International exercise professionals confederation expands in North America

The International Confederation of Registers for Exercise Professionals (ICREPs) has recently admitted its first North American member, Canada's National Fitness Leadership Alliance (NFLA).

The NFLA represents over 10,000 exercise professionals throughout Canada, and joins the already registered 50,000+ exercise professionals globally.

Created and driven by Australian and New Zealand exercise professionals, ICREPs is a membership based organisation and has members in four continents, who collectively register over 60,000 individual exercise professionals.

Consituent members are Fitness Australia, REPs Ireland, the New Zealand Register of Exercise Professionals (NZREPs), REPs South Africa, REPs United Kingdom and, now, the NFLA.

Welcoming NFLA to ICREPs, ICREPs Chair Richard Beddie explains "we are extremely pleased to be able to welcome NFLA to ICREPs as a full member, as the need for independent registration bodies for exercise professionals is growing all the time.

"Having the NFLA recognised by ICREPs as the registration body for Canada is an important step in helping improve the global recognition of exercise professionals to and from Canada."

While there are many training providers that operate accreditation systems in Canada and internationally, an important element for ICREPs recognition and membership, is that the register operates independently of any training providers.

Here Beddie explains "having Canada on board is extremely timely, as there are many organisations in North America, as well as several others spread around the globe, that are at various stages of developing their own independent national registers."

In respect of New Zealand, Christchurch-based Beddie adds "having Canada join our confederation is a great step forward in increasing the portability of exercise professionals globally. This is particularly important for those who undertake training in New Zealand, as so many kiwis love to travel early in their career."

NZREPs Registrar Stephen Gacsal also explains "we already have portability agreements in place with our most common overseas destinations - Australia, UK and Ireland - and adding Canada into our group adds yet another benefit of being registered with REPs in New Zealand."

All ICREPs members operate independent registration systems for exercise/fitness professionals, who must keep up to date with industry learning, and are bound by an industry code.

For further information visit www.icreps.org