In an age where people are looking to others to help maintain a healthy body and lifestyle, it's important to look to professionals who are truly qualified personal trainers.

Just ask Vincent Carvelli, 47, an East Meadow resident who now owns and operates the Academy of Applied Personal Training Education, which is the only nationally accredited personal training certification program in New York State. Just 20 years ago Carvelli was a bodybuilder, and he began to train people to get themselves healthy.

"The thing that really drove my educational passion was being involved in body building," Carvelli said. "I felt that I needed to get a credential to validate my credibility more than my physicality."

But Carvelli would soon realize that there is a science to personal training, which is something many personal trainers do not apply while lending assistance to others.

"When I went to go for my first certification process, I was totally humbled," Carvelli said. "I was slapped across my face emotionally with what I didn’t know and thought I knew."

Carvelli says that people "need to be careful" when seeking personal trainers, because these professionals need to do more than just pass an exam.

"Reading out of a textbook and passing an exam indicates knowledge," he said. "But do they have the skill set?"

It's not about the certification for the personal trainer, but the educational process the trainer went through, according to Carvelli. The trainers need to recognize that the most important part of the human body is the skeletal system, because "everything else serves it."

Carvelli has spent the past 15 years running the AAPTE, but he says he doesn't look at it as work.

"I want to die doing what I’m doing," Carvelli said. "I love my job, but it’s not a job."

Carvelli also teaches 11th and 12th graders at the Joseph M. Barry Career and Technical Education Center in Westbury, and he developed a curriculum for prospective personal trainers.

"The kids are highly impressionable," Carvelli said. "My students are spending two hours a day studying the practical science of [being a personal trainer]."

AAPTE also has an ongoing relationship with Hofstra University, and Carvelli's program has seen 3,000-plus personal trainers gain their certification.

"The industry was missing a really big component to personal trainers’ education," Carvelli said.  "The science side of exercise was missing. A lot of trainers had no practical skills before getting into it. We developed a curriculum that took care of that."

Carvelli, a 1981 graduate of Northport High School, initially wanted to be a psychologist, but after getting into bodybuilding his path was clear.

"Anytime you are helping someone help themselves, I don’t think there could be anything more rewarding than that," he said.

For more information on the Academy, visit their web site or email VCarvelli@aapte.org.