Scientist. Teacher. Builder.
Ph.D. EPFL · M.Sc. Kinesiology
M.Sc. Education · M.Sc. Computer Science for Earth Sciences
Engram Kinetics was designed by starting from the official exam outlines (what ACSM and NSCA say they test), then building a prep system around those decisions, from the ground up.
"The problem isn't that candidates don't know the content. The problem is they can't make the decisions the exam scores."
Years of designing and analyzing school exams showed me a pattern: students who failed were often not failing on knowledge. They were failing on decision execution: the ability to read a situation, filter relevant data, and commit to the right call under pressure. Certification exams ask for the same skill, in a professional scenario.
Most prep courses respond to this problem by adding more content: more flashcards, more questions, more review. Engram Kinetics started from the other end, the decision skill itself. Knowledge still matters, since you cannot decide on what you never learned, so we are adding it to the courses, starting with the ACSM-EP: lessons and spaced review built on the same facts the decisions use.
Every element of this platform (the Engram format, the decision-error framework, the Triple Coverage model) is designed to close that gap between knowing and deciding. This design is a reasoned argument from exam design and cognitive science, not a controlled study proving it beats any specific product on scores.
Why I built Engram Kinetics
In September 2020, while still teaching mathematics and sciences, I went back to university to study exercise science (B.Sc. 2021, M.Sc. 2025). The motivation was personal: I'm an ultra-trailer, and I wanted to understand how to train my own body, beyond what the books were telling me. It was also my third master's degree. I have an unreasonable love for studying.
Once inside the field, I read the ACSM and NSCA exam outlines the way an exam designer reads them. Most of what they test sits above recall: interpreting data, applying guidelines, committing to a call on an unfamiliar client profile. Yet the prep tools I found were built mostly for recall.
The prep tools weren't broken. They were testing the wrong skill: recall, not decision-making.
This wasn't a guess. My research career has spanned three disciplines over two decades: geology first, then education, now kinesiology. Different methodologies, but the same underlying question across all three: how do experts make decisions under incomplete information?
Five years specifically in educational assessment taught me that decision-making under uncertainty is a teachable skill, but only with the right scaffolding. Branching scenarios. Named decision errors. Feedback that targets reasoning, not just the answer. That research, combined with 24 years of classroom experience and 11 years developing and editing cantonal standardized exams (2013-2024), gave me the foundation to design something better.
So I started cataloguing. For each exam task, I asked the same question: which reasoning step could break? Overinterpretation of a non-finding? Tunnel vision on the obvious diagnosis? Confusion about the direction of a physiological response? Starting from research on diagnostic error in medicine, I grouped the answers into seven families of decision errors, from a proposed teaching framework, not a validated taxonomy. That gave me the bones of a curriculum.
Engram Kinetics is the platform I built around that catalog. Every drill targets a specific decision the exam will demand. Every wrong answer maps to a named decision error. Each piece of feedback explains the reasoning path, not just the fact.
It's the prep I would have wanted myself, when I started.
Marc Ferrer
- Ph.D., EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
- M.Sc. Kinesiology, University of Lausanne (UNIL)
- M.Sc. Education, HEP Lausanne
- M.Sc. Computer Science for Earth Sciences, UPMC Paris
- 5 years pedagogy & assessment research at the URSP Institute, Lausanne (2010-2015)
- 11 years developing and editing cantonal standardized exams (2013-2024)
- Author of a peer-reviewed article on designing decision-training scenarios (Strength and Conditioning Journal, 2026) and of a second, accepted for ACSM's Health & Fitness Journal (2027)
Why the platform is built this way
Three principles from assessment research shaped every design decision.
Exams score decisions more than recall
Certification exams present scenarios. Candidates must interpret data, apply guidelines, and commit to a call. Content knowledge is necessary but not sufficient; the decision skill must be trained separately.
Wrong answers are diagnostic data
In standard prep, a wrong answer earns an X. In assessment research, a wrong answer reveals a reasoning error that can be named, categorized, and corrected. The seven families of decision errors (from a proposed teaching framework, not a validated taxonomy) exist because generic feedback doesn't say which reasoning step failed.
Minimal dosage, maximum yield
You already have a degree. Engram Kinetics doesn't re-teach the textbook. It trains the exam decisions. Every Engram is designed to target a decision skill the certification tests, so that training time goes to decisions, not to what you already know.
Explore the methodology or start training
Read how the Engram system works, or go directly to the program that fits your certification.
Preparing for NSCA-CSCS? See the NSCA-CSCS program
7-day refund, no conditions. If it's not the right fit, email us.
Programs
Free and guides
Engram Kinetics
Legal
