Last Updated on August 14, 2024 by Sarah Leeves

In this blog, our CEO Gill-Cummings Bell deep dives into professional recognition for group exercise instructors like you.

Key takeaways

  • Professional recognition is good news for instructors – it’s a way to showcase your skills and expertise to employers.
  • Getting professional recognition from your national governing body for group exercise (EMD UK) is an acknowledgement of your skills and experience or qualifications and experience.
  • Scope of practice will recognise the skills you have for your role and increase your employability prospects.

What is Professional Recognition?

Professional Recognition is a title or award granted by professional bodies in the UK. It provides acknowledgement of your skills, qualifications, knowledge and experience as a professional working in your chosen sector.

EMD UK are the only recognised national governing body (NGB) for group exercise in the UK, funded and mandated to act on behalf of the group exercise workforce. No other organisation in the UK is recognised in this way and publicly funded. EMD UK is your professional body, and the only organisation with regulation responsibilities for the group exercise teacher and who can give you this Professional Recognition.

A group exercise instructor, as recognised by your NGB, is an instructor/teacher/coach of a structured exercise class of 6 or more people. There are over hundreds of different genres of exercise which are structured classes on timetables across the country.

Being Professionally Recognised helps you the teacher match your skills, qualifications and experience to what you are able to teach. This gives you your professional stamp to teach. It celebrates and defines you.

What is a Scope of Practice?

The skills, knowledge, experience and qualifications of a teacher in the group exercise sector is currently identified through two varied professional standards:

  • One set of professional standards is for Group exercise
  • The second is for Mat Pilates.

Given that there are many  different genres of group exercise alone and many more Pilates or yoga group classes, it is impossible to define what a teacher can teach from the professional standards alone.

The professional standards are owned by the sector and under the guardianship of CIMSPA. For many years now they have been left to drift and are now not fit for purpose. 80% of current group exercise, Pilates teachers or Yoga teachers could not gain recognition against the professional standards.

Why? The real answer is they do not identify the technical and tactical skill pathways of all the different styles/genres/modes or schools of group exercise classes being taught. This is why EMD UK as the NGB regulator of technical and tactical work in the group exercise give you Professional Recognition against your ‘Scope of Practice’.

As a group exercise teacher, it is you who is responsible for ensuring you have sufficient skills, experience or qualifications to teach what and who you teach. This is ‘working within your scope’. I am sure you have been there asking your insurance company, your employer, or your colleagues ‘am I able to teach xyz with my current qualifications’. Your insurance company will generally answer ‘if you are trained and qualified to do so’? Insurance companies expect you to work within the scope of what you have been trained and have the skills to do. So do your public, and of course I know you do.

EMD UK have identified the technical skills, experience, knowledge and qualifications that you need for your scopes of practice. EMD UK currently have created different scopes of practice including:

  • Group Training
  • Pilates
  • Circuits
  • Aqua
  • Yoga
  • And many more.

These already cover a substantial number of the varied styles/genres/disciplines of group exercise that you teach.  As more scopes unfold you will be able to identify what you are able to teach easily, and work within your scope or grow your scope.

Add the two together and you have Professional Recognition. You can be recognised professionally against one or several scopes of practice. You are Professionally Recognised for what you do within your pathway of teaching.

Why does this matter to a group exercise instructor?

There are some important things to consider as a teacher.

Firstly, do you want to gain Professional Recognition for what you are able to teach. If the answer to that question is YES, you can only gain Professional Recognition from your NGB as they are the only organisation able to identify your technical and tactical scope of practice.

To be a Professionally Recognised group exercise instructor, you must join EMD UK as a PRO member.

The benefits of professional recognition

Firstly, you can let all your class members know what you are able to teach and use this professional stamp across all of your marketing and materials. This is a big plus for identifying and defining yourself. For instance, do you teach Pilates method, Pilates Reformer, or Pilates in a fitness context? Defining what you are professionally recognised to do helps your public understand what they will get from you. This keeps them safe and in the right class at the right time.

It also protects you as the teacher. If you know what your scope is and someone asks you to do something that you feel you are not able to do because you have not gained the correct skills, experience or training you can say no “I would be out of scope”. This protects you as the teacher and your participants.

You can grow your Professional Recognition to take on board more scopes of practice as you become more experienced, more knowledgeable and more skilled.

Why does it matter to an employer?

A lot of employer’s work under the misapprehension that if an employee can evidence a membership number from varied organisations (i.e., not the NGB) that they must be able to teach anything in the studio. This is not the case. The only organisation that can offer Professional Recognition for a clearly identified scope of practice for a group exercise teacher is the NGB, EMD UK.

It is important as an employer to know that as we deploy staff they are well qualified, trained and skilled in that  area of work. Previously some employers have made it obligatory that members of the teaching team become a member of various organisations.

It is important that all employers recognise that their group exercise workforce can only gain Professional Recognition from their NGB against a scope of practice. This protects the employer and ensures that all staff are skilled and qualified to be deployed to teach specific classes and working within scope. If an employer requires obligatory membership of any organisation at all, that organisation should only be the NGB, EMD UK, for all their group exercise team.

EMD UK support teachers both individually and across operators with hundreds of professional resources that help the workforce increase their scope of practice and support the workforce at work.

If an employer does not require any Professional Recognised membership from the NGB, they risk having instructors work beyond their scope, endangering members and increasing liability. Additionally, they prevent their group exercise teachers from receiving proper support and resources from their NGB. If an employer mandates a membership number from a group exercise teacher, it should always be the NGB number as this defines the scope in which a teacher can be deployed. It also protects the employer and the teacher.

Professional Recognition is a must!

Does this matter? Yes, it does. As well as the individual advantages outlined above for both the teacher and the employer, we are moving towards a more regulated environment, whether this is something we desire or not.

We work under more pressured circumstances than we ever have before and in a more litigious society. We have more vulnerable adults and children under our care and more safeguarding issues to challenge us. This is the reason we are being mandated, by government, to move towards a more regulated environment.

Our workforce must be supported, celebrated and have the right touch regulation. Sport England have initiated the Governance and Registration Scheme Project. This is part of a wider blueprint of Sport England’s ‘Uniting the Movement’ Strategy. It is a strategy where all teachers and coaches will be able to be identified, celebrated and regulated as teachers and coaches of their sport and physical activity. This project has currently completed its discovery phase and is now moving to a pilot phase.

Whilst the end result maybe a couple of years away it is coming. It is important to be ready and to be able to meet your registration requirements through being Professionally Recognised for your scope of practice. Being Professionally Recognised by your NGB prepares you to be part of the future.

Ready to become a PRO member with your national governing body? Get professional recognition here.