This excerpt from the Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning outlines what training typically looks like in the preparatory period, or off-season.

From the 2021 NSCA’s Coaches Conference, Matthew Ibrahim, Co-Owner, Director of Strength and Conditioning, and Internship Coordinator at TD Athletes Edge, discusses how to help athletes develop the skills necessary to build the brakes in the athletic development process. Other topics covered include how to create a better understanding of the transfer from training in the weight room to sport performance.

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.

In this article, personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches will learn how Football Club of Mumbaikars has worked to maintain and even improved the fitness profile of its athletes using this online training protocol, and provide a template for how to apply this protocol to the general population.

This article examines why the Romanian deadlift (RDL) provides a suitable in-season strength training application, explores the interlinked relationship between the demands of practice and resistance training, and identifies how the RDL functions with other lower-extremity exercises.

The hip hinge and squat exercises, and their variations, are used in many strength and conditioning programs to develop athletes of many sports. The listed progressions are examples of practical implications used to develop athletes, but there may be additional practical and effective methods used by strength and conditioning coaches for similar purposes.

This article provides some practical applications to minimize the negative effects associated with a long intensive ice hockey season on ice hockey athletes.

This consensus statement provides specific conditioning recommendations with the intent of ending conditioning-related morbidity and deaths of collegiate athletes.

This article shows how to introduce and apply the sport season model, periodization cycles, and variables of training into the ARFORGEN process. Overtraining, including the signs and symptoms, also is covered.

This PTQ article discusses current research examining the relationship between training volume and muscle hypertrophy and provides guidelines for optimizing training outcomes. Visit NSCA online to read more on exercise science and sport performance.