A few weeks ago, I started getting advertisements telling me to sign up for the menopause coach certification, a new offering from ISSA. At the time, the course wasn’t even available yet, but you could be put on the waiting list.
The announcement definitely caught my eye, even though there was a wait list, because I happen to work in an area with a lot of women as clients, who are dealing with menopause.
So, I started investigating whether or not it was worth adding the menopause credential and here’s what I found.
Topic Contents
Quick Summary
ISSA’s menopause coach certification is:
- The same online structure as their other certifications requiring about 30 hours of self-paced study
- A great resource to fill a critical gap in the fitness industry with the unique physiological shifts that happen for women during midlife
- An ideal recommendation for trainers and coaches who want to expand their offerings
Let’s dive in.
Course Structure and Format
Like all of the ISSA certs, this one is also entirely online, using the same set up as their other certs. So, if you’re a fitness professional with certs under your belt, then you know how their set up is.
You probably know what the student portal looks like. It’s pretty self-explanatory, such that when you log in you have the top Banner with a breakdown for:
- Home
- Study aids
- Career and business
And so on. Then you have access to all of your certification courses that you have either completed or have recently signed up for. When you click on a particular course like the menopause certification course, it will direct you to the virtual classroom.
It’s the same portal, same structure, with the quizzes and the reading material and the exams.
But the biggest difference is this particular course is more of a focused, high-density specialization rather than a months-long course.
For example, when I added ISSA’s strength and conditioning cert, it took a loooooooooog time. So did the 200-hour yoga cert. This one though, only takes about 20 to 30 hours of self-paced study to complete. So, if you have a lot of free time right now, you could knock it out in a few weeks, but I wouldn’t recommend it. While the whole “only-20-hours” thing seems like a green light to blast your way through the material, that will only leave you burned out and, to be honest, you won’t really absorb the material as well.
That’s something they talk about a lot in things like weekly webinars and other career advancement sessions that they host now and again, and it’s one thing I really took to heart because I was that person, the first time I signed up for certification, only looking at the deadline and trying to get as much done as possible so that I could start working. But then I realized I wasn’t doing my clients any favors if all I had done was speed read through content and pass a final.
A big part of that is that ISSA has so many additional resources available when you sign up for a certification so whether you’ve used them before or not, if you sign up for the menopause certification you’ll have access to the study aid material including the:
- Easy-to-follow recommendation for your study schedule
- Full library of exercises with images and video content
- Business support tools for those launching a new career in the field of women’s fitness, with an emphasis on menopause
You’ll pay for your fee once, but you’ll receive all of the ongoing support, webinars, and other tools as well as the opportunity to not only download the study materials and the digital textbook, in your student portal.
Materials and Tools
Like all of their other stuff, you get a comprehensive digital textbook, interactive modules, and real-world case studies. You can also access downloadable client handouts, tracking tools, and conversation frameworks designed for immediate use on the gym floor. The tracking tools and other guidance are really useful, especially for someone who might be new to the field of women’s health or health in general, like someone who’s just wrapping up their certified personal trainer cert but also wants an emphasis on women’s health.
Final Exam
The final exam is done via an online exam.
This is self-paced, with no timer. It is also open book, technically. Obviously you don’t want to be the person who’s referring to your textbook for every single answer because that reflects more on how well you have absorbed or not absorbed material but if you are confused about something you can certainly revisit the content while you are taking your test.
One of the things I like about the online format they offer not just for the menopause certification but for other certifications is that you can pause your final exam and come back to it so at any point if, for example, you’re trying to work your way through hundreds of questions but someone knocks on your door or you need to take a phone call or any other type of break, you can save your work and come back to it.
Like most ISSA specialized credentials, it focuses heavily on real-world concepts and tests your ability to apply the program/materials rather than just regurgitate test answers. It will make you think rather than focus on memorization–again, part of why I advise against blazing through the content as quickly as possible even if you technically can.
Who This Certification Is Built For
Women’s subjects have been overlooked in the health field for a long time. As a female, I’m still often the only woman in the weight room. I still work with a lot of female clients, especially older women who are in the menopause age range, who don’t want to go to the gym at all because they aren’t comfortable.
That said, the new ISSA cert is specifically built for working professionals who already understand the fundamentals of movement, probably already work with a lot of older females, but want a dedicated framework for female endocrine health.
- Personal Trainers: I think this is best for personal trainers like myself, who want to be able to adjust the course content for their clients based on adjusting progressive overload when systemic inflammation, joint discomfort, and recovery windows change.
- Nutrition Coaches: It’s also essential for nutrition coaches with older clients who need support managing sudden body composition shifts, insulin sensitivity, and lean muscle mass retention without prescribing crash diets.
- Health Coaches: Finally, I think it is vital for navigating the psychological and emotional impacts of menopause, like the severe sleep disturbances, fatigue, and brain fog.
If you don’t currently work as a coach, and you don’t have any older female clients, you can still totally consider this cert. For example, you might work in an area where you currently focus on powerlifting or teen sports, but you want to expand your offerings. In that case, you can shift your work focus to a new demographic after adding this cert to your repertoire.
Why the ISSA Menopause Cert Benefits Coaches
This credential functions primarily as a business differentiator, the thing that helps set you apart from others in the industry. It’s a good tool for client retention too. Basically, it helps you add business value and improve your clinical offerings.
Better Business Value
Women over 40 are a fast-growing, affluent fitness demographic. When their bodies change, they often feel dismissed by traditional personal training or medical providers – speaking as one of those women, who heard things like “this is just part of aging” and “well, just work out more” or even “try this weird supplement/mushroom coffee/alt-form-of-yoga.”
- Business Value: With this cert, you can improve your business offerings by retaining women 40 and older, you can charge a higher rate per-session, and you can position yourself a bit higher
Once you add the menopause cert, you can adjust the programming dynamically to keep your clients training safely.
High-Converting Acquisition Channels
Midlife women, in my experience, are muuuuch more likely to do a lot of research before they hire a coach. Basically at this age, women have the money to spend on a long-term training commitment but they want someone with knowledge and expertise that fits unique goals and challenges associated with midlife.
With the ISSA Menopause Coach certification, for example, you can change your messaging as a coach to focus on functional longevity and symptom management rather than rapid weight loss.
What does that look like?
It looks like reframing your marketing content to focus on maintaining functional strength, building bone density, restoring deep sleep, and improving steady energy throughout the day. This of course helps you use clinical terms like perimenopause, muscle sarcopenia, and hot flashes not just in your content but in your conversations with clients, immediately allowing you to stand apart from the competition.
The knowledge you gain with this certification also improves your understanding of things like estrogen drops and visceral fat deposition so that you can help your current or perspective clients really understand the physiological changes they are going through and how things like your wellness sessions can be tied to the metabolic shifts of menopause.
If you are an existing coach, there’s a lot of potential here to not only bring in new clients but to increase the services and subsequently the income generated by your existing clients. I, for example, work with a lot of women who are in their late 40s and 50s who have recently been told by their doctor that they need to be doing more because all of these perimenopause and menopause symptoms kind of hit them at once.
So, I was able to combine my standard one-on-one gym sessions with dedicated support systems for improving protein intake goals or sleep hygiene metrics and connect my clients with structured 12-week lifestyle modification programs. To start with these specializations I provide all of my clients with deep dive questionnaires as part of their onboarding process that focus on topics like:
- Sleep patterns
- Joint pain tracking
- Hot flash frequency
- Current medical or HRT protocols
This works well with the existing certs I have including things like nutrition coach and brain fitness specialist.
Better Education as a Coach
As a coach or health professional, you can learn a lot from this certification. In fact, it’s one of the only companies right now offering this specificity. It teaches you the language of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and menopause hormone therapy (MHT). This can be a pretty unapproachable topic for people who haven’t actually gone through menopause, which is why clients are really happy when their coaches have the knowledge to interpret their medical adjustments and coordinate safely with healthcare providers.
- Clinical Literacy: You can develop a deeper understanding of HRT/MHT maps, program your sessions for bone density, and cross-references with MDs
It really provides a deep, clinical understanding of changes to sleep patterns and metabolism, a lot of changes that your current or future clients might be facing right now, changes that they don’t understand and might want guidance managing. As such, this is one of the many offerings from ISSA that isn’t a filler or just a copy of something else on the market but rather a standalone product that is unique in its ability to deliver immediate, real world setups for training women in midlife.
Continuing Education for Coaches
Finally, as a professional, you have to keep up with your continuing education units (CEUs). This course provides 20 CEUs (Continuing Education Units), completely fulfilling the bi-annual recertification requirement for ISSA personal trainers. So it helps you meet your requirements for cert renewal and upgrades your abilities as a coach.
Summing Up
After reviewing the ISSA Menopause Coach Certification, I’ve realized that it’s best suited for fitness professionals who work specifically with clients of a particular age group. It is a really unique offering, something that addresses a critical gap not just in the fitness industry but in women’s health. I think it really stands out as an opportunity to move away from the outdated thinking of women’s training as a singular category into the updated thinking of physiological shifts that happen for women throughout multiple times in their lives.
It is a great way for existing trainers and coaches to add to their wheelhouse, improve their business and improve client retention.
