How to Get Started in a Career as an Exercise Physiologist

People Are Living Longer, Healthier Lives. Exercise Physiologists Are Here to Help

A curious irony has evolved over the past twenty years: Americans are more overweight and sedentary than ever before. Yet, at the same time, we are living longer, healthier lives and competing for only a handful of spots in ultra-endurance sports like the Hawaiian Iron Man triathlon, Leadville 100-mile foot race and the Eco-challenge adventure series. What gives? How is this possible?

The answer, of course, is that the American population has developed an unsatiable thirst for health and fitness knowledge. The advice found in magazines, fitness centers, hospitals and even the workplace usually comes from the same resources: trained exercise physiologists.

Exercise physiologists come in many flavors. While they all begin their education with a minimum of a four-year university degree, most continue on to graduate school, selecting one of five specialty areas: prevention/rehabilitation, human performance, biomechanics, athletic training or academic research in any of the previously mentioned specialties.

The prevention/rehabilitation tract deals with the area of cardiovascular disease. This includes heart disease, hypertension, diabetes (types I and II) and pulmonary disease. Exercise specialists in prevention/rehabilitation educate and train individuals that are either at risk for developing or have already developed symptoms of these diseases. Most major hospitals employ clinical exercise physiologists to monitor patients that have had heart attacks, coronary bypass surgery and uncontrolled diabetes or have other diseases that improve with physical activity. Exercise physiologists test patients upon entry to the program, write the exercise prescriptions, monitor exercise sessions and develop home exercise programs for individuals that are not candidates for traditional exercise programs.