REPS SA

This week I met with Scott Schreuder, CEO of REPS SA.  REPS SA is South Africa’s arm of the Register of Exercise Professionals.  The Registers are well established in the Australia, Europe, UK and New Zealand, and you cannot work in the fitness profession in these countries, unless you are registered with REPS.  To be recognised by REPS, you have to hold a certificate from an accredited institution and you also need a valid CPR and First Aid certificate.  In some countries, applicants need professional indemnity insurance which they organise themselves and others may be able to access this insurance through their REPS body.  I see that FitSure is taking up the professional indemnity insurance for SA.

One of the things I wanted to tell you in this blog is about a development that occurred at the IHRSA convention in Milan last year.  All international representatives of REPS agreed to map their standards so that they could establish minimum professional standards internationally.  I am currently working with REPS SA to help identify which standards in SA map to the standards in the other countries.  Once this mapping is done, we really will have an international body representing the fitness profession.  Scott Schreuder tells me that REPS is making inroads into the profession in the USA as well.  Despite its incredible input to the fitness industry and its well respected contribution to sport science, the USA does not have one autonomous body that represents the industry as a whole.  This is not to say that there are not some great organisations, it is just that they lack autonomy.

I hear that REPS SA has had a really good uptake of membership; reaching almost two thousand members now.  Let’s hope that this membership continues to grow.  If there is a professional register then we have a profession.  A professional register gives the profession representation and it gives the profession status.  We support it fully at eta and because we do, we give our graduates a year’s membership once they have gone through their graduation ceremony. 

Linda Halliday

You can find out about REPS SA on www.repssa.com

You can find out about professional insurance on www.fitsure.co.za

The latest IDEA Fitness Journal cites some interesting research published recently in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine by O’Connor, Herring, & Carvalho (2010).  The researchers wrote on the mental health benefits of strength training in adults.  If you have a chance, get the IDEA January 2012 edition.  It has such valuable articles backed up by current research.  For example, these researchers I just mentioned cite seven randomised controlled studies that show resistance training improves several aspects of cognition in healthy older adults; one profound effect being improved memory.  Another benefit is improved executive function – this has nothing to do with your boss – but it has a lot to do with the control centre of your brain!  Improved executive function in the brain (the “command-and-control” function of cognition) is linked to resistance training (Anderson-Hanley, Nimon & Western, 2010) as well as cardiovascular exercise (Colombe & Framer, 2003).  Perhaps this is why eta students do well while they study with us – they exercise hard so they get smarter!
Linda Halliday

Gary Taubes wrote his ground-breaking book "The Diet Delusion".  I am currently reading this amazing expose and I love what is revealed through the Meta studies that Taubes discusses in his work.  I am ploughing through the book and exhausted by the lengths Taubes goes to with the science but I love what I am reading.  In fact, I met Tim Noakes recently when we were on a bus to OR Tambo Airport - he felt that Gary Taubes deserved the Nobel Prize for science - I see what Tim means now!

Linda Halliday