New Here and utterly baffled!

Why don't you google CYQ? Then you would find this: [url]Certificate in Sports Massage (Soft Tissue Therapy) | CYQ[/url]

As for the SMA, it's just an organisation/association that is involved in sports massage. There are other professional associations for sports massage. None of them including the SMA are officially appointed regulators, so why be concerned about the lack of CYQ listing? By the look of their website CYQ courses are registered with Ofqual. All Ofqual registered sports massage courses by ITEC, VTCT, CYQ etc should in theory follow the same syllabus. Reality is that standards can vary, and a course is as good as the tutor who puts the effort in to teach, and the student who puts effort in to learn!!

Very importantly a sports massage level 3 qual is basically a pre and post event massage rubdown. Which is fine but to go further you need to do afterwards level 4 or higher.

That is why a level 3 course is at affiliate level.

RP

Thanks RP

That certainly clears things up for me. I was under the impression that the SMA were an official body and I've read soany acronyms today that I was all in a muddle.

I appreciate that level 3 is a basic course and I will need to move higher if I really want to progress but I will need to start the journey somewhere and from what I can see (with no prior experience) the level 3 appears to be thw appropriate entry point

I will keep digging.

Thanks again for your help

G

Hello, I don't post often these days but I thought this correspondence merited a reply. I hope I don't muddy the water for the original poster. First to answer the question---RP is absolutely right VTCT/ITEC/CYQ deliver qualifications which are on the qualifications and credit framework (QCF) and the content should be the same--however, the quality of delivery will vary. As an aside the qualifications were written by the SMA in conjunction with VTCT. The qualifications are also based on Massage National Occupation Standards (again with massive input by the SMA and members of GCMT---which is chaired by the SMA). I would suggest you also look at some of the courses run by the private schools--they will be more expensive but the content can go above and beyond those courses delivered via the colleges. I would commend to you, amongst others, NLSSM, LSSM and Active Health Group. There is massive interest in Sports Massage education at the moment due to the success of Sports massage at the 2012 Games (engineered and managed by the SMA), but you need to be careful as many training provider are jumping on the education bandwagon with short courses, correspondence courses and online courses.

The language of our industry is complex but just for clarification:

The SMA (and FHT, STO, ISRM etc.) are Professional Associations--their primary responsibility is the member and the development of the profession. They have acted as pseudo regulators for many years in the absence of proper regulation. This is changing and you will see many PAs becoming 'regulators' under the initiative launched by the Professional Standards Authority.

CNHC are regulators--their primary responsibility is the protection of the public.

ITEC,VTCT, CYQ, etc are awarding bodies--they write qualifications and sell them to training providers.

GCMT is the lead body for soft tissue therapies--they are primarily responsible for defining and maintaining education standards. The lead body comprises Professional Associations and occasionally training providers and awarding organisations.

Just to finish as the SMA was mentioned in RP's post---the SMA was founded by the National Sports Medicine Institute in conjunction with the English Institute of Sport and launched at the 2002 Commonwealth Games.