These are excellent questions and were addressed at F.I.S.T. but are more appropriate for Dan to answer. As you all know, I found it a very valuable learning experience.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

just posting to get the message back on the top of the board so that maybe dan could give us some answers

1. nobody fails the test. or to put it another way, nobody fails to get certified. the test is just to get you to think about what it is you've absorbed. i'm not concerned about people leaving here unable to perform the fit properly. i don't anticipate that being an issue.

2. certification cannot be stripped from the person who has taken the course. the certification says that a person knows how to properly fit someone according to FIST procedures. what CAN and WILL occur, however, is that my published database will reflect how bike fits are administered by the shop. so, if someone is FIST certified and it is clear this person isn't fitting people according to FIST principles, then Slowtwitch will announce this fact to whomever accesses this on our site (see Dealer Profiles).

3. it is the person, not the store, who is FIST certified. there will be exceptions that occur on a temporary basis. as an example, clint page at wheelworks in belmont, mass, is very proactive about having his people properly certified in just about everything, serotta, FIST, etc. thom norton from that store just came through the latest FIST workshop. if thom were to leave wheelworks, i'd contact clint and we'd work out how we'd get his shop back to having FIST-trained people on his floor, and we'd do this without the FIST icon never leaving the wheelworks store. other shops i might not feel so confident in if a FIST-certified employee left. so it'll get worked out on a case by case basis. in reality what appears to be the case is that most shops that ARE sending people to FIST are either sending multiple people out, or the owner(s) are coming out.

Taku walks into a bar. bartender says, "hey, let me tell you a couple of other bar jokes. your sig is ready to be updated."

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman