- What You're Actually Studying For
- The Assessment Format: What Is Confirmed and What Is Not
- The Five Modules, One at a Time
- Scheduling the Five Modules Across Your Study Weeks
- Cost, Access and Retakes
- Where First-Time Candidates Lose Points
- After You Pass: Credits, Maintenance and Using the Credential
- Frequently Asked Questions
- This guide covers the BioMechanics Method Corrective Exercise Specialist (TBMM-CES) program offered through ACE, built from five modules.
- Published listings conflict on the pass mark: one cites 80%, another 70%. Confirm yours inside your own course portal.
- The digital course lists at $749 and includes materials, online assessments and unlimited free retakes.
- Plan for roughly 50-80 hours of self-paced study; there is no completion deadline and no extension fee.
What You're Actually Studying For
Before you open a single module, get clear on which credential this guide covers. "CES" is a crowded acronym, and plenty of material online belongs to unrelated certifications. Here, CES means the Corrective Exercise Specialty Certification delivered as The BioMechanics Method Corrective Exercise Specialist (TBMM-CES) program, developed by Justin Price and The BioMechanics Method and offered as an ACE Partner Specialist Program. If you want the broader background first, our explainers on what CES certification is and what CES stands for cover the naming in detail.
One distinction matters for your study plan: ACE also runs a separate Corrective Exercise Specialist program (formerly the Orthopedic Exercise Specialist) with its own curriculum. That program is out of scope here. If your study notes, flashcards or forum advice reference a different curriculum, treat them with caution. The material below is built around the five TBMM modules and nothing else.
The Assessment Format: What Is Confirmed and What Is Not
This is the section most study guides gloss over, and it is where candidates get surprised. Here is what the published sources do and do not establish.
| Detail | Status |
|---|---|
| Tests are untimed | Confirmed on the current provider course page |
| Unlimited free retakes | Confirmed; included with the course |
| Question types | Multiple-choice described in listings; interactive quizzes and skill-building activities also part of the materials |
| Passing threshold | Conflicting: an ACE partner-portal listing describes 80%; the provider's full-course listing describes 70% |
| Number of exams | ACE partner listing describes four multiple-choice exams plus one online practical skills exam; current counts remain unverified |
| Practical assessment requirement | Unverified; appears in the ACE partner listing only |
Both of those portal listings are undated and marked "Not Available," so neither should be treated as the verified current configuration. The honest takeaway: do not plan around a specific number until you can see the passing standard inside your own purchased course. Our dedicated page on the CES passing score tracks this question, and the CES pass rate article explains why no reliable pass-rate figure is available for this program.
Key Takeaway
Study to the stricter standard. If one listing says 80% and another says 70%, preparing as if 80% applies costs you nothing and protects you whichever number your portal actually enforces. Since retakes are free, an early miss is a diagnostic, not a penalty.
Which portal you log into matters
The provider's official course-login page routes learners to different Inspire360 portals depending on where they bought the course, including an ACE-specific portal. If you purchased through ACE, log in through the ACE route so your progress, assessments and credit reporting live in the right place. Bookmark the correct portal on day one rather than hunting for it mid-course.
The Five Modules, One at a Time
The curriculum is organized into five modules. ACE and The BioMechanics Method publish these as unweighted preparation headings, and no formal exam blueprint or domain percentages have been located. That means you cannot rank them by exam weight, so the safest approach is to treat all five as testable. For a deeper breakdown, see our complete guide to the CES content areas.
Module 1: The Fundamentals of Structural Assessment
This is your foundation. Corrective work begins with observing and evaluating how a client is built and how they move, so everything later depends on being able to assess accurately.
- Be able to describe what you are looking for during a static posture evaluation and why each observation matters.
- Practice linking an observed deviation to the structures that could be contributing to it.
- Learn the course's assessment forms; the materials include them, and fluency with the forms helps you answer scenario questions faster.
Module 2: Understanding Muscles and Movement
Here the course connects anatomy to function. Expect to move beyond naming muscles to explaining how they behave in motion and what happens when the balance between them shifts.
- Know muscle actions and how they combine to produce joint movement.
- Be ready to reason through which muscles are likely overactive or underactive given an observed movement pattern.
- Review the digital texts and video instruction together; the video often clarifies concepts the text states abstractly.
Module 3: The Fundamentals of Corrective Exercise
This module establishes the philosophy and framework behind corrective strategies, the "why" that makes the exercise selection in later modules coherent.
- Understand the underlying logic of corrective intervention so you can justify choices, not just recite them.
- Expect questions that ask you to choose an approach and defend it against a plausible alternative.
- Take notes in your own words; this module rewards conceptual clarity over rote recall.
Module 4: The Complete Corrective Exercise Library
Typically the most content-dense module. It catalogs the corrective exercises themselves, and it is where visual learners should lean on the video demonstrations.
- Group exercises by the problem they address rather than memorizing them as a flat list.
- Be able to name the purpose of an exercise and the pattern it is meant to improve.
- Use the interactive quizzes and skill-building activities here; repetition pays off most in this module.
Module 5: Corrective Exercise Program Design
The capstone. You take assessment findings and exercise knowledge and assemble them into a coherent plan for a client.
- Practice moving from assessment findings to a prioritized set of corrective strategies.
- Understand sequencing and how a program builds on itself over time.
- Run a few mock clients through the whole process, from observation to a written plan.
Notice the arc: assess, understand the body, learn the framework, learn the tools, then build the program. Each module assumes the previous one, which is why skipping around tends to backfire.
Scheduling the Five Modules Across Your Study Weeks
The course estimates 50-80 hours of work across the five self-paced modules. Those are learning hours, not an exam timer. Because the sequence builds on itself, schedule in module order and keep assessments close to the content they cover. A sample plan for a candidate who can give roughly 8-10 hours a week:
Module 1 and Module 2
- Work through structural assessment first, since it underpins everything after it.
- Move straight into muscles and movement while the assessment vocabulary is fresh.
- Take the module assessments early to confirm the foundation before building on it.
Module 3
- Spend time on the reasoning behind corrective strategy.
- Write a short summary of the framework from memory, then check it against the course.
Module 4
- Give the exercise library the most time; it is the heaviest content.
- Study by problem category and use the interactive quizzes repeatedly.
Module 5 and full review
- Build several complete client programs from scratch.
- Revisit any assessment topics where a retake showed a weak spot.
If you can study full-time, compress this considerably; if you are fitting it around a training schedule, stretch it out. There is no completion deadline and no extension fee, so pacing is yours to control. For a compact recap to use near the end, pair this plan with our CES cheat sheet.
Cost, Access and Retakes
The digital TBMM partner course lists at $749 on ACE, and the provider's full online course also lists at $749. A promotional price of $599.20 was observed on October 6, 2026, but promotions come and go, so verify the current price before you buy. The fee covers course materials, online assessments and unlimited free test retakes. For the full financial picture, see our CES certification cost breakdown.
There are no enrollment or education prerequisites. The program is designed for exercise, health and fitness professionals, but nothing gates entry. Our CES requirements page walks through who can enroll and what the course assumes you already know.
Where First-Time Candidates Lose Points
Because the assessments are untimed and retakes are free, the risk is not running out of attempts. The risk is wasting time or building shaky understanding. Watch for these patterns:
- Treating the exercise library as a memorization list. Module 4 is large, and flat memorization collapses under scenario questions. Tie each exercise to the problem it addresses.
- Rushing structural assessment. Weak Module 1 fundamentals ripple into Modules 3 and 5, where you must connect findings to strategy.
- Retaking repeatedly without reviewing. Free retakes are a gift only if you study the misses. Retaking blind just burns time.
- Assuming the pass mark. With conflicting published thresholds, confirm yours in the portal and aim above the higher one.
- Importing outside material. Notes from a different CES-labeled credential or from ACE's separate corrective program can steer you wrong.
A smarter way to use free retakes
After any assessment attempt, list every missed topic, trace it back to a module, and re-study that section before trying again. Treat each attempt as a map of your gaps. If you want extra scenario practice outside the course, our CES practice test platform lets you drill application-style questions, and the main practice site is a good place to confirm your readiness before the final assessments.
After You Pass: Credits, Maintenance and Using the Credential
Completing the program awards 8.0 ACE CECs. Those credits are separate from maintaining an ACE professional certification, so check how they fit your own renewal situation if you hold other ACE credentials. The TBMM-CES credential itself does not expire and carries no renewal or recertification fee, which makes it an unusually low-maintenance addition to a resume.
As for putting it to work, corrective exercise knowledge tends to be valued by personal trainers, strength coaches and other exercise professionals who work with clients managing movement limitations or recurring discomfort. Whether the credential pays off depends heavily on your market and clientele, and we do not cite specific earnings here. Our analyses of whether the CES is worth it, the CES salary picture and CES jobs explore the career side in more depth.
Key Takeaway
The strongest first-attempt strategy is simple: study the five modules in order, aim above the higher published pass mark, confirm your actual standard in your portal, and use free retakes as feedback rather than as a crutch.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Course access continues after completion, with no completion deadline and no extension fee. The 50-80 hour estimate covers the five self-paced modules and is a study-time guide, not a countdown.
Published listings conflict. An ACE partner-portal listing describes an 80% threshold, while the provider's full-course listing describes 70%. Neither is a verified current figure, so confirm the standard inside your own course and study to the higher number.
Yes. Unlimited free retakes are included with the course, and the tests are untimed. Use each miss to identify which module needs another look before you try again.
No. Once earned, it does not expire and has no renewal or recertification fee. Completion also awards 8.0 ACE CECs, which are separate from maintaining an ACE professional certification.
There are no enrollment or education prerequisites. The program is designed for exercise, health and fitness professionals, and you need internet access plus a compatible computer, tablet or smartphone to complete the online materials.
If you are weighing where to start, begin with a quick diagnostic on our CES practice test, then work through the modules in order. For a broader orientation to the credential, the CES study guide overview and the CES certification page are good companions to this article.