Andrea Hayden, Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Minnesota Twins Major League Baseball (MLB) team, talks to the NSCA Coaching and Sport Science Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about being great at your craft. Topics of discussion include how to train athletes in a sport you have never played and creating great career opportunities through education and networking. Find Andrea through Email: andreahayden@twinsbaseball.com | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscs

The purpose of this article is to help provide recommendations of overall recovery modalities for tactical athletes.

This narrative review will focus on the research related to tactical load carriage and on a program recommendation to maximize strength and endurance adaptations in Special Operations Forces (SOF).

This article covers the anatomy and mechanics of spinal stabilization and how to properly brace for both maximal and sub-maximal lifts. Because of the forces that are generated by, and transmitted through, the body during resistance training, having a sound understanding of stabilization is paramount for safe and effective training.

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

Both unilateral and bilateral training should be used to optimally develop basketball players. This article compares single-leg and double-leg training options and provides considerations and potential implications for training basketball athletes.

This excerpt from Developing Agility and Quickness provides a needs analysis for field hockey and possible program design options for optimal performance outcomes.

This excerpt from Developing Agility and Quickness highlights the high-intensity, reactive agility hockey players require, and provides two agility drills that challenge that skill.

One area that can have great impact on the success of a high school athletic department is the strength and conditioning program. This session from the 2015 NSCA National Conference provides insights from Coach Kevin Vanderbush’s personal experience as the strength and conditioning coach at Ben Davis High School for 31 years. This session covers the most important components of strength and conditioning at the high school level and provides both the rationale behind certain practices as well as practical tips.

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.