National Personal Training Institute. Anyone have any comments on it? Was wondering if it was any good…
I take it you would be doing the one in Orlando ? Thinking about staying at the campus ?
yeah i would, but i live in orlando so i don’ tthink i would actually stay on the campus.
It’s a good school I attended a few months ago but left when I got offered a great job in the communications field. The only thing you should know before hand is that you get a diploma not a certification!
I run the NPTI program in VA and am involved with the overall program nationwide. I am obviously biased but I will try to answer any questions that you have, either on here or through a PM.
Tim, what are a couple of the strongest arguments for going this route instead of a certification with any of the top tier certifications ?
[quote]WS4JB wrote:
Tim, what are a couple of the strongest arguments for going this route instead of a certification with any of the top tier certifications ?[/quote]
The way I look at it is there are three ways to go. You can go get a degree from a college/university, tough to beat that but it is expensive and you still might need to get certified in the end anyway. Plus if you already have a life established you may find this very hard to fit in your schedule, but I am not knocking it, it is the best way to go.
You can get a diploma in training (which is what NPTI offers). We can do that because we are approved by the Department of Education to teach training.
The difference between a diploma and certification is that your diploma does not expire, your title upon graduating from NPTI (assuming you pass) is CPT - certified personal trainer and under most circumstances an additional cert is not necessary. This will take 6-12 months to complete.
You can go get certified through NSCA, NASM, ACE, etc. This is the quickest and the cheapest way to do it.
The big difference between NPTI and your other certs are they are mainly self study and there is not a huge emphasis on practical gym time and anatomy. The other certs can certainly turn out good trainers and their textbooks are generally good.
Our program is much more expensive ($6300) but that is because you get 500 hours of instruction vs about 16 hours with the other certs. We spend 100 hours on anatomy and really go into pretty good detail on and actually test on it.
We also certify students in basic nutrition and CPR/First Aid, and in some ways the best part is we spend 200 hours in the gym with instruction. It is very difficult to become a good trainer just by reading a book, a few people have the self obtained knowledge to do so but most don’t.
Also those textbooks are not the easiest to read, so we translate the books for the students and then teach them how to do the stuff in the gym.
As I said I am a little biased but our goal was to take everything good from a degree and take it out and teach it to the students without the extra stuff, and then spend a lot of time (even more time than most degrees) in the gym really putting the info to practice.
The teacher can make or break the course. We have over 30 schools and hundreds of instructors so I can’t say with certainty every one of them is awesome, although most are. I would strongly suggest you go sit in on a class for a day and observe and see how you like it.
We allow you to do this for free. Then if you think it is for you and you are ready to make a serious commitment and work and study hard, sign up. If you don’t think it is for you, then look elsewhere, no hard feelings.
I hope that answered your questions, if you have any others let me know. Good luck with your decision.
I am currently getting a NASM cert. I also wanted to do NPTI because of the hands on training and experience. My friend at lifestyle family fitness says its a waste of money.
Although he says that I have heard good things about it and had a friend of mine say they learned a ton there. I just wish it wasn’t so expensive! Any way to get a discount Tim!?!
[quote]AlterEgo721 wrote:
I am currently getting a NASM cert. I also wanted to do NPTI because of the hands on training and experience. My friend at lifestyle family fitness says its a waste of money.
Although he says that I have heard good things about it and had a friend of mine say they learned a ton there. I just wish it wasn’t so expensive! Any way to get a discount Tim!?![/quote]
No, no discounts (if you pay in full we take 200 off the total price). You can apply for a student loan through Sallie Mae which can make the payments more reasonable and you can defer the payments until you get a job and start making money. Plus once you get 1-4 regular sessions per week for a year (depending on how much you are charging and retaining), the class will pay for itself just from that.
Everybody has their own way of looking at the price. If you simply got a trainer for 100 sessions it would most likely be more expensive that our price and you get 100 workouts with a trainer (the instructor), plus our price includes CPR cert, nutrition cert, textbooks, and the gym membership. Compared to a full blown degree you will pay about 40K, an associates is about 18K. We are more expensive than a regular cert for sure, they are usually about 750 when all is said and done assuming you pass the test on the first try, but we are not self study so I don’t see the two as comparable.
I would pay more attention to what the person whom actually took the class thinks than what a person that may not have that much knowledge about the class thinks. But if you want to validate their opinion, go ask the your friend at Lifestyle what the names of the hamstring muscles are and what their origin, insertion, and action is. If he/she rattles them off, then you can put more stock in their opinion (and have them contact me, I would like to see why they think it is not worth it). If he/she stares at you and says “I thought the hamstrings were just one muscle and don’t they just bend the knee,” then laugh and walk away.
What about job placement, it seems to be something that the NPTI really seems to talk about as a perk to going there.
If one was to graduate from the Institute having done very well, how easy would it be to get a good job in the field ?
–JB
We do have job placement. It is not a guarantee of receiving a job but we have lots of ways to help students find jobs.
Here is what we do in VA:
We go over creating a resume and conducting an interview.
When students graduate they get a big job packet with a large (200+) list of jobs in the area.
Students get access to our website with a password that has a national job database.
During the course I invite several fitness companies to come in and make presentations to the class about what they have and what they are looking for.
I have a job board in the class of immediate openings where companies have contacted me looking for trainers.
I feel our job placement assistance is strong, but to be blunt it is not really that hard to get a job as a trainer, especially in my area. The harder part is being successful once you get that job, and that is where the increased knowledge that comes with the more extensive education really helps out.