Professional Development: Considerations for Choosing Quality Opportunities

Dear future kinesiology graduate,

Whether you are new to the field or have been working for a while, you are likely familiar with the certifications out there or the ones that are required to practice kinesiology/exercise physiology in North America (CSEP, ACSM, AKA, NSCA, etc). In order to maintain any certification, you’re required to fulfill professional development credits. The value behind continued professional development is to stay informed on the latest research that shapes your evidence-based practice. Professional development opportunities range from in-person or online courses, conferences, webinars, and more. This may vary depending on the certification you hold, so it’s important to be informed on what qualifies as professional development (and how many credits it equivocates to) and the expectation for how much professional development is needed to maintain your certification per year. Otherwise, failure to meet these expectations could result in loss of your certification… YIKES. Here are some helpful insights and things we’ve learned in our professional development journeys thus far. Enjoy! 

Tips for Achieving Quality Professional Development Credits

Committing to professional development can be expensive and time consuming. There are a number of things you may want to consider before choosing what opportunity to pursue:

1. Weigh out the cost vs. the credit value

This one may speak for itself, but it is probably the most important to consider. Professional development can get expensive quickly, so make sure you do your research and compare trends for the cost of courses and how many credits you will receive. You may find an opportunity that is cheaper that gets you more credits. Alternatively, you  may choose to pay a little extra for an opportunity that gets you more credits in the long run or best suits your interests. For example, this year I’ve chosen to pay a hefty fee for a university level course that only gets me 7.5 credits, but is something that I will gain a lot of knowledge and skills from that I can implement into my practice. 

2. Keep it applicable/relevant

The whole point of professional development is to stay up to date on the latest evidence to enhance your knowledge and skills in the field. Therefore, you want to choose opportunities that are applicable to your current or aspiring career or in an area that is not your strong suit. Either way, it should be an opportunity that you will benefit from learning more about. 

3. Know your options

Depending on the certification, the governing body may offer their own professional development opportunities or you may have the flexibility to choose your own opportunities outside of your organization. For example, CSEP offers a range of professional development opportunities from online courses/modules, webinars, and annual conferences that you can find on the CSEP Online Learning Collection. With CSEP, you are not limited to just CSEP professional development. You can also branch out to a variety of academic courses, workshops, podcasts, teaching positions, or even holding a CSEP committee member position provides you with professional development credits. For more information on external professional development opportunities and how they translate to CSEP credits, check out CSEP’s Professional Development Credit Chart. 

Mentors Tip: It might be a good idea to email the member service team for your governing body to confirm that your opportunity of choice is accepted as professional development. Also, confirm the number of credits you will receive so that there are no surprises if/when you get audited. 

4. Plan ahead 

This one may seem obvious, but I think we are all guilty of waiting until the last minute to decide or complete our professional development opportunities. Speaking from experience, there is no worse stress than cramming all your credits in right before the deadline. Rushing through the process could lead you to  choose opportunities that are not well suited for you based on convenience and could reduce the value for your knowledge and skills. So, make sure you are always keeping track of how many credits you’ve earned or how many you have left to achieve before the deadline annually or biannually depending on your governing body. 

Mentor’s Tip: If you hold more than one certification, you may be able to use the same professional development opportunity to fulfill credits for both. For example, fellow YKM mentor Christine was able to use a professional development opportunity to fulfill credits for her CSEP-CPT and NSCA-CSCS certifications. 

Making the Most of your Professional Development Opportunities

One of the best ways to make the most of your professional development opportunities is to look at whether your workplace has an employee education assistance program. I’ve been lucky and have had some of my courses covered (or partially covered), which goes a long way when you are trying to make a living in the kinesiology field during extreme inflation (lol). Maybe your workplace does not have an education assistance program, but they offer other forms of educational content or workshops that you can take that translate to a certain number of credits. Worth a shot at inquiring! It’s also a good idea to keep record of the payment or completion of your professional development opportunities in case you get audited.

Mentor’s Tip: If you are a small business owner, you may want to discuss your professional development opportunities with your accountant as they MAY qualify for a tax write-off.  

Chantelle and I are teaming up to share some of our experiences with professional development thus far, from academic courses and CSEP online learning modules to virtual and in-person experiences at the CSEP conference. We hope you will find our experiences helpful! 

Attending the CSEP 2023 Conference: Chantelle’s Experience

One of the best options to get the biggest bang for your buck with professional development credits for your CSEP certification (CEP or CPT) is to attend the annual CSEP conference. Attending the conference covers all of your required professional development credits (30) for the 2 year certification cycle. They also offer the option to attend the conference virtually instead, which gives you access to live and recorded presentations from the conference’s main room. 

CSEP holds their yearly conference in a different Canadian city every year. This year (2023), it was held in my hometown: Calgary, Alberta. The conference was 4 days long (2 full days and 2 half days). The days were PACKED with different symposiums, poster and abstract presentations, events, and a whole host of booths to check out related to health, wellness, and physical activity.

I will admit… I originally only signed up for this conference because it was a really simple way to bang out my CSEP-CEP professional development credits for the next two years. It also happened to be held in the city I currently live in. Win-win! However, what I took away from the conference turned out to be so much more than just the credits. 

I would say that there were two large benefits to attending the conference in-person:

1. Gaining knowledge

Attending these presentations made me feel like a student again. As a giant nerd, this was an awesome feeling. There was a little bit of something for everyone on the exercise physiology spectrum, whether your focus is clinical exercise physiology or sport performance. 

In these 4 days, I attended presentations on an incredibly wide range of topics in exercise science, including:

• Vascular physiology
• Exercise and brain aging
• Fatigue and fatigability
• Concussion
• Critical intensity
• Nutrition for older adults
• Arthritis
• Cardiac adaptation
• Mechanisms of muscle contraction

2. Networking

Connecting with other professionals in the field is a huge benefit of attending this conference in-person. I was personally able to connect with people I hadn’t seen in a while as well as meet new people. How much you network and how many new connections you make is ultimately up to you, but putting yourself out there is something I highly recommend doing if you choose to attend the conference. You never know what might come out of simply walking up to someone and introducing yourself!

I’ve been admittedly feeling discouraged with my career pathway this year. I’ve been wondering whether or not working in the field of kinesiology is worth it. This conference really helped me to re-ignite my passion for the field. Being in a room full of like-minded people who you can “talk shop” with was so refreshing. It’s not often that we, as exercise professionals, are able to do this.

With all that said, no professional development opportunity is perfect. The CSEP conference was fairly research-heavy, meaning that most of the presentations focused on the research itself and I found that oftentimes there wasn’t much discussion on the practical application of that research. There were quite a few presentations that I left thinking: That’s really interesting, but why does it matter? As a practitioner, and knowing that there were so many other practitioners in the room, I wish that there had been a little more focus on this. 

Academic Courses & CSEP Online Learning Modules: Victoria’s Experience 

Unfortunately, attending the CSEP conference wasn’t an easy option for me living in the Northwest Territories (though I did opt for the virtual option in 2022). I found that taking online courses and modules at my own pace suited my schedule and lifestyle better for professional development. For CSEP Online Learning Modules, I chose to pursue the “Mental Health and Exercise Interactive Textbook” which I was drawn to at the time because so many of my patients at CBI Health struggled with their mental health. This course covered mental illness, recovery-focused practice, and support strategies. One practical component that I took away was ensuring that I had a list of local psychologists in the area that I could recommend to my patients that would be covered by insurance or health benefits.

I also pursued CSEP’s “Pre & Post-Natal Exercise Specialization” preparation modules, which I was drawn to because I was interested in learning more about exercise and pregnancy/postpartum. I found this course to be very theory and science based, so I gained a lot of valuable knowledge on fetal and maternal physiological changes during pregnancy and the benefits and precautions with exercise during pregnancy. However, I did not find the course to be very practical, which was disappointing. I had hoped I would feel confident understanding which exercises to prescribe if a doctor or physiotherapist diagnosed the patient with diastasis recti or pelvic floor weakness/tightness. I also would have liked exposure to examples of what a pre/post-natal exercise class would look like. Overall, I had good experiences with these opportunities and was able to walk away with bits and pieces of new and helpful information. 

This year I chose to branch away from CSEP-specific professional development opportunities and have decided to explore some academic courses. I am currently taking a structural human anatomy course which is fully online through the University of Alberta, which I was drawn to because I’ve been wanting to refresh my anatomy knowledge given that it’s been 10 years since I took anatomy during my undergrad (yikes!). It is definitely a high quality and content heavy course, going into greater depth than my undergrad anatomy course. The only downside is that tuition/course fees have increased, so this course is quite expensive and doesn’t earn as many professional development credits as I would like. 

Mentors Tip: If you are taking an academic course through a university for professional development credits, it’s important to know that CSEP will grant a different number of credits for a non-degree/continuing education course versus a course in pursuit of a university degree/diploma. For example, fellow YKM Mentor Christine was able to fulfill her CSEP-CPT credits through our Masters courses that we took together, win-win for her!

To wrap things up, we hope you’ve found our experiences helpful in your own journey with professional development. It may take some experimenting to find out which styles of professional development are best for you. We’ve learned from experience that professional development opportunities sometimes live up to our expectations and other times fall flat. At the end of the day, if you are taking away even one or two new things that you can apply in your practice, then that’s worth celebrating. We encourage you to keep an open mind, be ready to learn, and be excited to enhance your expertise in the field of kinesiology.

As always, if you have any further questions or comments feel free to reach out to Chantelle or myself. We’d love to hear from you!

Sincerely Your Kines Mentors,