5 Tips For Passing Your NASM Certified Personal Trainer Exam

I took my NASM Certified Personal Trainer exam this last November and was quite relieved when I passed! The whole experience was a great one for me and I learned so much. I had several questions during the study process in terms of what I needed to know to pass. I found a lot of great information on what to focus on and I thought I would post some tips of my own that I found very helpful. Here are my 5 tips:

1. Read The ENTIRE Book

First of all, it is so important that you read your entire NASM CPT book. I know some people are hoping that they can pass the exam without doing this, but it honestly just isn't wise. The book is chalked full of so much great information and this information is not only pertinent to the exam, but also to working as a personal trainer. I not only read all of the chapters, but spent a lot of time reading the glossary and different appendixes.

2. Watch The Modules, Do The Assignments, And Take All The Quizzes

Along with your book, you will have modules and quizzes that you can use as part of your online portal. These modules help to target some of the more important parts of the chapters and there are also several different exercises shown that help to give you a visual. There will also be different assignments that you can complete and quizzes that you can take. These assignments and quizzes helped me out a great deal because they simply reinforced all of the things that I had been learning. They also helped me commit concepts to memory and allowed me to see how things applied in a more functional sense.

3. Use The Practice Exams

Once you have read the book, watched all the modules, completed the assignments, and taken all of the quizzes, there are a couple different practice exams that you can take. These exams are SUPER helpful and give you a good idea of what the exam is like. I think I took each of the practice exams twice and then went back and reviewed the questions before the exam and this helped me out a ton!

4. Know Your Study Guide

There is an ebook style study guide that you can download as part of your study materials and I cannot even begin to say how helpful this study guide was for me. I probably went through the study guide 10 times or more, until I felt confident that I understood all of the material in it. I feel like reading the book gave me the foundation that I needed, but the study guide is what really solidified it all for me.

5. Study The Overhead Squat Assessment Details

The study guide helps a great deal in letting you know what you need to focus on but one area that you need to really understand in depth is the overhead squat assessments and all of the elements related to it. This really isn't something that you can memorize, but is instead something that you must understand on a deeper level. You need to be able to figure out what muscles are overactive and what muscles are underactive when certain compensations occur.

I hope you all have found this helpful and I wish you the best of luck with your NASM CPT Exam!! If you have anymore questions, feel free to ask!

xoxo

Rachel