Working in a Health and Fitness field offers many people who are passionate about physical training and wellness the opportunity to share their love of health and fitness while also helping others to perfect their sporting technique or health. Portland Community College offers online-only, comprehensive Health and Fitness coursework through online remote learning that helps you meet standards set by very well-regarded organizations such as the National Association of Sports Medicine (NASM) and the National Council on Strength and Fitness (NCSF). These programs allow you to take your own hands-on training through your own physical activity and combine them with the theory and research that are essential for a job in a health and fitness field.
NASM Corrective Exercise
NASM's personal trainer certifications are well-respected in many fields, and our NASM Corrective Exercise coursework provides you with both personal training expertise as well as a background in the Corrective Exercise continuum. This instruction helps you understand how to gently but effectively correct errors in form that could lead to injury, as well as conduct assessments of impaired movement in one of your clients. The course puts you on track to understanding how our muscular and skeletal systems work so that you can be an effective personal trainer.
NASM Performance Enhancement
It's possible to take the NASM personal training curriculum in a different direction, still receiving guidance in personal training but with a special emphasis on helping your clients to enhance their performance. When your clients want to make strides in their agility, speed, flexibility, and endurance, you'll have the training and background to know what to suggest and how to guide them to reach their fitness goals. This track can be useful for personal training careers either with professional athletes or with amateurs who still take their physical fitness and bodily performance seriously. With an intensive 6-month, online course in NASM Performance Enhancement, you'll be well trained to help your clients.
NCSF Strength Coach
Becoming an NCSF Strength Coach requires a holistic approach to training for greater and greater strength achievements. You'll begin by learning how to assess and evaluate clients where they are, making sure that they are approaching strength training safely and effectively. You'll learn about injury prevention and effective nutrition for clients who are focusing on building strength, and then you'll dive deep in both introductory and advanced techniques for growing strength in your clients. Strength coaches are in high demand for those who are working to stay at the peak performance needed for their strength-based sports, so learning how to become a strength coach using a curriculum that prepares you for the NCSF Certified Strength Coach exam is an excellent step forward.
NCSF Sports Nutrition
Whether you already work in a health and fitness field or are using this class to take your first step into the industry, an NCSF Sports Nutrition course is incredibly relevant to a career around the performance of athletes. This course helps you get into the nitty-gritty of how food affects the human body and bolsters its ability to grow more flexible, agile, strong, and fast. You'll learn the core elements of physiology and chemistry that help you understand nutrition on a molecular level, and how these building blocks can be put together into a program that creates holistic wellness and peak performance for athletes. You'll also address topics like body composition, weight management, and eating disorders in athletes, so that you can help your future clients in health and fitness contexts to develop a healthy and positive relationship with the food they need to fuel their performance.
Fitness Business Management
The Portland Community College online remote course in Fitness Business Management is a great way to meld an interest in business basics with a passion for sports and fitness. Given how many businesses involve health and fitness - health clubs, wellness centers, physical therapy clinics, and recreation centers of all kinds - having a course in the specific business considerations relevant to this kind of company can give you a real leg up. Whether you're starting your own business, opening a franchise, already working in a business context, or hoping to be hired soon, learning about how to manage the unique business challenges of a fitness-related business will help you understand the underlying principles that undergird the success of all fitness-related companies.
This course takes you through all the basics of finances, marketing, sales, customer service, and administration, but rather than taking an entire business degree with a diverse set of examples, your coursework is specific to your desired business goals. There is even an optional field internship where you'll get even more hands-on fitness business learning.
Ready to explore our array of online-only coursework in Health and Fitness? Check out our many offerings today to launch your career or add to your skill set for an existing career!
