NPTI - Portland

(Portland)

The hands-on experience is not as great as the claims. In my experience this consisted of only 2 six session programs (you were paired with a partner each term and trained them for only 6 sessions - not enough to teach you about program design, progressions, or working with different types of populations) and 1 group training session that you put together with a partner. Many students already had extensive experience in the weight room as well as other athletic backgrounds; their experience rather than the education at NPTI was more of an aid in finding employment for them - these are the people who had jobs before graduating. There are also several of my classmates with quite a bit of athletic, teaching, and customer relations experience who still did not find employment after graduating, despite their knowledge, experience, and ability to work with people.

Also, bear in mind that the statistics for employment are only based on people who actually complete the survey - not everyone.

The actual exercises that you learn are very limited. You may DO a lot of exercise, but that is not the same as learning how to teach other people how to do them, spot correctly for them, or progress them from beginning to advanced through them.

Successful students had a lot of outside knowledge - either from taking other exercise courses outside of NPTI while students or other training backgrounds; not everyone has the time to do this. Also, you could take these classes yourself and not waste the money on NPTI if that's not where you're learning it.

The program itself could be consolidated into a 3-month course, as a lot of the information is repeated in the second half with a slightly different emphasis. The bottom line is that you get a lot of theory, but not a lot of experience implementing these ideas or coaching someone through proper form and progressions during class (which is what you are paying for).