How I Passed the NASM Exam

Today, I passed the National Academy of Sports Medicine Personal Training Certification exam! I haven't felt so elated in a long time because I put a lot of effort and time into it. One of the most helpful things was researching other people's tips online who had confidently passed and tested well. Since it is still fresh in my mind, I wanted to jot down the things that helped me the most to pass the exam.

First of all, as I am sure you may have already seen, there is a thread on bodybuilding.com where NASM personal trainers compiled some of their best tips. When I first read this, I was extremely overwhelmed and it almost made me feel worse. I purchased the self-study package with study guides, the textbook, the practice test and flashcards, and I was still overwhelmed with all of the information that was shoved into my lap that I was supposed to memorize.

Even so, I advise you to read the thread linked above. I didn't do absolutely everything mentioned (especially because the thread is a bit outdated so page numbers and test questions are different), but I did get some very helpful tips, such as grouping muscle functions instead of memorizing individual muscle functions (which is HARD).

Anyway, other than reading that thread, here are my personal tips for passing the NASM.

Smartphone Apps

One of the most useful studying strategies was to pull out my phone and fiddle around with anatomy apps to help me learn muscles. 

Speed Anatomy // I purchased the full one, which was a waste. The free one is great help and fun to use. It doesn't teach you every little muscle, but is a great place to start and learn the bigger, more "mainstream" muscles and bones. This made learning the rest of the muscles less overwhelming and more understandable. 

iMuscle 2 // Worth the money! This was the best resource ever).

NASM CPT // I didn't purchase the full version, and sometimes I wish I had, but it was $10 and I just didn't feel right spending that much on an iPhone app. It was useful to whip out when work or class got boring and drill through a few practice test questions, which was the only feature I used on this app. 

Concepts

• Learning muscle groups and their function helped me with the majority of the questions. Don't just memorize to spew out information, but actually practice using that muscle and feel the function yourself. That way, if a question pops up about muscle usage that you don't have memorized, all you have to do is apply it to yourself to figure it out. 
• Example: I would try doing a single-leg squat and let my knee cave inward. I would then make a mental note of which muscles felt like they were contracting and which felt under-active. I would then straighten out so that I could feel what muscles were supposed to contract with the proper form. So, without even studying, I could tell you that one of the muscles that is under-active when the knee caves in during a single leg squat is the gluteus medius. I tested every single movement on myself as I studied it so that I would know what it felt like to do it correctly or incorrectly.
• Practice assessments on someone else. I practiced every single assessment on my brother, my husband, or myself. This helped me to understand assessments on a whole new level because I had actually done them. I also found out by doing this that I have an anterior tilted pelvis and pronation distortion syndrome, so that was cool, I guess. Knowledge of fitness assessments is very important to do well on the test.
• Know how muscles work in detail, from their structure to their chemical makeup to things like reciprocal inhibition. This helps to reason through a great deal of the questions.
• Know acute variables intimately. These are things like repetition range, tempo, number of sets, etc. in many different training scenarios. It's mapped out nicely in Chapter 14 of the 4th edition textbook. This was possibly one of the most useful chapters for the exam. It's a lot of information, but it wasn't a difficult chapter to understand and retain, especially if you have a lot of experience working out.

Study Strategies

• Make your own flash cards. I flipped through about 10 flash cards that NASM provided and never looked at them again. Instead, I read the book chapter-by-chapter and created my own flash cards full of everything that I thought was important. I would carry those around with me in my backpack and review them throughout the day. 
• Take the practice test, but don't study it. What I mean by this is that some people will write down all of the questions and answers of the practice test and memorize them. If you do this, you will not learn much, because the NASM test questions are only similar to the practice test in concept. Instead, every practice test question that I didn't get right, I would write down the concept of the question and study that.
• Example: There may be a question on the practice test asking how you should instruct your client to warm up in Phase 1 of the OPT model. That's great if you memorize that, but on the test, it might ask what warm-ups you should to for a client in Phase 2 who has knee pain (FYI, that's not an official test question, just an example). If you conceptually understand how warming up works and why you should or should not do certain things in each phase, this test question is easy, but if you just memorized the practice test question, you might not completely understand the concept.
• Study diligently about 30-45 minutes every weeknight. Give yourself a break on weekends and this way you will not overwhelm yourself. I did this for about 3 months. The longest study session I had was a 4 hour comprehensive review yesterday right before the exam to make sure I could tie all the concepts together, but I never studied even close to that long on other days. 
• Listen to audio recordings in the car. I would listen to the videos that were provided by NASM in their study guide over my car's speakers as I would drive around throughout the week. This would help to drill concepts, definitions, and processes into my head, sometimes without me even realizing it until I took the practice test and was surprised at how well I knew some things. Repetition, people. It works. I didn't even have to try. I just drove.

I hope this helps someone out there to feel more ready for the NASM exam. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but I'm sure it's because I was so well prepared, because I realized at the end of the test that I never would have been able to come close to passing it before my three months of dedicated studying. Good luck!