ACE FitnessReviews of acefitness.org

I wish I could rate this course higher! I was very happy that the material was rigorous and that the certification will mean more because of it. That being said, their testing is utterly ridiculous! I graduated High Honors with a BS in Health Education PLUS took a semester of Harvard Medical School Emeritus Health Coach coursework to prep and you would think I've never taken a health course in my life! One section on chronic disease was so extensive, it was like taking Diseases of Man I and II, so like an entire year of class for just 1 of 5 sections! What should have been my favorite section that included nutrition and physical fitness had one of the worst lecture series I've ever seen and to test well, you would have had to memorize every vitamin and mineral on the published charts. The statistical data is clearly meant to trip you up...NOT to see if you actually retained the material. Even so, I read each chapter, then re-read the chapters while note taking and highlighting (learned from past courses that just reading a chapter once while highlighting and note taking was NOT enough), watched/screenshot all the video lectures, reviewed again based on those, and STILL failed the section test. Over half of the test question information is never even mentioned in the video lectures and I've had to comb through the chapters to find obscure mentions of the topics! And NO ONE in this day and age needs to "memorize" formulas for calculating health parameters when we all know you can go right to the internet/AI to instantly calculate! They should be there for a coach to understand the concept behind them and how to use for individual clients, NOT to test memory! The tests pick out minute details from the chapter that no one EVER needs to know/memorize, stats that would be ridiculous to memorize even if you have a photographic memory and not anything applicable to a real client or things a coach needs to know. I work full time and this course seems to be set up for someone with nothing else to do in their life! So, now I'm just learning in order to test instead of learning to gain knowledge and I hate that :( Even WITH doing that though, I don't see how anyone passes these tests. I'll see how to proctored exam goes, but honestly cannot imagine how in the world I will pass it. Completely missed opportunity to make this learning a meaningful, joyful, positive experience that can actually get people like me on their way to changing lives to one of the most demoralizing and depressing educational experiences of my life! I've felt ready to give up on it several times already, but just trying to keep plugging away at it until I (hopefully pass) the exam.

2 stars for the content - minus 3 for the VERY poor customer service. It takes an Act of God to get someone to respond to an email and the chat is always offline. Not much luck getting through on the phone. Courses are solid but no preview available, you cannot print a transcript so you have to scribble notes or keep pausing and starting. Website not easy to navigate. They will email you daily if you let your cert or Power Pass lapse but seem to conveniently ignore all other inquiries. I've taken several courses whose name was changed so it was difficult to find my certificate. I passed my GX course alomst 4 years ago yet it is still showing as "incomplete" in my portal.... If you are looking for a Personal Training cert, go with NASM or ACSM who has great service and support.

Student support is almost non-existent. There is no place to ask a question, and when you call them, you are either transferred to multiple people prior to being placed on hold (as long as 18 min before I hung up), or the machine operator tells you that nobody at the company is available to take your call, or they offer the option to call you back (only heard that once and nobody did). One lady who took my call told me to access a topic on the website where I could ask my questions but I have not found it amongst the many links. I left 2-3 voice messages throughout the course of a week saying that I can't figure out a short paragraph on pg 515 and received no reply and asked if they thought that I had done something to someone in customer service and that if they thought that, that it wasn't me, because I'm unable to get through to anybody. I do not even WANT to talk with them now, and I'm just regretting that I even purchased this from them entirely.

when i got my certification abt 5 years ago, Ace offered great customer service. That is no longer true. It's very difficult contacting anyone for help and Im running out of options for CE. I've tried to download a couple of classes but they won't show up in my account. Im wasting more time just trying to keep my certification current. The offer online chats but lately no one is available to chat. Terrible customer service