Brett azar - assistant manager and personal trainer

Brett Azar has dedicated his life to the study and pursuit of fitness. A Kinesiology graduate from the University of Rhode Island, Brett became a well known Personal Trainer and served as Supervisor of the Fitness Center on the Kingstown Campus.

A certified Personal Trainer as well as a Natural Body Builder Competitor since the age of 18, Brett has a great love of the world of fitness and deeply enjoys teaching others the knowledge that he has gained through his own training and personal experiences.

"I look forward to aiding all of you on your way to becoming Certified Personal Trainers."

What is NBFE?

The NBFE was founded in 2003 as a non-profit organization for two principal purposes. First, the NBFE will address and define a series of prescribed scopes of practice for all fitness professionals. Second, the NBFE will determine the 3standards of practice2 for various fitness professionals, including floor instructors, group exercise instructors, general personal trainers, specialists in areas such as youth and senior fitness, and medical exercise specialists.

Standards of practice are a set of skills and a body of knowledge that a fitness professional is expected to master in order to meet the highest standards of the field. The first formal standards of practice to be issued by the NBFE will focus on personal fitness trainers. Based on these standards of practice, the NBFE will go on to generate standardized national examinations for personal fitness trainers in collaboration with a Thompson Prometric.

Bear in mind that the NBFE is not a certifying organization in itself (that is what NABF is), and will not take the place of any certifying organization. Rather, the NBFE will set national standards of excellence in the fitness industry and provide tools to test whether a fitness professional has met those standards. Individual personal fitness trainers must successfully complete a personal training certification program from an approved NBFE Affiliate or meet other qualifications prior to taking the NBFE exam. (See below for more information about NBFE Affiliates.)

Today, most organizations that certify fitness professionals rely on their own standards and their own tests in making certification decisions. Consequently, the standards for becoming a personal trainer vary from organization to organization, and so do the tests and ultimately, the skills of those receiving certifications. The NBFE will establish one national standard of excellence that every certifying organization and college is free to adopt and use. This also provides a means of achieving standardization for all certifying organizations. In a sense, one might say that the NBFE standardizes the various certification organizations. In this way, the fitness industry and the consumer will be confident that every fitness professional who has passed the National Boards has met the same high standards.

What is accreditation?

Accreditation: Certification organizations may obtain accreditation of its own policies and procedures from a third-party accrediting agency. Accreditation usually remains in effect for a specified number of years and must be periodically renewed according to the procedures established by the accrediting agency.