What Studying for My ACE Certification Taught Me About the Fitness Industry

I didn't grow up immersed in athletics or fitness culture. I don’t have a kinesiology degree. I’m relatively new to this world compared to many coaches and trainers.

So when I completed my CrossFit level one certification last July and started coaching group classes at Empower, I felt that I would benefit from having a broader perspective.

CrossFit had given me a strong foundation and completely changed the way I thought about fitness, but I didn’t want my understanding of exercise to come from only one system or philosophy. I wanted to learn more about anatomy, physiology, programming, psychology, and how other parts of the fitness industry approach training.

So I signed up for ACE personal training certification prep through InfoFit in Vancouver: six weekends, Saturday and Sunday, nine to five.

I just completed my final weekend.

And although I still have to write the exam, I can already say that the experience absolutely broadened my perspective. It also raised far more questions than I expected.

What the Course Did Well

To be clear, there was a lot of value in the course.

We spent considerable time on anatomy and physiology. We practiced teaching movements and communicating with clients. We discussed exercise psychology and behaviour change.

All of that was useful. Some of it was genuinely excellent.

But where things started to diverge sharply from my own experience was in the programming philosophy.

The Machine Problem

Most of the people in my class were preparing to work in commercial gyms or community centres. As a result, much of the programming we learned revolved around machines.

Not barbells. Not kettlebells. Not complex multi-joint movements.

Machines.

Machines that isolate specific muscles and guide the body through fixed movement patterns. Machines designed to minimize technical complexity and reduce the chances of doing something “wrong.”

And look, I understand why these machines exist. I'm sure they have legitimate uses.

But I found myself wondering: are we optimizing for safety at the expense of engagement?

Because coming from CrossFit, where workouts are varied, dynamic, skill-based, and coached, the idea of handing someone a six-to-eight-week program of reps and sets to do on machines and expecting them to stay motivated felt strange to me.

Maybe that’s my bias talking.

But it made me think about adherence. The best program in the world is meaningless if nobody sticks with it.

And I couldn’t shake the feeling that many mainstream fitness environments are designed less around what humans naturally enjoy and more around what is simple, standardized, and low-risk.

I was struck by how much of the course focused on reducing liability. About minimizing risk. About protecting yourself as a trainer. About CYA.

And it made me wonder whether some of the industry’s standards have evolved around being legally defensible rather than maximally effective or fun.

Fitness in Neat Little Buckets

Another thing that struck me was how cleanly everything was categorized.

Resistance training existed in one bucket. Cardiovascular training existed in another. Muscular endurance, hypertrophy, strength, and power—each had its own distinct programming parameters.

Everything was separated and organized into tidy systems.

Again, I understand the appeal of this. Simplification helps education. It creates structure. It gives new trainers frameworks to work from.

But human movement does not happen in neat little buckets.

CrossFit blends these qualities together. If you're moving moderate-to-heavy loads repeatedly and quickly, that is both resistance training and cardiovascular training.

The lines blur.

And maybe that’s why I find functional fitness so engaging. Real-world movement is messy and integrated. Our bodies do not experience life one isolated variable at a time.

When you carry groceries upstairs, sprint to catch a bus, pick up a child, shovel snow, or move furniture, your body is not politely separating cardiovascular output from muscular endurance, strength or power.

It’s all happening together.

The Fragility Question

But the deepest philosophical tension I experienced during the course was this: the underlying assumption that people are fragile.

The overall system felt built around protecting people from movement rather than preparing them for it.

One example is plyometric training—jumping, rebounding, explosive movement.

In the ACE framework, plyometrics are reserved for athletes or highly conditioned clients. They say, for example, that someone should be able to squat one-and-a-half times their body weight before engaging in jump training.

That shocked me.

Because we know that impact and jumping can be incredibly beneficial, especially to improve bone density in aging populations and women.

But how many middle-aged women are able to squat one-and-a-half times their body weight?

It seems to me that some of these recommendations come from theoretical calculations about force production and injury risk. But as WOD Father pointed out to me, plyometrics aren't really about muscular strength anyway—they're more dependent on the elasticity of your myofascia.

Another example involved corrective exercise.

In the ACE model, new clients undergo a battery of screening tests—not just pain screening, but also posture analysis and movement assessments designed to identify muscle imbalances and range of motion limits.

If the client fails any of these tests, the trainer needs to write programming to correct them before introducing even basic resistance training.

Again, I understand the logic. Nobody wants to create or worsen an injury or ignore legitimate limitations.

But I kept asking myself: how does this work in the real world?

Imagine coming to a trainer because you want to get stronger, lose weight, and feel healthier—and you're told that first you need two months of corrective exercises (similar to the exercises a physio would prescribe) before you can squat, push, pull, or rotate—even at bodyweight.

Meanwhile, outside the gym, that same person is squatting down to pick things up, carrying their groceries, climbing stairs, and living life.

Are we treating the exercise as more dangerous than reality itself?

To be fair, when I raised some of these questions with our instructor, he agreed that there are opportunities to blend corrective work with strength and conditioning. And perhaps experienced trainers do this all the time.

But it was not the dominant tone of the material we covered in class.

Where I've Landed

The more I reflect on the course, the more I wonder whether this is the inevitable result of mainstream fitness operating at scale.

Certification bodies need standardized systems. Commercial gyms need predictable programming. Trainers work with large general populations and varying skill levels. Liability concerns are real. Poor coaching can absolutely injure people.

But I also wonder whether some of the trends in mainstream fitness are driven as much by economics as by exercise science.

Machines are efficient. They reduce the amount of coaching required. They create standardized movement patterns that are easier to supervise and easier to defend from a liability standpoint.

But they also reduce movement complexity. They reduce skill development. They reduce the need for human coaching and interaction.

And that’s a problem. Because real life does not happen seated in a machine isolating one muscle group at a time.

So perhaps the fitness industry needs to move back toward coaching. Back toward teaching people how to move well in the real world.

And yes, that would require something more difficult than filling rooms with machines. It would require investing in skilled, educated, attentive coaches who can actually teach movement, scale appropriately, and help people progress safely without treating them like they are perpetually one squat away from catastrophe.

That may be harder. It may be less scalable. It may be more expensive.

But it would also be more human.