National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), the global leader in fitness certifications, today announced the premiere of “This Is Our Court,” an original docuseries profiling fitness and wellness professionals who are building careers outside the traditional personal-training mold.
Fitness is one of the fastest-growing career fields in the country. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of fitness trainers and instructors to grow 12% between 2024 and 2034, far outpacing the average for all occupations, with roughly 74,200 openings expected each year. As that growth accelerates, the profession itself keeps expanding into new territory: longevity, recovery, wellness, performance, and now spaces like esports that would have seemed unrelated a decade ago. “This Is Our Court” is NASM’s latest effort to showcase the people at the forefront of that evolution, certified professionals proving there’s no single path to a meaningful career in fitness.
The inaugural episode profiles Ricco Phinisee, an NASM Certified Personal Trainer trained in both fitness and gaming from age five, who now works as a head fitness trainer for a professional esports team competing in global digital sports leagues.
“The fitness industry doesn’t look like it did even five years ago, and it won’t look the same five years from now,” said Cynthia Flores, Creative Director at NASM. “Ricco’s story is a perfect example of that. He’s building something at the intersection of two worlds that most people never would have connected on their own. We wanted to tell stories like his because they show what’s actually possible with credentials. It was never meant to be one-size-fits-all.”
“When I got certified, the job I have now did not exist,” said Ricco Phinisee, NASM Certified Personal Trainer. “NASM taught me the science, and that science turned out to apply just as much to an athlete sitting in a gaming chair as one on a court. The credential is what let me walk into a room nobody had walked into before and be taken seriously.”
Episode one of “This Is Our Court” is available now on NASM’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbS-UO8ejVs
NASM® is a global leader in evidence-based learning and certifications for fitness and wellness professionals. Building on over 35 years of expertise, NASM programs create a roadmap for fitness and wellness professionals to help their clients achieve better physical and mental performance in athletics and everyday life. NASM provides an industry-first training system, with the Optimum Performance Training (OPT™) model, creating robust courses and content based solely on science-backed research. Learn more at www.nasm.org.
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