Every personal trainer knows the person who gets “certification happy.” They’re the person who has 8 certifications on their resume, more than half of which you’ve never heard of. They have things like certified mobility coach for young women playing tennis in the Midwest.
Certifications are necessary for some things. Obviously you need to be a certified personal trainer to get a job in a school or gym. Even if you were self employed you would need to be certified for liability reasons. But many certifications provide no additional benefit, and are just a cash grab for fitness organizations.
Fitness can be broken down into two major categories, exercise and diet. The typical progression is for an individual to first get a personal training certification and start training clients. If they want to expand their business, they will usually then look into a nutrition coaching certification.
If you type nutrition coach certification or nutritionist certification into a google search, Precision Nutrition will likely be one of the top results. Others include NASM’s nutrition certification and ISSN.
I have the first level Precision Nutrition certificate, called pn1. When people search for a new product on Amazon, they typically scroll right down to the reviews, so I figured I’d provide the same. The Precision Nutrition website obviously has tons of information about the certification program. But let’s be honest, you want to hear about it from someone with firsthand experience, not their marketing department.
What You Can Do With The Certification
Providing diet plans is a strange, ambiguous subject in terms of legality in the United States. The laws actually change on a state by state basis. For example, some states require you to be a Registered Dietitian to provide individual nutrition counseling. Some states have no requirements, in which any individual can legally provide nutrition counseling. And then there’s everything in between, where there is a route for individuals to be able to provide counseling without becoming a full blown Registered Dietitian.
But it gets weirder when the question of “what is nutrition counseling” comes up. Precision Nutrition goes into this in their program; making the distinction between dietary advice, specific meal plans, and working with various populations. Having a Precision Nutrition certification does not make you a Registered Dietitian or Clinical Nutritionist.
The one thing Precision Nutrition does on their website is compare their program to a University degree program (see below). This is a completely unfair comparison for the reasons we just stated; you can do far more as an RD or Nutritionist than you can with this certification. Of course a four year degree is going to cost more.
Perhaps the more important question is “do you really care?”
Odds are you’re not trying to work in a clinical setting, and just want to help some clients with their nutrition. How many of the popular nutrition coaches you see on Instagram are actual Registered Dietitians? Not many. If they were they’d brag about it because becoming an RD requires tons of schooling and a 1200 hour internship.
Generally speaking, as long as you’re not giving dietary advice for the purpose of treating illness or disease, you should be fine with a standard nutrition certification (again, this is not legal advice).
Getting a Job
Any real world nutrition job is going to require one to be an RD or have a bachelor’s degree in nutrition from a college or university.
So what can a Precision Nutrition certification get you in the real world? For fun I typed in pn1, which is the abbreviation for Precision Nutrition’s certification, into LinkedIn’s job search tool. It returned zero results.
Then I typed in Precision Nutrition certification into LinkedIn’s job search tool, to which it returned 4 relevant results… in the entire country. Clearly the certification won’t take you far if the goal is to use it to get a job.
It’s evident that the only situation in which the Precision Nutrition certification makes sense is for an individual who is self employed within some facet of the fitness industry looking to expand their knowledge.
What You Learn in the Program
When you purchase the program, Precision Nutrition will send you a large textbook and other course materials. The entire program is self-paced, and there is a quiz at the end of each chapter. It is an open book quiz, with the rationale being that you could always reference the book when working with clients so why not reference it for a test. Once you complete all the tests, you receive the certification in the mail and are added to their nutrition coaching directory.
The course materials are a good mix of the hard sciences like biology, practical information about nutrition, and coaching advice. They are not advocates of any particular dieting strategy like keto or fasting, and reference clinical research in the book. Overall, it’s a good tool to learn about the basics of nutrition. It’s easy to read and understand, especially compared to standard college textbooks. They also place a major emphasis on changes in behavior when it comes to working with clients.
Price
The standard price for the entire course ranges from $999 to $1,428 depending on the payment option you choose. They offer upfront payment or month-by-month. Precision Nutrition’s price point compared with other industry leaders is outlined below. These are based on standard prices and not any promotions they may currently have.
| Organization | Price |
| Precision Nutrition | $999 |
| NASM | $899 |
| AFPA | $799 |
| ACE Fitness | $699 |
| ISSN | $649 + Membership |
Alternatives
The simplest alternative is to not get certified at all, and take a self-taught approach to nutrition. If you demonstrate a certain level of knowledge with nutrition to your clients, they will probably work with you whether you are certified or not. Nowadays there are tons of free resources online to learn about diet and nutrition. But there are some clients that would only work with someone who is certified; everyone has a different attitude.
In addition, most people don’t know the difference between a Registered Dietitian, Nutritionist, and Nutrition Coach. So saying you have a nutrition certification may sound like a big deal to them, when in reality all you had to do is buy the book and pass a relatively easy exam.
I have no regrets in terms of getting the Precision Nutrition certification. It’s a fine course, well-organized, and they offer many additional resources like client forms and questionnaires. But I can’t say my business started booming after I became certified, it was just a nice thing to have. In fairness, I don’t know if any certification would increase your business in of itself.
If I could do it all over again, I would likely have pursued the ISSN nutrition certification. They focus more on nutrition for athletes, which is the base of my clientele. Precision Nutrition can work for athletes, but the materials and examples in the book focus mainly on the general population.
Conclusion
Overall, the Precision Nutrition course is decent. They try to upsell you on their level 2 program, coaching software, and cookbooks, which is a little annoying. But hey, it’s a business. They offer sound information and advice, plus you can go at your own pace. Personally I think it’s overpriced, but if someone was excited to start the course and asked me about it, I wouldn’t deter them from following through.