Early sport specialization involves physically immature children participating in intensive year-round training and/or competition for a single sport. The lack of sport exposure and diversification during the developmental years may underlie the increased risk of overuse injuries, blunting of motor skill development, psychosocial issues, overtraining syndrome, burnout, and potential dropout from sport. With increasing number of youth choosing, or being encouraged, to specialize at an early age, we aim to provide evidence based recommendations for the integration of strength and conditioning into the development programs of young athletes who participate in sports with a culture of early specialization. In addition to the principles of programming, strategies are provided relative to monitoring of growth, maturation, and training load to illustrate the potential complexities of attempting to optimize long-term athletic development in early specializing athletes.

This excerpt from Developing Speed aims to develop athletes’ ability to accelerate quickly through stride modification.

From Successful Trainer To Gym Owner – 9 Steps To Open Your First Facility

This excerpt breaks down the optimal positions of the body during acceleration and deceleration.

Multidirectional ground reaction forces (GRFs) and jump tests within baseball pitchers provide insight into athletic ability and coordination to produce lower-body force and power. Lower-body power is a biomechanical feature that denotes physiological capacity through dynamic and passive tissue stretch-shortening in transferring energy from the ground through the kinetic chain. Optimized lower-body power may lessen the magnitude of forces on the upper extremity. Insufficient lower-body power may create a greater risk of upper-body injury. Lower-body power and its relationship to ball velocity have been minimally investigated, yet some research points to a correlation between jumping ability and fastball velocity. Because pitching is unilateral, practitioners should consider unilateral jumps to determine the extent of bilateral asymmetry or stride to drive leg differences that can guide training to remediate deficiencies. The purposes of this brief review are to (a) examine factors that influence vertical jump performance among baseball players, (b) examine research on pitching multidirectional GRFs, and (c) examine literature concerning jump performances to baseball pitching performance. Collectively, this review can assist coaches and practitioners in lower-body power testing and training for baseball pitchers.

This Kinetic Select excerpt from Developing the Core describes how to perform the medicine ball twist variation as a rotational core movement.

NSCA Member Spotlight: Lee Brown shares his path into tactical strength and conditioning, firefighter research, and how NSCA engagement has elevated his career.

This Personal Trainers Quarterly article examines a client's ability to maintain pelvic and trunk stability during a dynamic fitness screening. Visit NSCA online to read more on corrective exercises, health, and fitness.

This PTQ article reviews scientific literature on concurrent training and examines whether combining aerobic and resistance exercise has meaningful impacts on performance. Visit the NSCA online to read more about personal training.