Mark Kovacs, PhD, CSCS,*D, spoke during the NSCA's 2013 Coaches Conference about the importance of balancing conditioning with strength training, and the need to approach program design in such a way that all your athletes get what they need, no matter their fitness level or sport.

From the 2020 NSCA Coaches Conference, Jim Davis, Founder of the Good Athlete Project, presents his mission for maximizing the potential of athletics as education and the many components that create the framework of a high order performance goal.

In this session from 2019 Coaches Conference, Paul Laursen, co-author of the book “Science and Application of High-Intensity Interval Training: Solutions to the Programming Puzzle,” explains the physiological targets of high-intensity interval training and how to design and manipulate variables for a variety of applications.

Learn how to design an effective nutrition coaching program for all types of athletes without supplements, support staff, or expensive training tables. In this session from the NSCA’s 2017 Coaches Conference, Adam Feit compares the awfulness- versus awesomeness-based nutrition coaching models.

Almost all functional movements of the trunk are combinations or variations of four basic movement patterns: trunk flexion, trunk extension, trunk rotation, and trunk lateral flexion. This article lists exercises to address each of these movement patterns.

Developing a truly successful program involves several layers that the personal trainer must address with time, competence, and critical thinking. A thorough and complete initial consultation can ensure that the personal trainer has all the data that they need to design a program that is time-efficient and successful.

In this session from the 2015 NSCA National Conference, Nelson Ayotte—the Strength and Conditioning Coach for the St. Louis Blues National Hockey League (NHL) team—explains how to design and implement a specific energy systems program at the elite level. Ayotte demonstrates the characteristics of each of the three energy systems and their trainability, and explores how to understand the energy demands of a sport by analysis of its characteristics, competition intensity, and duration of efforts and recovery periods.

The expression of mechanical “muscle power” and the advanced training methodologies used to optimize it are explained by Duncan French in this session from the 2015 NSCA National Conference. By overviewing training strategies utilized with world-class athletes, this session links science with advanced training techniques designed to augment muscle power.

This article is part of a continuing series of tactical strength and conditioning (TSAC) research reviews. It is designed to bring awareness to new research findings of relevance to tactical strength and conditioning communities.

This session from the NSCA’s 2015 TSAC Annual Training provide examples of how different agencies (i.e., fire, military, and police) have implemented legally defensible fitness tests. Previous experiences will be shared as well as general recommendations on how to implement a scientifically-based testing battery.