Becoming a Personal Trainer (ACE?)

Hello, so I have decided to pick up some extra work and get my personal trainer certification. I am already doing some personal training so I thought it nice to get a nationally accredited cert to pick up more clients.

I am looking for any advice from anybody that knows anything about this process. I am leaning toward ACE certification. Good? Bad?

Any advice or links you have discovered that are helpful, please post. Perhaps this thread can become an archive of information for those to follow.

Also, mods, can you please bounce this thread over to steroid forum in a few days? This is not a question about anabolics per se but there are many there who would also be able to contribute information. Depending on how much interest either forum shows in the thread I will ask it to be bumped back to HL (if HL for instance shows the most interest).

Thanks everybody!

ACE is good. ISSA is also pretty popular where I live (Northeast). Those two are probably the most common here actually.

I went with the NSCA cert. ( http://www.nsca-cc.org/ ) just because it's the oldest one. It wasn't hard. I wouldn't worry about preparation, just go with the one that most gyms in your area are looking for. Also, this is a given but, the more certs you have the more marketable you are. Honestly if you are acquainted with the physiology and exercise technique and prescription you should be good to go. When I went to get mine there were an obtuse amount of scenarios where you had to base your prescription off of the persons medical history, but you can BS your way through those ones pretty easily. It's a lot of common sense. Many people hype up the difficulty of these exams however IMHO if you aren't a complete dunce you won't have any issues at all.

If you are looking to instruct groups I would also look into the CSCS even though Rippetoe rips on it. It's applicable in a lot of situations.

ACE used to be pretty good but there are others which are much better. Sorry i forget what they are