The purpose of this article is to share the importance of the menstrual cycle’s effects on elite athlete performance, and how these effects should influence the training and recovery of high-performing athletic women.

This article from Personal Training Quarterly looks at training plans based on menstrual health to help personal trainers better support female clients. Visit NSCA online to read more on athletic performance, health, and fitness.

This article serves to educate people about the menstrual cycle in the tactical female population. It provides a framework for how to work through the phases of menstruation to increase training response, and thus, overall success in military training.

Identify methods of prioritization and individualization within the training week plans to make training specific for individual athletes within the team setting. In this session from the NSCA’s 2016 National Conference, Ashley Jones explains how to design effective week plans for each of three major phases of a training year, and describes the format and content of key training areas of speed, strength, and fitness within each training phase.

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

Because a client’s functional abilities will change in each of the tissue healing phases, the fitness professional must understand the time it takes to heal and the science behind each phase in order to prescribe safe exercises for clients in those phases.

From the Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, this book excerpt explains the various stages of tissue healing in the rehabilitation process.

Power and strength translate into force, the key behind any push athlete's success. In this lecture from the NSCA's 2015 Coaches Conference, USOC Coach Brad DeWeese discusses periodization and the need to develop phase potentiation for push athletes.

A substantial body of literature has focused on weightlifting derivative lifts, primarily emphasizing the second pull phase because of its greater expression of force, velocity, and power output. The biomechanical resemblance of this phase to various athletic movements underscores the relevance of these derivatives in physical preparation across multiple sports. However, although the findings of these studies greatly enhance our understanding of their effectiveness in enhancing neuromuscular qualities, there remains a noticeable gap in the literature regarding the importance of the first pull phase, specifically within the sport of weightlifting. The aim of this review was to elucidate the relative importance of the first pull phase in snatch and clean & jerk performance and to explore the selection of specific pull derivative exercises that target the strength development of this phase of the lifts.

Two factors that determine running speed are stride cadence and stride length. Because athletes propel themselves forward only when their foot is in contact with the ground, the stance phase of the running stride should be the focus of speed enhancement programs.