PASS NASM 2026 W/ TUTORING & LIVE CALLS

The fastest way to fail the NASM CPT is to study like you’re trying to become a walking textbook. We take the opposite approach: pass the exam quickly, then put your energy into the hands-on coaching skills, people skills, and business confidence that actually keep trainers in the industry.

We walk through the NASM OPT model in a way that makes test questions feel predictable. You’ll hear how NASM frames periodization across stabilization, strength, and power, and exactly which acute variables you should memorize to win easy points: reps, sets, intensity, tempo, and rest intervals. We also cover muscle actions, why plyometrics bring up the amortization phase, and how ATP recovery shows up in rest-period questions. The goal is simple: recognize the pattern, pick the answer, move on.

Then we connect the certification to the career: why hands-on seminars beat endless reading, how to think about getting hired at top gyms, and why a diversified resume can be the difference between getting an interview and getting ignored. We also talk about building a support team, delivering better assessments, and charging like a professional when you can truly help people.

If you’re studying for the NASM CPT exam or you’re rebuilding momentum after stalling out, this one will help. Subscribe for more practical coaching, share this with a friend who’s stuck in the book, and leave a review so more future trainers can find the shortcut that actually works.

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Want to ask us a question?  Email info@showupfitness.com with the subject line PODCAST QUESTION to get your question answered live on the show!

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NASM / ACE / ISSA study guide: https://www.showupfitness.com

Transcript

Pass Fast With A Practical Plan

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Had it y'all, welcome back to the show of this podcast, helping you pass your NASA CPT as quickly as possible. Get through it. You do not need a textbook. Unfortunately, you came across the SUF CPT too late. Can't get a refund. So you need to pass this. The worst thing you can do is spend months reading a textbook because we are not textbook trainers. We're personal trainers. You need to learn the people skills, the business skills, the technical skills, hands-on learning. 90% of trainers quit within the first year because they don't get those skills. Get through this and level yourself up. Surround yourself with a great team so you can become a successful personal trainer. We offer bi-monthly calls. You get to ask questions. You're going to see with the PowerPoints and everything that's included in the program. You can get through this very quickly. The fastest we've had, less than three days. And that is the goal because you need hands-on supervision, asking questions and surrounding yourself in an environment where you can learn by asking questions. Pass your NASAM, get to a hands-on learning seminar, get hired at the best gyms, and you're on your way to become a successful personal

Why The Textbook Derails Most People

SPEAKER_00 1:10

trainer. Keep showing up. And so for those that need to pass NASA, we're gonna go over a deck of slides right here. There's a couple people in the women's group who was asking about a textbook. You there's obviously there's like two sides to everything, right? Some people want to dive into the book. I'm not a big fan of that because I feel when you start going through it, usually around chapters four and five, most people get pretty frustrated. And over the 10 years of helping people pass this, which just really crushes me is I've had so many stories of people will say that I just stopped studying, I quit, I gave up. And then Nassim's now calling me saying that I have to renew and pay an extra $200. And they've wasted almost a year plus. And so the textbook is like anything. If you try to learn Spanish by reading a Spanish book, you're gonna have a really, really difficult time. You need to be able to diverse, um, immerse yourself into the culture and learn and be able to ask questions. And so this is just your first step into the industry. And the more successful you're gonna be doing exactly as she was mentioning before, going to seminars, going and gaining hands-on experience. We have a partnership with Lifetime. We are the only certification that can proudly say you are guaranteed an interview. If you don't have our certification, then you'll need to gain a couple of years of experience before you can apply at the top gyms like equipment lifetime. But we do go out to their lovely hundred million dollar gyms and give seminars. And we were at Austin this last week, and I think it's just cool attestament to our product where you'll have people who are training there. They they worked at a gym for a couple of years. They say, Wow, I learned more in two days than my CES, PES, and CPT all to all together. And again, I understand where you're at. I've taught this stuff for a long time, and it's not bash and NASAM, they're an incredible uh marketing company, they do a great job of getting in front of people, and you need to pass it. So, what we tell you is what you need to know to pass it. You don't need the textbook. If you want to get it for whatever reason, that's fine. We will give reference points that we have in the study guides and so forth, but we give you what you need to pass because at the end of it, what I don't want is for you to spend you know months on months and years trying to understand this stuff. Uh, and then even worse, you were to take it and you fail, a lot of people don't even try again. And I think that's again really cool to see where if, in my view, if you don't pass something, I I would want to know why I didn't pass it and learn and how to pronunciate certain words and so forth. And then when you take a multiple choice test, that that's what happens.

OPT Model Basics And Acute Variables

SPEAKER_00 3:41

So the OPT model is a big bulk of the test. This is going to be going over the the five phases, the three parts. Can everyone see this okay? Yep. So when we hear the words periodization, periodization is breaking up a training block, and how NASA breaks their block up is into three parts. You have your bottom level, which is stabilization, the middle part, which is strength, and then you have power. Each phase, it's nice and easily um translated because you can look at this and see that okay, the bottom level is purple, middle one is pink, top one is red. Obviously, you need to step, uh start on the foundation and move your way up. So it's how they break it down. You have to stay one month in each block before you can progress into another one. And then you'll see on here phase three, this is an older one. They call that muscular development. Now it's that's the same terminology. Um, but we're gonna break through the main aspects with the acute variables. So rep sets, intensity, volume, tempo, interval, exercise, selection, order, duration, frequency. That's what you really need to know for the OPT model. So, what Manassam's gonna ask you is they're gonna say your client is performing eight reps. Which of the following phases of the OPT model will this be performed in? And you'll need to be able to give you one, they'll give you phase three, phase five, and and maybe even a random phase. And so you need to be able to recognize that that eight is going to be corresponding with the phase three of the OPT model. So we have three parts of a movement. We have concentric, isometric, and eccentric. Unless we are doing a plyometric, we will not have an isometric phase. Does anyone know what the phase for an ice for the plyometric would be called instead of isometric? So you have eccentric, blank, and then concentric. It's definitely a test question that you could see that's referred to as the amortization phase. It's a quick transition between eccentric to concentric. So if I'm doing a jump properly, I'm going to load my arms behind the body. That very quick transaction, the transition between eccentric to concentric is called amortization. Whereas within the muscle actions, we have concentric, which is the shortening. Think of doing a bicep curl, you are overcoming gravity. When the weight comes down, the weight is going towards the earth. It's going with gravity. That's the easier portion. That is called eccentric. Any type of holding, such as a prone isoab or a wall sit, that's going to be an isometric contraction. And together those will add up to be what's called your time under tension. So for the phases of the OPT model, the stabilization, the foundation, we're going to have 12 to 20 reps, six to 12 for phase three, one to five for maximal strength, and power will be one to 10. And these all have a corresponding intensity, which we should know. So when we look at the sets, three to six for power, 46 for maximal strength, three to five for hypertrophy, and one to three for endurance. They're not going to give you four similar answers. They're not going to say how many sets are in stabilization, one, two, three, or four. It's going to be very obvious. It's be two, four, eight, and twelve. So just being able to flashcard these is helpful. I'm really big in just flashcarding and memorizing because it's just going to make your time when you take the test a lot easier. So with that one to 10 in the power range, that corresponds with 30 to 45% of your one rep max or 10% body weight. For the endurance, 12 to 20 reps is 50 to 70%. Hypertrophy is 6 to 12 or 75 to 85. And max strength is one to five reps or 85 to 100%. What that means is if I put a load on that's 85%, that means I can only do it five times. That's volitional fatigue. That means I cannot do more than that. So if you are truly lifting a weight five times, you will be getting optimal fast twitch muscle fiber recruitment. Those are the big powerful ones. We see the type two muscles when we do things explosively, but also really, really heavy. We want to start out with light weights in the beginning because that's going to strengthen our connective tissue. And the main ones we need to be concerned about will be our tendons and ligaments

Tempo Rest And ATP Test Traps

SPEAKER_00 7:50

because they're avascular. So yeah, for the endurance aspect and stabilization, we do a certain tempo, which we'll see on this next one, because it's going to help stress that connective tissue, which is avascular, and it's going to help prevent injuries in the future. So a 4211 tempo, what that would mean is if I have a if I'm doing a goblet squat or NASA and loves to do a stupid stability ball squawk girl press, if you're going to be doing that, you're going to come four seconds down, you pause for two, you come up for one, you pause for one. My only piece of advice is to never ever cant that out for your clients because they will consider you annoying and a rep counter. When I do this, I just control it. If you're doing a push-up, control it on the way down. If you're doing a squat, control it on the way down. I don't want to see rapid acceleration when we should be controlled. And what I mean by that is if I were to have someone sit down really, really slow, I'm standing up right now. If I come down slow and I just fall, that lack of eccentric control could potentially produce an injury in the future. So we want to choose an appropriate load where you can control it down for the eccentric aspect and then have a nice transition from isometric into concentric. Again, concentric is when the muscle shortens. That's when we produce the maximal amount of force. Think of a baseball player. You throw the ball that's producing maximal concentric acceleration. Rest intervals, you can see a question about ATP, which I'll show you here in a second. But generally speaking, endurance zero to 90 seconds for phase one, hypertrophy, zero to 60 seconds for phase three. That's why it's important to keep up to date with the current literature because that is extremely outdated. If you want to maximize hypertrophy, you'd want to be resting closer to two or three minutes. But again, put your NASAM hat on and choose the answers that they want for the exam. They're going to ask your client wants to get stronger. How many reps would you recommend for them? Sorry, how long would you recommend the rest periods to be? Zero to 90 seconds, one minute, two minutes, or four minutes plus. And if we want strength, it's going to be three to five minutes. That's going to optimize muscle ATP replenishment. Good. Another flashcard to have on here, three minutes for approximately 100% recovery. 60 seconds will get you about 90%, 40 seconds, 75. They're only going to ask you 20 to 30 seconds and/or three minutes. ATP is what is the cell currency. And when we do work, we break down that ATP molecule and produce ADP. They don't get into the physiology or bioenergetics of this. I'm just giving you a little cherry on top, but you produce this molecule called ADP, adenosin diaphosphate, which can reproduce more ATP because of creatin phosphate. And we're all familiar with creatin phosphate and the benefits of creatin monohydrate, the single most studied supplement in the world that everyone should pretty much be taking because it allows for more work to be done. So looking at, I'm going to skip over some of those, just looking at frequency and so forth, not that important. So when you see things that are unstable, that's always going to be stabilization. And what I mean by that is a stability ball, a BOSU ball. Anytime you see 12 plus reps, anytime you see a 4, 2, 1, 1 tempo, it's always going to be in phase one. When you get into the strength portion, so phases two, three, and four, think of it as most of the bro lifts, as I call them. When we go to the gym, if we're doing straight sets, like most of us are probably doing, you're going to be doing a bench press, a squat, a deadlift, a military press. Those are all going to be strength-focused exercises. And then anything that's going to be explosive and/or dynamic, if we take a ball and throw it as hard as we can, or some type of lateral change of base of support with explosiveness, that's going to be phase five. Let's take a look at some of the exercise selections here. Again, I was saying single leg step up curl, balance. Those will all be words that will cue stabilization. If you're doing something that you're stable, and that's going to be phases two, three, and four. When you have a throw or some type of pass, that's always going to be power. Here are some examples of the progressions

Exercise Selection And Periodization Shortcuts

SPEAKER_00 12:05

with the floor to a BOSU ball being the most unstable versus upper body two arm alternating, single arm, single arm trunk rotation. Again, also just good, good um flashcard tab on these because they'll definitely ask you what would be the most optimal regression for a client who began a half foam roll exercise. So knowing it would be a sport beam or floor versus a progression. Think of regression, you're regressing to make it easier. Progression, you're making it more challenging. Breaking down the phases, macro, big picture, that's gonna be typically based off of a Olympic period. So every four years, where every month would be a mesocycle mess in Spanish is month, whereas a micro machine is very, very small, that's gonna be a weekly plan. NASA based everything off of linear periodization. So what that means is the whole week you stayed the same. Three sets of 15 that whole week. The next week you would then progress. So if you're doing three sets of 15, next week you would increase the weight and do three sets of 12. That's referred to as linear periodization. The more optimal form of programming and periodization would be referred to as dup, daily undulating periodization. And that's how we program within the CCA at show up. So you would take an exercise optimized force production. Say you're doing three by 12. Well, then as you go down in the programming, you would make it lighter. So each day you are undulating the load that you are putting on the system. Just for stabilization, anytime you see these words, always choose stabilization. Correcting muscular imbalances, improving stabilization, improving uh patterns and so forth, always going to be stabilization. Proporoceptive enriched environment, always choose stabilization. It's funny because when people just 100% buy into the guide or the cause and what we're saying, we've had people pass the test in less than 20 minutes because the exam is very, very simple in the sense it's saying things like your client is performing a stability level squat pearl curl press in this proprioceptive enriched environment, which phased the OPT model. A lot of people can interpret that as, oh my God, there's so much information. But it's just you just take that word, proprioceptive enriched environment, and you choose stabilization, move

Overactive Underactive Muscle Cheat Codes

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on to the next one. And it's the same with the overactive and underactive muscles. Someone shot me a message on YouTube about they're confused about the overactive and underactive. And you just need to memorize the chart that we have. So if something is overactive, the antagonist is going to typically be underactive. So let's take a look at the shoulder joint. The anterior deltoid is going to be overactive, the posterior deltoid will be underactive. The pectoralis major is going to be overactive, the mid-back, the rhomboids major and minor, as well as the middle and lower trapezius, will be underactive. This muscle right here is you're called your sternocleomastoid, that is an overactive muscle. The uh deep muscles, the deep cervical flexors, would be underactive. When we look at the knee on the medial side, the vastus medialis or the teardrop is going to be underactive, or on the lateral side, that's going to be overactive. At the hip, we have the psoas major iliacus, ileal psoas used interchangeably. Those flexors are overactive, and then the opposite ones, which will be your glutes, will be underactive. I always like to make a joke: if we don't foam roll and stretch, you're going to die. You have to do that for a 20 to 40 second duration. And then you're going to strengthen the antagonist with that 4-2-1-1 tempo. So your clients performing the overhead squat assessment. Don't do it, but that's what you have to do for the exam. And your lats are overactive, foam roll stretch, 20 to 40 seconds. And then you're going to strengthen the mid-back with a 4-2-1-1 tempo, such as a single leg scaption, which is going to be strengthening those upward rotators and the mid-back for that compensation. Your clients performing the overhead squat assessment, and you notice that their heels come off the ground. Which muscles would be overactive? The gastroc and the soleus, form roll, and stretch, 20 to 40 seconds. And then you're going to do some antib walks to strengthen the anterior TBLs because those are always underactive. We have a list, pretty much memorize the top five, overactive, underactive. They're not going to get fancy and throwing curveballs at you. It's pretty simple. If you can just recognize the compensation, the overactive muscle, and what you would do for that. And really the main ones for the OPT model, stabilization has the most uh aspects to it. After that, uh phase two, super easy. So this is what you need to memorize these um this work right here, 12 to 20, one to three sets, four, two, one, one tempo, 50 to 70 percent, zero to 90 seconds. That's all you need to memorize, and just know the exercises such as prone isoab, which is a plank, doing a stability uh plyo. So you're holding for three to five seconds. That's always going to be stabilization. So we move into strength. The next one's gonna be two in phase two, super easy, just to superset, stable into unstable. That's all you need to know. Bench press into a stability ball push-up, a military press into single leg scaption, back squat into a step-up curl press, a pull-up into a TRX row. That's all they're going to ask that. You don't need to know anything else about that. For phase three, we need to know six to 12 reps for hypertrophy, three to five sets, two zero, two zero tempo, and then that's 75 to 85 percent intensity with zero to 60 seconds of rest. Phase four is gonna get the optimization of motor unit recruitment. And that sounds fancy, but it's just basically saying that the load is heavy enough to get full uh firing rate from your type two and type one muscle fibers. Type two or larger, type one or smaller, more muscular endurance for type one. So with strength, you're gonna be one to five reps, four to six sets, a tempo of XXXX, 85% of intensity, 35 minutes of rest. And then the last one with power, this is what's called PAP training, post-activation potentiation. You do something that is heavy into something that's explosive, or vice versa. So you do a heavy back squat into a jump or a jump into a heavy back squat. You'd still use those acute variables for strength, one to five reps, and then one to ten reps for the power aspect. Power is defined as force times velocity. So you're looking at optimization of power for type two recruitment would be 30 to 45% or that 10% of body weight. You may have a little bit of a rest, but they're not going to get uh nitty-gritty on that one. It's just know that it's a superset with power, where phase two is a superset with stability. That's all you need to know in those differences. So I think with the OPT model, we we can make it a lot more complex than it is. But if you just literally memorize these acute variables, again, if you don't have the book, that's fine. You could just probably even type into chat. There's numerous charts that are out there. I'm always a little cautious of like apps like Quizlet and also taking the NASM test. And this is just my opinion. You gotta think of this as like, you know, I've been doing this for 20 plus years,

Career Steps Pricing And Resume Edge

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gym owner, teacher of trainers, author of a book. And it's like if you're in college and you you're taking a class like polypsy and you're like, okay, I just got to pass this class. I'm the teacher's aid. I'm gonna tell you exactly how to pass it. That's all you care. And you're coming to me saying, I just need to pass this, Chris. That's my goal. If you go to the professor, if you go to NASA, if you go to their website, if you go to other YouTubes, they're gonna try to teach you the entire thing. As a trainer, we're not textbook trainers. We need to learn the practical side, the technical side. You need to build that confidence to be able to assess people, but most importantly, turn this into a business. And that business part is asking for 100, 150. Let's show up here. We charge 200 to 350 per session. Having the confidence to take a client through an assessment, help them feel better, deliver a great product, and sit them down and get them to sign up with you. So we're really big into getting RDs on your team, physical therapists on your team. I'm excited for everyone because this is the first step of your journey, and your journey is going to be super successful, lucrative if you choose to make it that way. But most importantly you'll be able to help a ton of people. So get through it. We have tons of free podcasts. I've done podcasts with hundreds of people from Lifetime, Equinox, ones that we will classify as successful. And so if you need to get a job at a specific gym, we can help you with your resume, the application process, the interviews. And I just did one recently with a manager at Lifetime in Canada. We were up there about two months ago. And he said the one thing that he looks for on a resume is diversification. So if you got your NASAM, great, that's cool. Get another certification to put on there because you could come across a manager who's biased towards one way. And so that one biase may not get you into that next interview. So having a diversified resume, doing something like animal flow, doing weekend workshops, learning about uh FMS, doing our soft tissue certification that we offer, our CPT, which is for life, it's just showcase that you are really interested in continually learning. A lot of trainers are just going to pack up the resume with a bundle of whether if it's ISSA, you got your CPT, the corrective exercise, nutrition, showing diversity means that you're open minded to critical thought and to learning about all the different camps that are out there. Are there certain areas or frustrations that we're currently experiencing with our process of passing this test?