The Best Free NASM Study Guide and Flashcards
Before you can help clients live healthier lifestyles as a personal trainer, you need to earn the necessary qualifications. These NASM study guides and flashcards will prepare you to conquer the exam of one of the country’s most respected academies and jumpstart your career.
What is the NASM CPT Exam?
The National Academy of Sports Medicine requires all prospective personal trainers to take an exam for certification. As one of the leading establishments in health and fitness education, the NASM offers certifications that are highly sought after by employers, making this exam an important step in a successful personal trainer career. To take the test, you need to be at least 18 years old and have a current AED and CPR certification as well as a high school diploma or its equivalent.
Your Best NASM Study Options
With over 700 pages to pore through, only using the NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness Training textbook to study is usually inefficient and unreliable. To avoid having to pay a $199 retest fee in addition to the hundreds of dollars the program already requires, you should use a study guide from companies like the Fitness Mentors Trainer Academy.
Fitness Mentors
Fitness Mentors places its emphasis on a “classroom” experience, using a study guide and lectures created with the help of a successful NASM professor. It has five different NASM CPT study bundles to give you more control over your learning plan. Students using these materials have a 99% pass rate.
Starter
This package, starting at $69, only includes a premium study guide. After you sign up, it gives you access to the Fitness Mentors learning portal, where you can download your learning material. Using input from over 3000 test-takers and an experienced NASM professor, this guide is consistently updated to reflect questions that appeared on the most recent test. The guide is 11 pages long, covering only the most necessary information.
It is worth noting that Fitness Mentors also offers a free study guide and practice test for the NASM CPT exam. However, these resources provide a more general overview of the textbook while the premium study guide focuses on subjects that are more likely to appear on the exam. Fitness Mentors also gives you access to its study guides for older textbook editions.
Basic
At $149, the Basic package includes practice tests along with the study guide. These practice tests include over 600 questions based on the most recent NASM CPT exam and are organized into a quiz for each chapter, plus three final tests. Not only will this help you hone your test-taking skills, but it will also show you which subjects you may need to spend more time studying.
Standard
The Standard package, also priced at $149, includes audio lectures with the study guide instead of practice tests. The Fitness Mentors audio lectures cover each chapter of the most recent edition of the NASAM EPFT textbook page by page to ensure that you understand the material. Each lecture is between 30 minutes to three hours long for a total of over 30 hours of audio review. The learning portal also lets you stream your lectures on your computer or any mobile device.
Plus
As the most popular choice, the Plus package includes the Fitness Mentors study guide, audio lectures, and practice tests for $199. This is your best option if you want a full classroom experience with lectures and quizzes without committing to the most expensive choice. Students using this package have a 99% pass rate, with less than 30 failed attempts and over 3000 study guides sold.
Pro
While this package is significantly more expensive at $399, it offers many more resources than the other choices. In addition to the study guide, audio lectures, and practice tests, the Pro package includes answers to the study guide questions, a final exam review, and PowerPoint presentations and lectures.
Fitness Mentors offers a pass guarantee with the Pro package, which gives you a free retest if you fail the NASM CPT exam. Its website also has a sample of one chapter from this package so you can see how they integrate their different learning resources with the material from the official NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness Training textbook.
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Trainer Academy
Trainer Academy also boasts a 99% pass rate for its comprehensive study packages but focuses more on the information necessary to start your career as a personal trainer. It only has three packages, as opposed to the five offered by Fitness Mentors, but claims that it will reduce your exam prep time by half.
Rookie
This is Trainer Academy’s most basic package, which costs $69 and gives you access to its 11-page study guide. Because the NASM frequently changes its tests, this website creates its study guides by talking with students who have passed the exam and recreating questions with similar styles and subject matter.
All-Star
Trainer Academy’s middle program, the All-Star package, includes the study guide as well as five NASM practice tests and over 1000 flashcards. The practice tests carefully recreate the test structure and wording of the official exam to prepare you to answer any question and to reduce testing anxiety.
While the significant price increase may seem excessive for practice tests and flashcards, Trainer Academy uses spaced repetition learning in its intelligent flashcards to streamline your study process. This system analyzes which material you have trouble learning and makes the corresponding flashcards appear more frequently, shoring up your weak points and reducing the time spent on the information you already know.
MVP
The normal price of Trainer Academy’s most expensive guide is different depending on the page, listed as $299 on one and $399 on the other. With the flash sale at the time of writing, both prices are discounted to $199, making it cheaper than the All-Star package despite including more features. One of these selling points is the exam pass guarantee, which refunds your entire purchase if you fail your NASM CPT test.
In addition to everything included in the All-Star Package, the MVP package also gives you the answers to your study guide and an audio version that reviews each part. Other study materials such as mnemonics, a muscle coloring book, and a cheat sheet of the most important topics will cement the information you need.
Finally, as the most important component of Trainer Academy’s strategy to reduce your study time by 50%, this package includes a detailed study blueprint. Depending on how much time you can commit to your studies, it tells you what and when to study over 16 weeks, 8 weeks, or 4 weeks. It even includes a cram plan for 2 weeks if you need to study as quickly as possible.
Choosing Your Guide
Both Fitness Mentors and Trainer Academy provide high-quality studying solutions for NASM test-takers, so choosing which guide works best for you will mostly depend on the learning methods with which you are most comfortable.
Low-End Packages
Their most affordable packages only include a study guide and both companies create their questions using feedback from successful examinees. Fitness Mentors may have a slight edge in this category because it also bases its questions on a professor’s extensive experience in the college fitness system. If your budget is tight, you could supplement Trainer Academy’s guide with the free version from Fitness Mentors.
Middle Packages
The middle packages provide the most flexibility to fit your preferred study methods. Fitness Mentors gives you more choices as you can include practice tests and audio lectures depending on which you find more useful. You can also take advantage of both for an extra cost. Trainer Academy’s All-Star package is more expensive for including practice tests and flashcards but includes learning technology to target areas that are more difficult for you.
High-End Packages
Both programs require you to buy the most expensive package to see the answers for your study guide. They also both include a pass guarantee, although Trainer Academy offers you a refund instead of Fitness Mentors’ free retest. Fitness Mentors Pro includes more traditional classroom learning methods as opposed to the variety and creativity of Trainer Academy’s MVP offerings.
The Trainer Academy MVP package is significantly more affordable when it is on sale, but its audio aides only cover the study guide rather than the textbook. While it is more expensive, Fitness Mentors’ Pro plan lets you choose between two monthly payments of $199.50 or three monthly payments of $133.33.
In Comparison
Whether you would rather color in different muscle groups or follow along with a PowerPoint presentation, both study programs provide respectable test preparation options. Fitness Mentors offers you more flexibility and affordability for its less expensive packages.
When it is on sale, Trainer Academy’s MVP package gives you a pass guarantee and a variety of study materials at the same price as Fitness Mentors’ Plus package. Without sale prices, choosing between the most expensive packages from each group will mostly come down to personal preference.
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Closing Thoughts
The NASM Certified Personal Trainer exam can be intimidating, especially considering that students who only use the official textbook have a 65% pass rate. Not only can both of these study guides lower your chances of failing to 1%, but they can also give you a guarantee to save money in the rare event that you still fail. Securing your future as a personal trainer is too important to leave up to chance, so use these effective tools to ensure that you are as prepared as possible.