What to Expect At Your AFAA Certification—Part 1

I'm writing this post because as I prepared for this certification, I turned to similar posts to help me know what to expect and what things I'd need to know. 

The certification began at 9 am at a location about 40 minutes from my house. I carpooled there with an instructor who teaches with me at the Provo Recreation Center. We expected traffic since some freeway closures were going on, but we made great time and had time to spare. 

We waited a little bit before we checked in. Before you receive your official certification, you have to have a current CPR training. When you check in, they ask for your CPR card. I am waiting for a training at my facility, so I haven't done the CPR training yet. I was not alone (Several people did not know they needed this.) However, AFAA allows you to mail in a copy of your card once that training is complete. Assuming you pass the certification, you'd be good to go.

And yes, it takes AFAA 4-6 weeks to let you know if you pass. 

We had about 18 people attending. I'd say 10 of us were Zumba instructors. One was a spin instructor, one was yoga, one was step, a couple were kickboxing, and at least one hadn't ever taught a class.

We actually had two instructors there to help us certify for the day. One was finishing up her training to become an AFAA certification instructor, and the other has been with AFAA for 30 years and oversees all the training and hiring of the AFAA certification instructors. She knows her stuff. Having the two instructors created an interesting dynamic because there were some things the learning instructor didn't know exactly or thoroughly do, and the supervising instructor would step in, re-do things, and really delve into various topics. Part of me wish she had done the entire training, but I also thing the new instructor may have done better if she didn't have someone watching over her shoulder the whole time. But overall, I think they covered the material well through out the day.

The first part of the day was one of the only times we sat down with our study guides. They walked us through the expectations for the day, what we've be covering, and the overall plan. We would be graded on 2 group demonstrations, 1 individual demonstration, and finish the day with a 100-question written exam. The group demonstrations would be on 1) our ability to effectively lead a warm up, cardio, and cool down portions of class and 2) our knowledge our exercises (and stretch) to work each muscle group. For the individual demonstration, we would each show either a strength, cardio, or flexibility move at levels 1, 2, 3. We'd be graded on our presentation skills and our ability to smoothly and effectively show each fitness level. 

After this overview, we put away our stuff and all stood in a circle. At this point we went over parts of the body, including the joints and muscles and what their functions are. For example, we'd talk about the shoulder and how the shoulder flexion works the deltoid and the shoulder extension works the latissimus doris. The instructor would say the joint and muscle and we'd repeat the info back to her. 

After this I believe we went into the AFAA 5 Questions. 

1. What is the purpose of this exercise?
2. Are you doing that effectively?
3. Does the exercise create any safety concerns?
4. Can you maintain proper alignment and form for the duration of the exercise?
5. For whom is the exercise appropriate or inappropriate?

As they introduced these questions, they showed little hand motions to help us memorize each one. We would repeat the questions back with the motions. For question 2, you do a finger to the chin thinking pose. For question 4, you create a little horizontal ocean wave motion for the "duration of the exercise" portion. After introducing these questions and talking about what they mean, we practiced applying them to various moves. At this point, we split into groups. One example move was a push up. In our groups, we went over the questions. What is the purpose? Maybe we want to work the upper body. Are you doing that effectively? Well, does doing the pushup work our upper body? Yes. If we had said the purpose was to work the triceps or chest, we might adjust the TYPE of pushup to focus on those groups. (Although a pushup does engage all those muscles no matter what.) Does the exercise create any safety concerns? The purpose of this question was the most tricky to understand. For example, we talked about how a pushup might not be the safest for weak wrists or the lower back. Overall, I learned it's important to be AWARE of those issues, but it doesn't mean a pushup isn't a good exercise to do in group fitness classes. Can you maintain alignment and form? Remember the "you" in this question is both you as an instructor and the participants in your class. This question helps you gauge how well people will do with engaging their core and maintaining form. Perhaps you'd opt to lead your class in pushups on the knees instead. Perhaps you'd choose to only do 5 pushups at a time and that would be OK. For whom is the exercise appropriate or inappropriate? Based on our answers and evaluations, we'd conclude that a pushup is appropriate for a general group fitness class. It might not be appropriate with someone with known wrist or back issues or who do not have the training to maintain form at all.

Next we went into an overview of a warm up, cardio, and cool down. We briefly talked about basics like how long each section of class should be and what speed of music you should use. We also talked about appropriate moves for each section and covered the difference between low, medium, and high impact exercises. (Obviously the cardio depends on what type of class you are teaching.) The supervising instructor stepped in and led us through a sample warm up and cardio. Then it was our turn. 

We did a practice run of what we'd be tested on later in the day. They played some generic music (no you can't use your own—several people in our group asked) and all at the same time, we started demonstrating a warm up. Yes, we were all doing different things at the same time. You'd just have to be careful not to run into people who were doing different directional changes. After 2 minutes, the instructors signaled us to move to our cardio portion. We were supposed to increase the intensity for the cardio portion, but it by no means had to be anything high impact. There were a lot of grapevines with feet coming off the ground, jumping jacks, kickboxing moves, knee lifts, and v-steps with arms above the head. We did cardio for 4 minutes before we were instructed to move into the cool down. Then we had about 1-2 minutes to show a mini cool down. 

The instructors didn't give us a lot of feedback during this practice

run but did say to make sure our cardio moves were distinctly different from our warm up/cool down moves. Overall they gave positive feedback for this. The practice run was really beneficial to get used to the time of each section and not be distracted by everyone doing something different at the same time.

By this time we were a little ahead of schedule we we opted to start going over the muscle exercises before we took a 40 min lunch break at about 12:50 pm. When we were back we finished up that section. I'll go more into that in Part 2 tomorrow!