Need for Educated, Credentialed Fitness Professionals Tops Trends for 2013
For the
sixth consecutive year, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has
ranked the need for educated and certified health and fitness and clinical
exercise program professionals as the top fitness trend.
For its
survey, ACSM received more than 3,340 responses from health and fitness
professionals from almost every continent—Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa,
North America, and South America. Specific countries included the United
States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, India, Italy, and
Russia. Demographics of the survey respondents included 67% female across a
wide variability in ages and 48% having more than 10 years of experience in the
industry.
Strength training ranked second for the second year in
a row. Body weight training, which ranked third, appeared for the first time in the
trend survey because it has only now become popular (as a defined trend) in
gyms around the world, says ACSM. Programs aimed specifically at the problem of
childhood obesity, weight loss programs, and fitness programs for older adults
placed fourth, fifth, and sixth, respectively.
The trend toward creating
incentive programs to stimulate positive healthy behavior change as part of
employer-based health promotion programming and health care benefits ranked 15th.
Outcome
measurements placed 17th in the survey. This is the first time this trend
toward accountability has made it into the top 20 spots.
Free
full text of the article is available in the November/December issue of Health & Fitness Journal.