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Continuing Education Credits for Fitness and Rehab Pros

Approved continuing education credits for personal trainers, physical therapists, athletic trainers, chiropractors, massage therapists, and OTs. Every approval, by country.

Brent Brookbush

Brent Brookbush

DPT, PT, MS, BS, CPT, HMS, SPC, IMT

100s of Pre-approved Online Continuing Education Courses for Personal Trainers, Physical Therapists, Athletic Trainers, Massage Therapists, Chiropractors, Occupational Therapists, and Group Exercise Instructors.,

Continuing Education Credits: Every Approval the Brookbush Institute Holds (2026)

We think about continuing education credit approval, so you don't have to.

by Dr. Brent Brookbush DPT, PT, MS, CPT, HMS, IMT

Updated October 2026.

Quick Answer

The Brookbush Institute is an approved provider of continuing education for personal trainers, group fitness instructors, yoga teachers, physical therapists and physical therapist assistants, athletic trainers, chiropractors, massage therapists, and occupational therapists, with approvals in the United States, Canada, and Australia and portfolio-ready certificates for professionals in the United Kingdom. We hold more than 20 approvals. Every course you complete generates a certificate in your dashboard with the approval logos and course numbers your profession requires, and every course counts toward both continuing education and our certifications at the same time. The full directory, by profession and country, is below.

How Credits Work at the Brookbush Institute

  • One membership covers everything. Membership is $29.99/month or $299/year and includes every course, every certificate, and every approval listed here. You can start, stop, or change courses at any time.
  • Short courses, full credit. Each course is 1 to 4 hours long, and we apply for as many credits per course as each approval allows (generally 1 credit per hour). You do not need to finish a certification to earn credit for a course.
  • A certificate for every course. Your dashboard generates a continuing-education certificate the moment you complete a course. The approvals printed on it match your profession.
  • Credits count twice. Every course you complete earns continuing education credit and earns credit toward the Advanced BI-CPT Certificate and our advanced certifications. No double billing and no double work.
  • Which courses carry which approvals. The number of approved courses differs by approval body. Each course page lists the approvals that course carries, so you can check before you start.

Above is an example of the certificate generated for every course you complete. This certificate was issued to a fitness and clinical professional for Deadlift Progressions. The course also counts toward the Advanced BI-CPT Certificate. The approvals on your certificate are auto-populated to match your profession.

Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) Certification

The Brookbush Institute offers two personal trainer credentials. The Advanced BI-CPT Certificate is our education-based credential, included in membership and earned by completing the courses in the curriculum. The Brookbush Institute Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) Certification Program was granted accreditation by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA) on September 22, 2026, for demonstrating compliance with the NCCA Standards for the Accreditation of Certification Programs. The accreditation applies to the CPT Certification examination . The exam is open to anyone. No Brookbush Institute course or membership is required to sit for it, and the exam fee is separate from membership.

For what accreditation does and does not cover, read What Is an Accredited Personal Trainer Certification?

Does Passing the NCCA-Accredited CPT Exam Count for Continuing Education?

Sometimes. Each organization sets its own rule, and we checked them in October 2026.

  • NSCA: yes, by rule. NSCA-certified professionals earn 2.0 CEUs (Category C) for passing a certification exam offered by a fitness, sport, or exercise nutrition organization that is currently NCCA-accredited. A copy of the certificate is required if audited, and the CEUs are awarded for the original certification only. See Earn NSCA CEUs through Additional Certifications and the NSCA CEU categories .
  • NASM and AFAA: by petition. The NASM-AFAA Recertification Handbook awards CEUs for "other approved certifications" as determined by NASM, and courses or credentials outside the approved-provider program go through the petition process ($25 per petition). See NASM recertification and renewal .
  • ACE: by petition. ACE accepts education that is not ACE-approved through its petition process. See ACE recertification .
  • ISSA: by submission. ISSA members submit certificates to ISSA for review. See ISSA certification renewal .
  • ACSM: no. ACSM states that certifications earned from other organizations cannot be applied toward ACSM recertification. See the ACSM recertification FAQs .
  • BOC: no. The BOC awards CEUs for continuing education programs measured in contact hours, not for passing a certification exam. Our BOC-approved courses are the route for athletic trainers.

If your organization is not listed, send us its continuing education policy through Support and we will add it here.

NCCA-accredited CPT Exam - Brookbush Institute
Caption: NCCA-accredited CPT Exam - Brookbush Institute

Directory of Approvals by Profession and Country

Certified Personal Trainers (CPT) and Registered Exercise Professionals (REP)

Our page for personal trainers: Continuing Education for Personal Trainers .

United States and international brands

Canada

  • canfitpro : approved provider of professional contact hours. 1 credit = 1.5 to 2.0 contact hours, with a maximum of 4.0 contact hours per course.

Australia

Yoga

United States

  • Yoga Alliance : approved to offer non-contact hours in anatomy and physiology. 1 credit = 1 non-contact hour.

Group Exercise

United States

Chiropractors (DC)

Our page for chiropractors, with the state coverage map: PACE-Approved Online Continuing Education for Chiropractors .

United States

  • PACE (Providers of Approved Continuing Education) , the program of the Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards (FCLB): the Brookbush Institute is a PACE-recognized provider. Whether your state accepts PACE-approved courses depends on your state board. Check the coverage map on our chiropractors page before your renewal period. 1 credit = 1 continuing education hour.

Canada

  • Nova Scotia: accepts PACE-approved courses (see United States, above).
  • Saskatchewan: the Brookbush Institute is approved by the Chiropractors' Association of Saskatchewan.
  • Other provinces, except New Brunswick, Alberta, and Quebec: no pre-approval is required. Chiropractors keep records of their continuing professional development and take courses that meet their needs. Proof of approval in other countries can support a portfolio, and every completed course generates a certificate for yours. 1 credit = 1 contact hour.

United Kingdom and Australia

  • No pre-approval is required. The General Chiropractic Council (United Kingdom) and the Chiropractic Board of Australia require chiropractors to keep records of their continuing professional development and to take courses that meet their individual needs. Every completed course generates a certificate for your portfolio. 1 credit = 1 contact hour.

Physical Therapists (PT), Physiotherapists, and Physical Therapist Assistants (PTA)

Our state-by-state guide: PT and PTA State by State Course Approval and Credit Requirements .

United States

  • Pre-approved in 45 states and accepted in all 50: the Brookbush Institute is approved to offer continuing competence units (CCUs) to licensed physical therapists and physical therapist assistants in 45 states. The 5 remaining states accept courses by petition, so if you are audited in one of those states, contact us and we will supply what the board asks for. The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) does not approve continuing education and has no role in reporting CCUs; state licensing boards approve courses, and several delegate the review to APTA state chapters. See the United States Physical Therapy Coverage Map for your state. 1 credit = 1 CCU.

Australia

  • No pre-approval is required. The Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) expects practicing physiotherapists to complete at least 20 hours of continuing professional development each year. Every completed course generates a certificate for your portfolio. 1 credit = 1 contact hour.

Canada and the United Kingdom

  • No pre-approval is required. The Canadian Physiotherapy Association and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy expect physiotherapists to complete courses that contribute to their professional development and to keep records of them. No organization pre-approves courses in either country. Every completed course generates a certificate for your portfolio. 1 credit = 1 contact hour.

Certified Athletic Trainers (ATC)

United States

  • Board of Certification (BOC) : the Brookbush Institute is a BOC Approved Provider (P10038) of Category A continuing education. Our courses are listed in the BOC Activity Directory under Brookbush Institute of Human Movement Science. Our BOC-approved courses are enough to keep your certification current for life. The BOC discontinued its separate evidence-based-practice credit requirement in 2022, so the credits offered here fulfill the full requirement. 1 credit = 1 continuing education unit.

Canada

United Kingdom

  • No pre-approval is required. Members of the Society of Sports Therapists are responsible for choosing continuing education within their scope and insurance. By the Society's published criteria, Brookbush Institute courses fall under short courses, workshops, and seminars relevant to sports therapy. Every completed course generates a certificate for your portfolio. 1 credit = 1 contact hour.

Massage Therapists (LMT, RMT)

Our page for massage therapists: Continuing Education for Massage Therapists .

United States

Australia

  • Five organizations govern continuing education for massage therapists in Australia. Applicable courses are approved by Massage Association Australia (MAA). The Association of Massage Therapists Australia (AMT) does not pre-approve courses; its members complete and record 20 hours of relevant continuing education each year. The Australian Traditional-Medicine Society (ATMS) does not pre-approve courses; its members accrue 1 point per hour for a short course with a certificate and a 100-word summary of how it applies to their modality. Every completed course generates a certificate for your records. 1 credit = 1 CPE (1 contact hour).

Canada

  • Applicable courses are approved by the Massage Therapist Association of Saskatchewan. New Brunswick, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia have no organization that pre-approves courses. Ontario and Newfoundland do not pre-approve courses either; massage therapists there complete relevant continuing education and report it through their college's program (STRiVE in Ontario). Quebec has no continuing education requirement. Our courses are not approved in Alberta or Manitoba. 1 credit = 1 CPE (1 contact hour).

Occupational Therapists (OT)

Our page for occupational therapists: AOTA-Approved Continuing Education for Occupational Therapists .

United States

  • American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) : the Brookbush Institute is an AOTA Approved Provider (00463) of professional development. Each approved course remains approved through its individual approval date, which is listed on the course page. 1 credit = 1 professional development hour.

Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia

Health and Wellness Coaches

United States

  • National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching (NBHWC) : NBC-HWCs may petition for coursework that NBHWC has not approved. The petition must show that the course content is entirely within the NBHWC scope of practice and that it advances the professional practice of health and wellness coaching. Every completed course generates a certificate to attach to a petition. 1 credit = 1 contact hour.
List of Approvals
Caption: List of Approvals

Suggestions and Questions

Approval is complicated, and we believe in total transparency. If you have a suggestion for an approval or a country we should add, or a question about whether a course counts for your license or certification, send it to our approval manager through the Support link in the top bar (the menu icon on mobile) or at Contact Us .

Why Is Continuing Education Approval So Confusing?

We wish it were simple. Continuing education approval is a patchwork of regulations, licensing boards, professional associations, and certification companies, and many professions and countries have no single body that approves courses. The result is that most professionals are unsure which approvals matter, which organization approves the credits they need, and what an approval says about a course. Most of our colleagues just want high-quality education on health science, clinical practice, sports performance, and patient care, and the approval system makes that harder than it should be. A few examples:

  • Physical therapists in the United States. The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) does not approve continuing education. State licensing boards do, and several delegate the review to APTA state chapters, so a provider applies state by state.
  • Massage therapists in the United States. Licensing is state by state, but approval of continuing education is national, through the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB).
  • Athletic trainers. Approval is national, through the Board of Certification (BOC), which requires credits in defined categories. A separate evidence-based-practice credit category was added and then discontinued in 2022.
  • Chiropractors in the United States. Course approval runs through PACE, the program of the Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards, but each state board decides whether to accept PACE-approved courses, so a chiropractor has to check both.
  • Personal trainers in the United States. A course provider applies, and pays, separately to each certification organization, and sometimes separately for each certification and for live versus online delivery. Approval by one organization does not carry to the group fitness certification that the same company owns, and approval for a personal trainer certification does not carry to a strength and conditioning certification from another organization.

Only a few education companies have had reason to learn this system. Employers call us to ask how it works, because they need to know that their hiring decisions fall within their liability insurance, and they cannot find a place to start. A professional trying to find out whether a course is approved for their license has even less to go on.

What Good Approval Looks Like

Not every approval body is the same, and the good ones do far more than collect a fee. When approval is done well, it enforces a minimum standard of education quality. Some approvals require little more than a course title and a fee. Others are demanding: the American Occupational Therapy Association expects research demonstrating effects on functional outcomes for any course that teaches an assessment or intervention, the Physical Therapy Board of California sets detailed standards for instructional design, and the Board of Certification for athletic trainers expects documented processes for continuous evaluation and improvement. Those are the approvals that do what approval is supposed to do.

Holding more than 20 approvals means meeting all of those standards at once, because each body has its own focus. We find the paperwork tedious for one reason: our content standards are higher than any single approval requires, so the work is documentation rather than rewriting. A company without those standards would have to rewrite its curriculum before it could complain about the paperwork. The closest comparison is a research study submitted to the peer review of several journals at once.

How We Fix It for Our Colleagues

The only solution we know of is to build the approval portfolio ourselves. We research which approvals each profession and country requires, we acquire as many as we can so that our colleagues are covered, and we generate certificates that meet each body's documentation rules. We keep adding approvals, we adjust certificates when a body changes its requirements, and we take suggestions for new approvals and countries. Every course counts toward continuing education and certification at the same time, every course is 1 to 4 hours long, and every completed course produces its certificate immediately. With more than 200 courses in one membership, you can take what you want, when you want, and you have enough credits to stay licensed or certified for your whole career.

Additional Resources on Certification and Accreditation

© 2026 Brent Brookbush (B2C Fitness, LLC d.b.a. Brookbush Institute )

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