In this session from the 2014 NSCA Personal Trainers Conference, Barton Bishop explains how to utilize the body’s natural way of learning movement. This will help athletes become more efficient at movement for improvements in exercise and athletic performance, and help in preventing future injuries.

Learn how to differentiate between the three critical tactical psychological skills related to enhancing tactical athlete performance, and how each tactical psychological skill impacts performance for the tactical athlete. In this session from the NSCA’s 2017 TSAC Annual Training, Peter Jensen, PhD, teaches how to apply each tactical psychological skill in a training setting to improve tactical athlete performance.

Lance Walker, Global Director of Performance at Michael Johnson Performance (MJP), talks to the NSCA Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Scott Caulfield, about being unselfish in your work, developing your people skills in order to be a better coach, and mapping out your professional path.

This article is the second part of a two-part series that considers the potential role strength and conditioning coaches have in developing student-athlete leadership.

Ground-based free weight lifts, especially the explosive Olympic-style lifts, are highly recommended for athletic conditioning for the core muscles. They can provide a moderately unstable stimulus to augment activation of the core and limb muscles, while still providing maximal or near maximal strength, velocity, and power output.

This book excerpt is from Developing Agility and Quickness, Second Edition and goes over change of direction drills to help with speed and power development as well as an athletes cognitive and decision making skills.

Brian Thompson, Director of Strength and Conditioning at Springfield College, helps young coaches develop an understanding of how small mistakes can make a big difference while interviewing for a strength position. This session provides knowledge of how the selection process works for employers and discusses how to apply better professionalism to get the positions you want.

Brett Bartholomew talks about the risks posed to athletes who are partaking in randomized and unstructured training practices often supervised by non-certified professionals. This session from the NSCA’s 2017 Coaches Conference will help you identify ways in which a “skills not drills” approach towards movement training design can not only lead to enhanced transfer of training to the competitive environment, but also better retention on behalf of the athlete as they progress through future training.

In the intercollegiate athletic setting, the strength and conditioning coach can play a role in the development of student-athlete leadership. For the strength and conditioning coach to be a positive contributor to this effort, he or she must have a clear understanding of their role, the role of the sport coach, and the interaction and relationship between the two.

This brief excerpt breaks down agility into different target movement patterns to help develop an effective agility and quickness program.