As you may have heard, ACE recently announced the release of The Professional’s Guide to Health and Wellness Coaching and associated study materials. Individuals studying from the ACE Health Coach Manual and associated study materials may be wondering if their current materials are still sufficient to help them prepare for the ACE Health Coach Certification exam. Here is some information that may help you feel comfortable about being able to successfully prepare for the exam using the ACE Health Coach Manual and associated study materials.

Can I still use the ACE Health Coach Manual and associated study materials to prepare for the exam? Yes. Those of you who currently have the ACE Health Coach study materials can prepare for and successfully pass the ACE Health Coach Certification examination. If you’ve been working with these materials for a while, we’d encourage you to finish up your studies and sit for the exam, as the new ACE Health Coach exam content outline was introduced in July 2017, prior to the new manual being available.

When will the exam change to reflect the new manual? The exam does not make a dramatic switch from one manual to another, as it is not directly tied to any one manual or study resource. Instead, what is being tested is whether or not an individual is adequately prepared to enter a particular profession or job role. New questions are rotated into ACE certification exams on a regular basis each year, even when the manual remains unchanged for several consecutive years. This is something ACE does with all four certification programs. As we move into 2019 and beyond, more questions will be rotated into the certification exam that reflect the updated science-based health and wellness coaching techniques referenced in the ACE Health Coach exam content outline, as well as The Professional’s Guide to Health and Wellness Coaching and other reference materials.

How do new exam questions get selected for the exam? ACE certification examinations are built according to the domains and tasks in the exam content outline for that specific exam. The current ACE Health Coach exam content outline is published as Appendix B in both the ACE Health Coach Manual and The Professional’s Guide to Health and Wellness Coaching, and is also available as a downloadable PDF on the ACE website. ACE Certification Committees write new exam questions (items) throughout the year. The questions are edited and validated by other Certification Committee Members, and then they are rotated into exams as experimental (unscored) items. Questions that perform well are then used in place of older and outdated items on new exams. These new questions may focus on updated industry guidelines, evidence-based findings in exercise, nutrition, or health-behavioral sciences; or they might simply be new questions on existing topics in the ACE Health Coach exam content outline.

In summary, you can still prepare for and have success on the ACE Health Coach Certification exam using the ACE Health Coach Manual and associated materials. Continue with your current study plan using all print and online study materials that you purchased, including any practice tests. Once you feel prepared for the exam and a career as a health coach, log into your MyACE account to register for your examination. If your study materials included an exam voucher, you will want to make sure that you schedule your exam date and use the voucher before it expires. You will need to have current CPR/AED certification on file to register for the examination. You will also need to make sure that you have been pre-approved to sit for the ACE Health Coach Certification prior to registration.

Do you still have questions about the exam or your preparation? Check out the ACE Answers page for more information.