they do review what will be on the written exam on test day, but if you haven’t studied, you’ll be in trouble since the questions get pretty detailed. It’s not hard, but it will require studying. Lots of people came in with blank study guides and bombed the test. I completed my study guide and got 100% on the test.

While you are studying in the month or two before test day, get your CPR certification done too. Almost every gym requires their group ex instructors to have it so even if you get your AFAA cert, you can’t teach if you don’t have your CPR cert. Find your local Red Cross for a schedule.

On your exam day [which is usually held at a gym or some sort of rec center], you’ll take a written test and a practical test. They scheduled a full day for me [8 hours], but I was there only for about 6 hours. In the morning they review everything that will be on the written exam and show you what they will be looking for when grading the practical exam.

In the afternoon, you’ll do the practical exam which involves doing a short individual demo teaching a specific exercise [I demonstrated squats] and also a group practical exam where they will call out a muscle group and you just have to demonstrate the proper way to perform an exercise for that muscle [e.g. biceps = do a bicep curl. Easy, right?]. They are fairly particular about some exercises they don’t want to see and about the form on some of them, but they’ll go over all of that before the official test.

Stay tuned for what you do after you get your test results!

Tagged as: group fitness