The Precision Nutrition Certification
Finally, a true nutrition certification for fitness professionals.
Over 3 years in the making, the Precision Nutrition Certification Program is finally here. A brand new textbook, a brand new course, a brand new exam, all created from the ground up, with one purpose in mind: to teach elite fitness professionals the art and science of nutrition coaching.
We’re taking just 200 motivated fitness professionals into the 2010 group; registration opens Sep. 29th 2010. Are you in?
Today is an exciting day for us here at Precision Nutrition, because it’s the culmination of over 3 years of hard work on a project that I believe will do more to change the fitness industry than anything we’ve ever done.
The goal is simple: to teach elite fitness professionals how to become elite nutrition coaches. Because once you can consistently influence your client’s nutrition, your ability to deliver results increases 3-fold, at least. (That’s not my opinion. That’s a fact. More on that below.)
The method we chose to achieve that goal?
The Precision Nutrition Certification.
Executive Summary
- A comprehensive nutrition education and certification program designed specifically for use in a personal training / strength coaching environment.
- Covers the science of nutrition. Cellular biology, digestion, metabolism, macronutritients, micronutrients and more, all covered in depth.
- … and the practice of coaching. Teaches you a practical nutrition coaching process that you can use in a personal training / strength coaching environment for all clients at all levels.
- Includes our new textbook, “The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition,” a 500-page academic text written from the ground up specifically for fitness professionals.
- Includes 17 online seminars, one for each section of the text, to reinforce
the material. - Includes our study guide, to thoroughly prepare you for the exam.
- Includes online exam, available instantly and whenever you feel ready.
- Includes 26 forms, assessments and questionnaires that you can duplicate and use to integrate nutrition coaching into your practice immediately.
- Get listed in our new online directory of certified fitness professionals. Upon completion, we’ll list you on our site as PN-Certified and direct people looking for local help your way.
- Costs $799 USD. Less than a college credit, and for a fitness pro, much
more valuable. - Only 200 spots available in the 2010 certification group. First-come, first-serve. The PN Certification is an elite program with limited enrollment; we don’t plan to run another program this year.
- Registration opens September 29th.
The Certification Program: Nutrition Education for Elite Fitness Professionals.
At it’s core, the Precision Nutrition Certification Program is a comprehensive nutrition education program for elite fitness professionals.
It’s designed for, and meant to be used in, a personal training or strength coaching setting. In the program, we first teach you the essential science of sport and exercise nutrition. Cellular biology, digestion, metabolism, macronutrients, micronutrients — if you need to know it as a coach, we teach it in the cert.
Then, we teach you exactly how to add nutrition coaching to your work in the gym to guide an exercising client to their optimal physique. In other words, you’ll learn a system for influencing the nutrition habits of any client, with any goal, beginners and advanced alike.
There is no other educational program with that focus. I can tell you that, because if there was, I would have taken it myself. Because when I started out as a trainer in Miami, years ago, that’s exactly what I needed.
A little backstory: how we developed the certification program, and why.
The certification program is actually borne of a need I encountered in my own career.
See, I started out as a personal trainer myself, some 15-odd years ago. Based in Miami, I ran a pretty successful training business and worked with clients of all kinds.
I can’t remember how many people I trained exactly, but I imagine it must have been in the hundreds all told. On the exercise side of things, I had no problem. Once they got in the gym, I knew I could get them doing their absolute best.
But in many cases, that simply wasn’t enough, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why.
They just weren’t eating right.
Insight #1: 90% of clients want to lose fat, and 100% of clients need body transformation of some kind.
Having clients that weren’t eating right was a big problem, because my back-of-the-napkin stats showed that about 90% of my clients wanted to lose fat, and all of them needed some body transformation of some kind.
That couldn’t be done in the gym alone. If they’re spending 3 hours a week with me in the gym training, I thought, and the other 165 hours a week, on their own, eating poorly …
… then their progress is going to suck.
And unfortunately, in some cases, it did, for that very reason. In other cases, progress was just okay, when it should have been good; in others still, it was good when it should have been great.
Insight #2: Nutrition is always the limiting factor in body transformation.
The closer I looked, the more I realized that once I got the client in the gym and working out 3 times a week, keeping the intensity as high as they could manage, what I actually did with them didn’t change their rate of body composition all that much.
If I could get them to come in for 1 or 2 more hours a week, well that would have changed things, but for most clients it was out of the question for financial reasons. And if I let the intensity slip, then progress suffered.
But given 3 high intensity workouts a week, which is what most clients were able to do, body comp change (i.e., fat loss, for the most part) was pretty much the same no matter what we did.
What sped things up significantly, however, was nutrition change.
And in some cases, it didn’t just speed things up. It made the otherwise impossible, well, possible.
By changing nutrition habits (in the admittedly limited number of cases where I was able to do it successfully at the time), I was able to help clients reach goals they had long since given up on. We were breaking through plateaus and seeing results even I was surprised by.
That’s when I became fascinated (some might say “obsessed”) with sport nutrition. I had seen first-hand what was possible, and I wanted to immerse myself in it, master it, and figure out how to teach it to all kinds of clients — especially the ones I hadn’t been able to train successfully.
Soon after, I shut down my training business, left Miami and set out to learn everything I could on the subject.
But … where to go?
Insight #3: No one is really teaching fitness professionals how to become effective nutrition coaches with exercising clients.
When I set out to learn sport nutrition (and I now say “sport and exercise nutrition,” because I wanted to learn how to coach ALL the people I was training, not just the athletes), I quickly realized that there was almost no place to go.
Here’s what I found:
Option #1: Weekend Nutrition Certification. There are a number of nutrition “certifications” out there, most of which consist of some kind of seminar you attend — and many of which don’t even test your competency with an exam.
Pros: Would have allowed me to market myself as a nutritionist, or something to that effect.
Cons: Basically a merit-less rubber stamp.
I opted not to do that sort of cert, because I felt like they were far too basic. I didn’t just want a piece of paper. I legitimately wanted to learn everything I needed to master the science and application of nutrition.
Option #2: Become a Registered Dietitian (RD). I also thought briefly about becoming an RD, which entails a bachelor degree, doing a series of clinical internships, passing an exam and doing continuing education to stay registered.
Pros: An RD is a relatively well-known and respected accreditation; a noble profession, requiring intensive study.
Cons: Largely about disease management and medical nutrition therapy; relatively little about sport and exercise nutrition.
I opted not to do this either, because I knew that I didn’t want to do medical nutrition or work from a hospital. Not all RDs do, but it’s still the focus.
I knew, from the very beginning, that I wanted to work with athletes and exercising populations, and the RD didn’t seem like the best way to go about learning how.
Option #3: Become a researcher/professor (PhD). There isn’t really a sport nutrition PhD, per se. However, once you make it to the masters and PhD levels, you have a lot more flexibility in planning your own studies.
I never really wanted to become a tenured professor (although I’m now an adjunct professor and teach college nutrition courses from time to time). It’s just not my thing. What I did love was research. I figured that doing a PhD would afford me the time to delve into all the existing research on sport and exercising nutrition, and the ability to actually conduct and publish studies myself.
Pros: Lots of freedom to study whatever you want in depth, including sport and exercise nutrition, in a demanding and scientifically rigorous environment.
Cons: Inordinate amount of studying (4 years of college, plus typically 5 or more years working on your masters and PhD), huge cost (both from tuition, room & board, etc. AND from the lost employment income you could have been earning instead.)
This is the route I chose. Ultimately, I went to study in the Exercise and Nutrition Lab at the University of Western Ontario, and wrapped up my grad work in Exercise Physiology and Nutrient Biochemistry.
But really, I never learned what I set out to learn — exercise and sport nutrition coaching.
Some of it was great, don’t get me wrong. I was fortunate to have an outstanding advisor in Dr. Peter Lemon, who has done a lot of groundbreaking research in sport nutrition and whom I consider one of my mentors; but not all were that lucky. It has opened many doors for me in the meantime, for sure. And of course, I learned most of what I wanted to learn (including how little I actually knew) and then some. All told, it was a hugely beneficial process.
That said, it was a TON of work, much more than I ever expected. It also cost me a huge part of my life, and I don’t miss beating the bushes for research grants or the political bullshit that you have to endure. For me it was largely a nuisance; for others I know, it was much, much worse.
The best part of it was that it started to solidify certain ideas about nutrition: what works, what doesn’t, and why; and most importantly, how it can be taught and coached. Because there was no real “sport nutrition” degree, I basically created one for myself out of necessity, choosing my courses, studies and dissertation to lead to that end.
That effort made Precision Nutrition possible. During my final few years there, we started the company and began to test those ideas, first with athletes, and then, through our coaching programs, with the general population.
In fact, Precision Nutrition has grown into a huge body transformation research project, in which we test our ideas with real clients every day; the amount of data we collect is, to my knowledge anyway, unprecedented in this field. So learning how to conduct studies and derive insight from them was quite helpful, in retrospect.
And even to this day, I still conduct studies from time to time through my affiliation with the University of Texas and Eastern Michigan University.
One of those studies, in fact, should forever change the way you coach . . .
Insight #4: Exercise alone doesn’t work.
I recently worked on a study at the University of Texas. We wanted to test the effects of exercise alone — without any change to diet. Pay close attention here, folks, because the results surprised even me.
The study looked at 100 sedentary participants over the course of 12 weeks. Half of them were told to do nothing but show up for measurement sessions (the control group).
The other half were given:
- an intensive 12 week training program, designed by me
- 3 hours/week of weight training, supervised by a strength coach
- 2+ hours/week of group exercise or interval training, supervised by a
group exercise coach - no diet change
These individuals, as stated above, did no exercise before the study began. As a result of this sedentary lifestyle, they averaged between 35% and 40% body fat (according to DEXA scans).
Now, its important to note that we didnt alter the participants eating at all. And we did this on purpose. We wanted to test the effects of exercise alone without diet. In other words, the question became:
“Without a dietary intervention, can exercise alone reshape a persons body?”
At the end of the 12 week study, we got our answer:
“No.”
Without dietary control, 12 weeks of high intensity training produced a fairly disappointing 1% loss of body fat. In terms of raw data, the participants lost only 1 pound of fat and gained 2 pounds of lean body mass vs. the placebo group.
Frankly, that sucks.
[Some might argue that the training program was flawed; had it been this way or that way, it would have worked better. I don’t think so. Keep in mind, I designed the program and have some experience in this area, having worked with nearly every top coach in the business and being one myself. Furthermore, each session was supervised by highly qualified coaches, so there was ample quality control. Ignore this data at your peril, because as we shall see, there’s more of it to come.]
Here’s the bottom line . . .
Insight #5: If a client doesn’t change their nutrition, all the effort in the gym is largely wasted.
If a client doesnt change their nutrition, nothing we as trainers and coaches do in the gym will matter when it comes to body comp change (fat loss, muscle gain) — and when some 90% of clients want fat loss, and nearly 100% require body comp change, that’s a problem.
Simply put, the last 25 years of published research show that, while exercise alone can promote VERY small changes in body fat and lean mass, those changes are almost negligible.
In fact, one published review, a meta-analysis of over 700 previous exercise studies done over 25 years, showed that about 6 months of supervised exercise programming will produce only 9lbs of weight lost.
If we assume 50% of that weight lost is fat (which is a safe assumption, based on the research), that means that clients can expect to lose around 4.5lbs of fat during a 6 month training program.
So, lets assume a client meets with his/her trainer 4 times per week for $50 per hour. Thats $200 per week, $800 per month, and $4,800 for 6 months. All for 4.5lbs of fat lost?
Thats a cost of just over $1000 per pound of fat lost.
After all that time and money spent, would an overweight client even notice a 4.5lb fat loss? Not likely.
Fortunately, there is a better way.
Insight #6: Exercise AND nutrition coaching — together — work even better than clients expect.
The upshot of all of this is that trainers and coaches need to integrate nutrition into their practice. Without it, the results will be consistently disappointing with all but the few driven clients who are changing their diet anyway.
But what happens when you DO integrate training and nutrition?
About 3 years ago, we set out to answer that.
And the answer is that when training and nutrition are integrated in the coaching process, body composition change increases by a factor of 3, at the very least.
Here’s how I know.
A brief history of Precision Nutrition coaching
We began coaching people online in 2000, all on a one-on-one basis over email. If the client or athlete had a coach or trainer already, we would look at their training plan and provide suggestions if necessary; if their coach didn’t have a plan, our suggestion was to get a new coach.
And if they didn’t have a trainer or coach, we’d do the exercise plan for them, in addition to our nutrition plan.
So there was always an exercise component to our coaching.
That early one-on-one coaching process was very instructive, because it helped refine the ins and out of coaching: communication strategies, overcoming objections, etc.
But it was also limiting in that we could never take more than 20 or so clients per coach, because the back-and-forth communication and data collection was so time consuming and inefficient. So we could never really scale up and test new ideas with enough of a sample size to get meaningful data out of it.
Lean Eating Coaching Program: The Research Project?
Then, 3 years ago, we started doing things differently.
We began building what would eventually becoming the Lean Eating Coaching program. Over the years, our programmers started to build a web application that allows us to streamline communication with clients, teach them key lessons, provide instant feedback and — most importantly — track all kinds of statistics and measurements on each client.
By the end of next year, we will have put somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 clients through our programs. We’re quietly conducting what I believe is the largest body transformation research project of its kind.
Because the program is entirely online, we keep data on every relevant domain, and with that data, we constantly test new coaching ideas. It’s a real-world research lab, working with people in their every day lives.
Raising the bar: training + nutrition = 3X-10X the results.
During the 6 month, online-only Lean Eating program, the average fat loss is around 15lbs. That’s at least 3X what we would expect without nutrition change.
Keep in mind, that’s without us ever meeting them in person.
If the participant also sees a trainer in-person, i.e., they use our exercise and nutrition system while finding a coach to help keep intensity up in the gym, we see closer to 25lbs of fat loss in 6 months.
Top end results are even more impressive. Top performers, the real go-getters that coaches love, are losing up to 50lbs in 6 months. Its quite amazing.
So with 6 months of the right exercise and the right nutrition programming, supervised by a trainer, the cost per pound of fat loss can go down from $1000 per pound to $100 per pound.
Thats nearly 10X more fat loss and 10X more cost effectiveness.
That’s what we should expect: 3-10X better numbers with effective nutrition coaching.
Problem is, no one is teaching this stuff. Until now.
Why we created the Precision Nutrition Certification
Nothing out there covers the specific problem: how to deliver nutrition coaching in a personal training or strength coaching environment.
And thats why I wanted to do this certification.
I want to help create a new kind of fitness professional. One that helps coaches become body transformation experts, and one that helps clients get the kind of results they deserve.
The PN Certification is a massive step in that direction.
About the Precision Nutrition Certification
Let me give you the rundown of what the certification is. Here it is, in a nutshell:
- Small group of 200 students, starting Oct 4th 2010 (registration opens Sep. 29th)
- Brand new course textbook, “The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition,” by yours truly along with Ryan Andrews
- 17 online seminars, reinforcing each topic in the textbook
- Study guide, with hundreds of practice questions to prepare for the . . .
- Online exam, available whenever you’re ready
- 26 forms and assessment questionnaires you can duplicate and use to integrate what you’ve learned into your practice
The program costs $799 USD and should take about 8-16 weeks to complete, depending on how ambitious you are.
Let’s go through each part in a little more depth.
Questions about the PN Certification program
In the lead-up to the launch of the certification program, we fielded a number of questions about it, and I think it would be helpful to answer some of the main ones here.
Q1: “How thorough is the PN Certification?”
Very. To give you an idea, I teach a masters level Sport and Exercise Nutrition course at Eastern Michigan University.
The course is part of a High-Performance Physiology masters degree program at EMU. And the PN Certification covers the very same material that my masters students learn as part of the EMU program.
So make no mistake, this is an elite certification based on grad school material.
Q2: “Will there be multiple levels of certification?”
Yes, two. This is the first, Level 1, and includes the textbook, the online material and the online exam. Essentially, Level 1 certifies that you understand the theory.
With Level 1, we give you all the knowledge to begin incorporating sport and exercise nutrition into your practice immediately. You get our 500-page The Essentials of Exercise and Sport Nutrition text, our 100-page workbook, access to our online learning platform, complete with 17 video lectures, and more.
Then, once you pass the exam, you get a Level 1 certificate acknowledging your completion of the theory part of the certification program.
Some trainers and coaches will stop there. And thats cool with me. With the Level 1 certificate, they’ll be as well trained in exercise and sport nutrition as my masters students.
Level 2 is an invitation-only program for students who pass Level 1. The student is required to do an online internship, perform regular research reviews and client case studies showing that they can actually deliver results. Level 2 certifies that you can the theory and apply it with clients all the way through a successful body transformation.
So unlike other nutrition certification programs, the PN Certification has both a theory component (Level 1) and a practice component (Level 2). Those students who complete both levels will be among the best body transformation experts in the world.
Q3: “Do I need to have a science degree to become certified?”
No. We assume no prior knowledge of biology, chemistry, etc, and so we dont require a university degree. Now, if you were terrible in science, expect this certification to give you trouble. But if you are generally comfortable with science and are willing to put your time in, you can learn this stuff for sure.
Q3. “Once Im PN Certified, will I be listed on your site?”
Yes. And given our exposure online, thats a big advantage for PN Certified fitness pros.
And as we grow our online coaching programs, that advantage will grow with it.
I’ll give you an example. Our Lean Eating coaching clients are often interested in finding a local trainer, one who actually knows what the hell they’re doing, to help them out with their new exercise movements, etc.
Now, in the past, we had no one to send them to. I can’t in good conscience just send them blindly in the typical local fitness club with their Lean Eating exercise and nutrition program in hand.
It would be a disaster. The trainer doesn’t know what to make of our program, or they start criticizing it or trying to change it. And the client spends half their time trying to mediate between us and them. Not good.
So with the PN Certification were creating an army of fitness professionals who actually get it. Coaches who our readers, clients, and customers can trust.
What’s more, by being PN Certified, trainers and coaches will be part of a network of local professionals that WE trust, and that we can refer our own clients to.
Once youre certified, youll have a professional profile in our new online directory of PN Certified Professionals, so youll be easy to find when people are looking for local help.
Q4: “Would nutritionists and dietitians benefit from this program as well?”
Absolutely. In fact, I wish every dietitian would find their way to this program and get involved.
Although RDs have excellent training in all aspects of clinical nutrition, most dietetics programs dont even offer a sport nutrition course. And if they do, the course is usually too general to be of any use in the field.
Trust me, I know, because I’ve taught in dietetics departments.
So just because someone has earned an RD or LD credential, that doesnt mean they’re done learning. The best dietitians, trainers, and strength coaches make life-long education an important priority.
The PN Certification program would be an asset for every dietitian.
Q5: “Is the PN Certification program accredited by one of the national education boards?”
No.
Q6: “How long does it take to complete the Level 1 program?”
The Level 1 program is self-paced. So as soon as a trainer or coach feels ready, they can take their certification exam online.
In general, I recommend studying 1 chapter every week. So, since the text contains 17 chapters, I’d study for about 4 months before writing the exam.
The ambitious and those folks with a nutrition background, however, can try a pace of 2-3 chapters a week, so 6-8 weeks total.
Q7: “How about Level 2?”
Once someone successfully completes Level 1, they can apply for the Level 2 program, which will take 6 months.
Since there is a 6-month online internship requirement, it can’t be done more quickly than that.
Q8: “What scope of advice will someone be able to offer clients after completing the course?
Thats a great question, and one we cover in depth in the course.
For now, its important to know that fitness professionals are allowed to make nutrition recommendations to otherwise healthy clients.
So even without the PN Cert, fitness pros are able to make nutrition recommendations. What we’re offering is a much better system for making those recommendations.
The only scope of practice thats prohibited is Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT), which means giving nutrition advice to treat or cure disease. You wont be qualified to do this, and you should never attempt to, for a number of reasons. Thats a whole different field of study.
Q9: “When does the PN Certification program begin?”
The Precision Nutrition Certification program runs in groups. The program begins on a specific day, everyone starts at the same time, and group size is limited. Registration for the next cohort kicks off on Sep 29th 2010, and the actual program begins on Oct 4th 2010.
Q10: “If I can’t make it into the Sep 29th group, when is the next one?”
Spring 2011. There won’t be another Certification group in 2010.
Q11: “How many people in the group?”
To keep the program well-controlled, especially at first, were only accepting 200 people this time around. And if past experience is any guide, I expect those 200 spots will fill up very quickly. Hence the waiting list; which provides an early registration period (24 hours before the general public) to reward the most motivated students.
Q12: “How much does is cost?”
Level 1 certification costs $799 USD. Level 2 costs haven’t been anounced yet; we’ll anounce more details on the blog and in our newsletter as they’re available.
Q13: “Is there a payment plan available?”
Not at this time.
Q14: “Will I have to get recertified every few years or take continuing education credits to maintain my status?”
Right now there is no continuing education plan in place, but every two years you will have to retake the exam if you wish to remain certified and listed on our site. The cost of recertification for the first group will be $99 USD. If you don’t want to, it’s up to you — your listing will simply expire in 2 years time.
The Precision Nutrition Guarantee
We’re very confident that this is far and away the best nutrition education program for fitness professionals.
So as with everything we do, the certification is 100% guaranteed. You have 45 days to try all the material, and if for whatever reason it’s not for you, just return it and we’ll give you your money back. It’s that simple.
How the registration process works:
Registration is easy and can be done online by clicking the “Register Now” button at the bottom of this page.
Your course material (textbook, study guide, forms) will be shipped to you when the program begins on Oct 4th.
Your online material (online seminars, online exam, profile for the directory of PN-certified fitness pros) will also be made available on Oct 4th.
Here’s how it works.
1. Click the “Register Now” button below. That will take you to the online checkout page.
2. On the checkout page, fill out your billing and shipping information and submit your order. That will take you to a page where you can create your precisionnutrition.com username and password (required to access the private certification material and exam).
3. On the “Create Account” page, create your precisionnutrition.com username and password. If you already have one (which you probably do if you’ve bought something from us before or post on the forums), you can upgrade that one. Then from now one, you’ll have access to the certification material when you log in.
4. On Oct 4th, log in with your username and password. You’ll find a link to the Certification home page in the top right corner of every page on the site.
There you’ll find all the online seminars and the online exam.
5. Also on Oct 4th, your course material (textbook, study guide, forms) will ship to you from our warehouse. Depending on where you live, you’ll get it soon thereafter.
Then you read the text, watch the seminars, work through the study guide, and take the exam.
And you’re certified.
Once that happens, we’ll mail you a certificate and give you a form to fill out, so you can create your profile in our directory of certified fitness professionals. You provide your contact info, and we’ll list you on our site so that people interested in local, PN-approved help can find you.
That’s it.
A final note . . .
I’m as proud of this certification as anything we’ve done before. This is what I’ve wanted to do ever since I first became fascinated with sports nutrition many years ago . . . and now it’s finally done and ready to go.
It’s the culmination of 3 years of ceaseless effort by our team to create something — from the ground up — that will teach trainers and coaches to become true body transformation experts. And I guarantee you, it will do just that.
There aren’t many spots available in this first group, and there won’t be another one for a while. So if you want in, now’s the time to register and get your learn on.
Let’s raise the bar — and create a new elite in the fitness profession.
Join the Waiting List
Precision Nutrition Certification
Because the demand for spots in the certification program will exceed supply, we've created a waiting list so you can "pre-register". When the date of the program is near, you'll be sent a special link where you can reserve a spot — 24 hours before the general public. We highly recommend you reserve a spot on the waiting list now, because places are made available on a first-come, first-served basis.
See you on in the program,
John M. Berardi, PhD CSCS
Chief Science Officer
Precision Nutrition Inc.