NCSF Certification Journey - Part 4 - I Passed the Exam!

by Nancy

Great news... I passed the NCSF exam on Saturday!

They give you 3 hours for the exam with "no break time" (so the time is counting down during any break you take) but I was able to complete it and go back through every answer in 2 hours and 40 minutes. I would say they give you plenty of time and you don't need to worry about rushing.

Ariana from Buffalo nailed it in her entry on this page, so be sure to read that. I began reading the textbook and filling out the workbook in February, attended the workshop in May, took practice tests, and studied all the material pretty consistently for a week prior to taking the test. It is written with very tough vocabulary. On every question, I could narrow it down to 2 answers. Unfortunately that gives you right around 50% chance of getting the right answer: )

If you are taking the NCSF exam I would most DEFINITELY do the following:

-Attend the 2-day workshop and write down as much as you can

-Read or at least skim the whole book and study materials that come with the book

-Go online and look at the NCSF sample test section (There are 15 questions) and print them out... the test is VERY similar to these questions... in fact, i saw 2 identical ones on the real test

-Get Katie's prep course from this site. It was instrumental in practicing for this test because its got quizzes that you can do throughout your studying and then a final test. The material in her test parallels the NCSF test material. One of my favorite parts about her test is that if you get a question wrong, it tells you WHY.


Make sure to study the eccentric, concentric stuff and shoulder horizontal abduction vs adduction, leg extension, and lunges for example. Real life questions appear quite a bit where you need to incorporate your knowledge of muscle and bone names, body planes (frontal, transverse, etc) and movement directions (abduction, flexion, etc) to determine which exercise will be appropriate for a certain person or population. You need to understand how it all works together.

There wasn't a lot of math or tough formulas. If you read the book and go to the workshop, there are certain words, theories and subjects that will pop up over and over (like the Karnoven formula, for example) that you should naturally focus on. There is plenty of muscle fiber questioning and also terms like capillary, mitochondria, etc. You also need to know how many calories per fat (9), alcohol (7), etc.

Again, I would definitely try to attend a NCSF workshop and buy the practice tests. It will be worth your while! If anyone has any questions, feel free to post them and I'll answer them the best I can.

As for me, I am training with a personal trainer currently and it is the best practical experience I could be getting. He is a friend of a friend and he knows I am working towards becoming a trainer so he is cognizant of pointing out things to me about working with various clients. I have never worked one-on-one with a personal trainer until now and it is completely eye-opening. It has given me a further appreciation for the role of a personal trainer and helped me learn how to prescribe programs for people.

I've written too much again so I'm signing off, but best of luck to anyone taking the exam!!

Nancy