ISSA Weight Management Specialist Review

With so many family members and friends drastically losing weight thanks to new medication, I’ve had a lot of people ask me what they can do to get fit. Apparently, they thought that losing weight with medication was kind of a one-stop shop, and it turned out to be the first store (?) of many. 

So now they are looking for people they can pay to help them manage their weight loss in a healthy fashion, not just with medication but with good nutrition and exercise habits. So I signed up for the ISSA weight management specialist certification to see if I could help, and here is my review. 

Price

First up was the price.

It was surprisingly affordable at just over $300 with options for military discounts, a regular rotation of other applicable discounts, and monthly payment plans.

They don’t even require you to finish paying off the course before you can get certified and start making money; as long as you have paid for one month of your 12-month payment program, you are good to go.

I did some quick math and realized I paid more than that for a single college course so all in, this was a pretty affordable investment in my future. 

Accessibility

As soon as I signed up for the ISSA weight management specialist certification, I was able to hit the ground running.

ISSA sent me another email with my login information in case I had forgotten (I had; it had been a while since my last cert), a reminder about the study support options, and a quick guide on how the modules were set up. 

Student Dashboard

Once I logged in, I was back to the ISSA dashboard, which is very clearly laid out and has several side panels that indicate your progress through the certification while also showing you what other quizzes you might have missed.

I like that you can’t move forward in the modules until you have completed previous units owing to the fact that the material tends to build on itself. Just the same as you can’t just skip ahead to the last few weeks of a college course, you have to move methodically through the weight management course material, and only after you have passed each of the respective chapter quizzes will the rest of the material populate in that dashboard. 

Learning Materials

I was in the dashboard, and I got access to all the other learning materials. 

Thankfully, ISSA is pretty standardized when it comes to their certifications, so you can expect a somewhat similarly structured design in terms of modules and content.

This meant I was able to access the digital textbook as well as video content and quizzes online.

The final exam was administered online as well, in an open-book, no time limit fashion.

Note: ISSA is pretty dope because they include a second retest for free if you fail the first time. If you fail a second time, then you have to pay out of pocket for another test, but at that point, you might want to take some more time to review the course material.

I found that when I started the course, my goal was to get through the learning material as quickly as possible because I was fielding text messages and phone calls from my friends about how to help them and whether I was certified yet, because they wanted to pay me instead of just harassing me with endless questions for free.

It was a little overwhelming to try and push myself that quickly, especially when the program wasn’t structured to be done as quickly as possible but rather at a steady, regular weekly pace.

During one of the weekly Zoom webinars or meetings, I raised this question about how quickly I should be done with the course and they were very quick to point out that while I could mad dash my way through it, they had the structure set up in its current progression and speed for a reason: The goal with this material was to really absorb it in such a way that I could apply it to my clients not just to get the certification without recalling any of the details.

That spoke to me. 

Study Support

I was surprised at how similar the ISSA Weight Management Specialist course was set up much like a traditional college course.

The curriculum was laid out in an easy fashion with weekly reading assignments, video content, and chapter quizzes–the catch of course being that, unlike a traditional college course, you could choose to take as much or as little time as you needed on each module, so long as you finished within 6 months of signing up for the course.

Other forms of support included office hours where you could go to ask questions relating to the course or any other areas where you might need help. 

ISSA included live Zoom classes each week. They have it set up to where you email questions ahead of time, and then they get addressed the following week. These are private, recorded sessions, too, so if you miss a week, you can review the recording later. 

For some of the certifications, you also get live training help, sessions that are led by other master trainers and career fitness professionals, something you don’t get from competing organizations.

Other forms of study support included study groups and access to social media groups, including students taking the same weight management specialist course. 

Career Support

Then, once you complete the course, ISSA support somehow gets even more robust. 

ISSA support doesn’t end when you complete your exam, either; they offer really in-depth tools for getting your business started. 

For example, if you want to become a weight loss trainer, they have a business guide that literally walks you through each step you need to complete to set everything up.

To support you, you get access to downloadable forms, images for your website, and business cards:

They also have partner organizations. 

This might not sound like a lot, but it includes two key benefits:

1. Options for job opportunities at partner locations
2. Discounts on a lot of other things you need to make your career work like professional liability insurance, athletic gear, or other business support 

That first thing is significantly more important as someone who has made a substantial investment in a potential second career or career switch. The Career Assist area is where you have a chance to see, in real time, the jobs that are available to you, and according to recent data, all of the partner organizations that meet with ISSA reps on a regular basis are actively looking for certified personal trainers.

Some of these gyms have had to issue refunds to their new members because they sold them packages that included personal training and then didn’t end up having the certified personal trainers on hand, or they sold them packages that included specialty support like weight management and strength and conditioning, but they didn’t have any trainers with those certifications. 

So, you have access to this career support center as soon as you sign up for your certification, not when you pass your exam. This means you have a chance to directly message hiring managers from all of these partner organizations and many of them, if you explain that you are currently enrolled and have a test date anticipated on fill-in-the-blank, might set up your interview for the very next day assuming you pass your certification or even set up a potential job opportunity that starts once you pass your certification.

I think it’s a great opportunity for many people to be able to potentially set up a job contingent on completing your certification, instead of waiting until you’ve already passed and then starting your search. 

Expiration

After I finished, I was awarded the cert and got reminder emails about the other support they had, like the website creation support, access to professional liability insurance, and discounts on other programs.

All of these certifications have expiration dates, and an industry standard is 2 years. During that time, you are expected to complete additional education, usually called continuing education units. The field of weight management, weight loss, and personal training is always evolving, so it’s important that you do too.

ISSA offers discounts on things like seminars and continuing education units to make this more achievable. 

I got a discount just a few weeks after I completed my weight management specialist cert, and that made it really easy for me to add a corrective exercise certification, something that had been mentioned during one of the weekly live videos. I had actually overlooked that particular certification thinking that it wasn’t for me until the instructor talked about how hard we work at using the right form for things like squats or deadlifts, and I realized that I had been encouraging a lot of my clients to focus on perfecting their form before they added more weight so this would be an ideal continuing education unit for me. 

Summing Up

Overall, I found the course to be very accessible, very informative, with a lot of ongoing support, more so than I expected. At times, it was a little overwhelming, but that’s just because I was forcing myself to get through it as quickly as possible to sort of check it off my list, and once I realized that ISSA had curriculum specialists who designed the pacing intentionally, and I slowed everything down, it was perfect.