Personal Training Certifications
I have my Nesta , it was a great certification and is accepted all over North America .
Cheers !
just my opinion, like it or hate it
I am NSCA-CSCS certified. If you don't know what that means, I suggest you look it up. For NSCA-CPT and ACSM-PT, you do not need a college degree in a health/exercise field, but you do need to be CPR and First Aid certified before you take their test. I believe both organizations now let you take the test online as well. But once you want those higher up cert's, you need a college degree in a related field. These are the two most well known certification organizations in the US. They both require continuing education credits so you can keep your cert. (as I believe most of the others also do). If just going to get the basic CPT cert, you will need to know the business side of things on how to handle that part of the business such as if you work for yourself how to become profitable or even working in a gym and dealing with that.
I personally chose NSCA-CSCS because I want to work with athletes to become better, faster, stronger athletes. Make sure you do research and figure out what it is you want before you decide to get your cert. If you decide against the two I mentioned, thats fine, thats what you want, I just would advise to know all organizations out there and see what kind of books, supplemental materials, and videos they offer.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to message me. I am one semester away from getting my Masters in Exercise Science.
btw, the degree at Purdue that someone mentioned earlier is not actually Personal Training degree, I think you're referring to the Health and Fitness degree which is aimed at getting the ACSM-HFI which you need a college degree for.