Leadership & Life Skills Mindset Development Relationship Skills Self-Discipline & Habit Change Stress Management

ISSA (International Sports Sciences Association): Certified Life Coach

ISSA (International Sports Sciences Association)

An online life-coaching certification from ISSA designed for personal trainers and fitness professionals adding coaching to their services. Covers communication skills, personality types, goal setting, stress and time management, and behavior-change strategies. Includes 20 CEU credits and an at-home open-book certification exam.

Certification: accredited certification, CE credits
Format: self-paced
Skill level: beginner, intermediate
Career pathway: advanced training

$639 $799

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Course program

The ISSA Life Coaching Course is an online certification from the International Sports Sciences Association built for fitness professionals who want to coach clients beyond physical goals. It frames life coaching as an add-on service for personal trainers, focused on helping clients set and reach goals across career, relationships, and personal change.

ISSA positions this course primarily for working personal trainers and fitness professionals who want to expand their services into life coaching. There are no formal prerequisites listed on the course page, but the framing assumes a coaching context — existing trainers, wellness practitioners, and career changers using it to layer life-coaching skills onto an existing or planned fitness practice.

The curriculum covers life-coaching techniques, personality types, and goal setting. Students learn the reasons clients seek out a life coach and the role coaches play in helping clients build a life that matches their goals. The course teaches communication skills designed to create understanding and trust in the coach-client relationship, and methods for collecting and analyzing client information to surface both the goals a client wants and the obstacles in the way.

Further modules cover recognizing common personality types and adapting the coaching approach to each, helping clients develop practical life skills around stress reduction, time management, and coping with day-to-day challenges, and applying motivation strategies that support clients through the change process and into lasting behavior change and goal maintenance.

The course is delivered 100% online and self-paced through ISSA’s online learning system, with access from any device. Materials include online course content, course videos, reading companions, and worksheets, plus hands-on exercises that reinforce key concepts. There are no scheduled live sessions on the course page — students study on their own schedule and move toward certification at their own speed.