What are the details of the legislation?
Starting Strength Coach
Disastrous Massachusetts personal training licensure bill still pending
Massachusetts HB 185, which seeks to require state licensure by personal trainers, has been referred to the Massachusetts committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure. The committee will provide a recommendation on the bill by the end of the year.
I don't personally believe this legislation is likely to go anywhere, as identical bills have not made it out of committee in the last two legislative sessions. However, it is always better to be safe than sorry.
For those in Massachusetts or the surrounding areas, or even for those who are simply interested, I encourage you to contact the committee and tell them (respectfully) that they should reject this piece of legislation. Here is the contact information for the committee members.
Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure
And here's your cheat sheet for the reasons why this law is stupid, if you want to have a more involved conversation with them. http://startingstrength.com/contentf...re_butland.pdf
TMPHBITEU
What are the details of the legislation?
Member
only four pages, can't believe it.
Bill Text: MA H185 | 2015-2016 | 189th General Court | Introduced | LegiScan
TMPHBITEU
Yep, no better way to ensure quality instruction than this:
Standards USREPS protection racket legislation. You guys up there better get busy, just in case your legislature is denser/more corrupt than Brodie thinks they will be. Fucking morons know absolutely nothing about the issue -- except that they like the USREPS gal who took them to lunch -- yet they feel perfectly capable of making law about it.Section 23F ½. It shall be required in order for a person to hold himself or herself out as a19 personal trainer, to (a) be certified as a personal trainer or its equivalent by national independent20 organization whose certification procedures for personal trainers have been approved by the21 National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA); or (b) possess a credential or certification in either the field of personal training, exercise23 science, or similarly related field, from an educational institution accredited by an accrediting24 body recognized by either the Council for Higher Education Accreditation or by the United25 States Department of Education.
Member
I find this curious:
so . . . the Aerobics instructor of a 35 person "group class" doesn't have to comply?Exemptions. The certification requirements set forth in section 23F 1/2 shall not apply to
27 the following:
28 (i) Group exercise instructors;
If the aim of the law in protect the public or consumer (which, the whole idea flawed I know), it doesn't do a very good job with this exclusion.
A lot of situations are slipping through.
Crossfit = group exercise, so there's that.
Member
Sending this off to all committee members, with parts lifted from Coach Butland's original article.
Esteemed Senators:
I'm writing to you regarding House bill H185 - An Act to encourage well qualified practitioners in the field of personal training.
On its face, its sole goal is to allow certifying organizations exclude those who are not members of those same organizations from competing with their members.
Anyone can get a personal training certification from the ACE, NASM, ISSA, ACSM, or NSCA (the five most popular personal training certifications) without ever having to demonstrate that they are capable of teaching someone in real time. Further, the exception for group training is entirely arbitrary; one-on-one training requires licensure, but the exact same training when provided to more than one person simultaneously does not.
A handful of personal training certification organizations are requesting that they alone decide who may practice personal training and who may not - this is anti-competitive at its heart and should not become law.
Thank you for your time.
Member
Thanks for the heads up. I'm not a trainer or a coach but I consider it a possibility in the future.
I'll be contacting them shortly.
I_iz,
Careful with pointing out the group training loophole. It may give them ideas.
Starting Strength Coach
Yep. It is, without question, the single worst drafted bill of the entire bunch--and that's saying something, because there are some real doozies in the last five years. You'll notice that, inexplicably, the bill doesn't even have an enforcement mechanism.Originally Posted by MBasic
This is the main reason why I think the legislation has no chance of getting out of committee--it is so incomplete that it can't feasibly be passed as written. The DC law was pretty minimalist, but it at least delegated rulemaking to a governmental body so that the law could actually be enforced.
Yeah, the goal was to prevent the need for Zumba and spinning instructors to be certified--but they created a loophole big enough for a 747. If I instruct two or three trainees at the same time, I'm exempt under the law.
This is why the USREPS/CREP proposed legislation only exempts group fitness done to music. (Yes, "to music" is expressly stated in the proposed law.) That way, they can exempt the Zumba and yoga people while still shutting down Crossfit or Starting Strength.
Nice. If licensure starts becoming a big issue again in the future, I may develop a sample letter/message so we can flood the legislators considering these types of stupid laws. That said, USREPS/CREP claim that they're no longer actively pursuing licensure, probably because they got embarrassed in DC--so it may be a few years before the issue really heats up again.
I would not be surprised, however, if Mr. Fennell offers the same bill in the 2017 legislative session...the guy's been like clockwork over the last three sessions, always submitting the same stupid-ass bill that never gets anywhere.
Member
So if you are coaching a couple, with music playing in the background, you should be in the clear, no?
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