Precision Nutrition

Precision Nutrition may not be the best choice – Since 2005, Precision Nutrition, a Canadian based firm has certified over 150,000 health and fitness professionals worldwide, giving them the skills and knowledge to successfully coach in “exercise nutrition”. Their training appears to be first class in a combination of book and online interaction. The training covers everything from mindset, nutrition, dieting, exercise and starting your business. At the completion of the course you are certified to practice exercise nutrition as a PNL1 for a period of 2 years and this is where it now goes wrong.

Precision Nutrition launched a couple of new “optional” products, the first one is pro coach as a software based program that helps you provide and deliver the nutrition product to the client. They charge a fee based on the number of clients that you have each month. This is a helpful idea but it really digs into your coaching income. The general understanding is there may be better products than the Procoach.

The second product was the introduction of the Precision Nutrition Academy, called “PN Academy” , an advanced education membership that is reserved for PN graduates. There are two ways to access this by either a monthly membership or pay per training module.

This made for an attractive certification product. By paying a set fee you would receive your certification and upon completion, every 2 years you would take a free recertification that would ensure your skills were on track. Anything else was optional depending on what you were using your certification for.

After 150,000 people have purchased the program PN have now announced that they have unconditionally changed the recertification process. It will now be mandatory for all PN recertifications to complete additional training modules from the PN academy at a cost per course or membership fee.

This makes alot of business sense when looking to optimize profits from 150,000 members, however it makes the PN product very unattractive and in my view it devalues the product. I can clearly see that these are grey areas and this company has in fact changed the product after so many people have purchased it.

I would be very careful when looking at PN for a certification as there is no regulation on their business choices to protect the members who invested and trained with them.