ACSM's Health & Fitness Certification Review

ACSM's Health & Fitness Certification Review is a mostly excellent preparation for the written portion of the ACSM HFI (Health/Fitness Instructor) exam. I'm also finding it a valuable for portions of the NSCA-PT certification exam (National Strength and Conditioning Association personal trainer), which has a great deal of overlap in material. Chapters 1 - 10 contain a generally excellent "Cliff's notes" type outline of the highlights of their 10 KSA topics found on the written exam: (1) Anatomy and Biomechanics, (2) Exercise Physiology, (3) Human Development and Aging, (4) Pathophysiology/Risk Factors, (5) Human Behavior and Psychology, (6) Health Appraisal and Fitness Testing, (7) Safety, Injury Prevention, and Emergency Care, (8) Exercise Programming, (9) Nutrition and Weight Management, (10) Program Administration/Management. Each chapter was written by one or two experts in that area. The chapters on anatomy, physiology, and pathology (1, 2, and 4) contain helpful, skillfully done, black and white illustrations. For the most part, I'm impressed with the quality of these outlines: thorough and easy to understand. Chapter 10, however on Program Administration/Management is very bare-bones and could stand a little more detail. At the end of the book is a list of sources of more information on each chapter. Following each outline is a multiple choice quiz, typically 25 questions with four choices. To inventory my knowledge and areas that needed more study, I took all the review quizzes before reading the outlines. Having taught college, I was impressed with the questions: they were straightforward, usually with plausible distractor choices. There are about a dozen errors in quizzes, and a few in the outlines, so be sure to go to the certification section of ACSM's website to obtain their corrections. Although overall, I find this study guide impressive and helpful, here's why I've deducted a star: * Although the book bills itself as a certification review, it does not state on the front cover or anywhere else that this review is for the written portion of the HFI exam only. But as HFI candidates know, this exam has a practical lab portion where candidates have to take skinfolds, conduct a bicycle ergometer exercise test, and demonstrate exercise techniques. This book is of very little use for the lab portion. For example, the outline on skinfold measurement says "(1) Locate the sites to be measured. (2) Measure the skinfold thickness. (3) Use the measurements of skinfold thickness in the appropriate equation to predict body composition." The bicycle ergometer test is barely mentioned. For detailed information on these tests, I highly recommend ACSM's Health-Related Physical Fitness Assessment Manual. * I found chapter 11 on Metabolic Calculations to be extremely confusing. For me, the only value of the chapter was in the discussion of what to expect on the exam: from 6 to 10 met calc questions and which formulas are p

This book was quite helpful for the certification test. It prepared me well for physiology and anatomy. The questions helped me to freshen up on the ones I didn't know. The book was also well-written, easy to comprehend and a must buy to anyone needing to become certified. I also used the following which I found to help me also on the anatomy and physiology portions of the test. Anatomy and Physiology Study Guide: Key Review Questions and Answers with Explanations by Patrick Leonardi Volume 1 (isbn: 0971999619)Volume 2 (isbn: 0971999627)Spinal Anatomy Study Guide: Key Review Questions and Answersisbn: 0971999600These four study guides helped me to pass the national certification with ease. I highly recommend these books.

The text provides a wealth of information that helps the candidate focus on the concepts necessary to pass the written portion of the HFI certification exam. The chapters were brief, but to the point, and ended in an important test over the covered material.