The influence of education on the nutritional knowledge of certified fitness professionals

International Journal of Exercise Science 14(4): 239-249, 2021. The American Fitness Industry has seen progressive success with recent increases in facility memberships and annual revenues of fitness centers. The number of fitness trainers and instructors in the United States has persisted this growth and is projected to grow over the next decade. However, only a few known studies have investigated the nutritional education of fitness professionals. This preliminary study explores the education and knowledge among certified fitness professions (CFPs) in the United States. A cross-sectional, descriptive survey design was utilized with a convenience sample of 120 female participants from the United States who were associated with a major fitness newsletter. The average age of the participants was 48.51 years (SD 12), and they had 14.85 years of experience (SD 10.16) and worked an average of 22.04 hours per week (SD 16.78). Most of the participants had some kind of college degree (96.2%) and held a group fitness certification (76.6%) or personal training certification (47.5%). Those with a nutrition certification were found to have significantly higher nutrition knowledge test scores on the 21 question test (18.2 ± 2.0 correct to 17.1 ± 1.9, p=0.04). Additionally, it is revealed that CFPs use the internet as a primary source for nutritional information and was the most frequently used source of nutrition information accessed. This pilot study suggests a more in-depth study would be beneficial to solidify the current results and could allow for more investigation into whether or not completion of nutrition coursework within formal earned degrees by CFPs positively influences their nutritional knowledge.