Knowledge of metabolic rate can help athletes as well as health-conscious people improve their exercise performance or obtain the fat-to-lean-mass ratio optimal for their personal situations. Two examples of how this works follow.

Lawrence Herrera, owner and founder of LH Performance, talks to the NSCA Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Scott Caulfield, about how strong is strong enough, keeping the training simple, and relating to athletes and coaches.

HRV is thought to provide objective insight into understanding fatigue, “trainability,” and “readiness” to perform in athletic populations. Evolving access to HRV data may enhance the understanding of individualized fitness and training responses in tactical athletes.

The goal of this brief review is to describe what classifies as high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and summarize the potential benefits for various populations: athletic, general, and clinical.

Brett Bartholomew, keynote speaker, performance coach and consultant, best-selling author, and Founder of Art of Coaching™, talks to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about the importance of communication as a foundation of coaching, understanding the messy realities of leadership, and how reflection can help the profession grow. Find Brett on Instagram: @coach_brettb or Twitter: @Coach_BrettB | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscs

Military and law enforcement needs analyses are not specifically matched to firefighting, but those training styles are better than basic fitness regimens or no regimen at all. For firefighters who are attracted to other styles of training not specific to firefighting, there are ways to train for all the demands of firefighting without making the firefighter use training modalities that they dislike or are not comfortable using.

This article aims to bring awareness to the importance of sleep and recovery for first responders, as well as providing strategies to optimize sleep specific to their occupational demands.

This article reviews the use of heart rate as a way to program cardiovascular exercise.

This article seeks to explain monitoring body composition, including how to assess it properly for an accurate evaluation to minimize errors in body fat estimation and maximize physical training.

In the final part of this four-part series on proper movement, the author recommends that the US Marine Corps screen the movement quality of each Marine and educate them on how to move correctly in order to reduce the risk of injury.