The NSCA Foundation (NSCAF) awards hundreds of thousands in research grant dollars each year to outstanding individuals within the strength and conditioning community. The NSCAF is one of the few foundations that fund research for master’s degree students and across all levels of education and experience up to senior investigators, as well as one of the few sources that funds work in the strength and conditioning field. Further your research, education and career through the support of the NSCAF. Grants are supported in part by GNC.

The NSCA Foundation awarded nearly $195,000 to 15 Grant Recipients in 2026 to support strength and conditioning research, coaching advancement, and equipment

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are commonplace in business and sport. They offer an objective means to link data and processes with performance outcomes. Yet, their application in sports performance, particularly team sports, is not without issue. Here, we review 4 key issues relating to KPI application in team sports; lack of a universal definition, complexity of performance, drifting from on-field performance goals with off-field targets, and agency issues across different key stakeholders. With these issues relating to sports performance KPIs in mind, we propose a complementary approach to help practitioners focus on implementing the conditions that create performance environments and opportunities for success in a complex sporting environment. Ongoing process trackers (OPTs) are quantifiable measures of the execution of behaviors and processes that create the environments, cultures, and conditions for successful performance outcomes. This approach equips sports science practitioners with key questions they can ask themselves and their team when starting to select and use OPTs in their program.

Blood pressure changes acutely during resistance exercise. Continuous, beat-by-beat assessment provides detailed temporal resolution of blood pressure profiles, through techniques including intra-arterial catheterization, photoplethysmography, or applanation tonometry. However, noncontinuous measurements may be conducted before and after resistance exercise through auscultatory sphygmomanometry or oscillometry. Blood pressures tend to increase across repetitions within sets, influenced by load magnitude, repetitions and sets performed, muscle mass recruited, and rest periods; the highest pressures result from multi-joint, large muscle group exercises. Evaluation of such factors may facilitate better understanding of blood pressure responses to acute resistance exercise and influence program design considerations relative to anticipated hemodynamic changes.

The implementation of long-term athletic development (LTAD) aims to improve health, physical activity, and performance of all youth. Contemporary LTAD models suggest that a broad range of physical and psychosocial competencies should be developed in youth, but few resources are available for coaches that describe “how” to achieve these outcomes. This article overviews a coaching session framework built around the following components: raise, activate, mobilize, prepare, activity, games, evaluate (RAMPAGE). The framework provides practitioners with information on what can be planned and delivered and when within a coaching session, across multiple ages and stages of development within multiple contexts (e.g., physical education and talent development).

Canoe slalom requires technical ability, well-developed energetics, a high level of maximum force production, and range of movement to perform a variety of complex paddle stokes, while maneuvering through a challenging whitewater course. The strength and conditioning (S&C) coach should provide strategic direction across a network or department including S&C coaches working toward identified outcomes and measures. S&C coaches should collaborate with a multidisciplinary support team (i.e., sport coaches, physiotherapists, physiologists, etc.) to develop a technical framework. The technical framework may allow for development of training strategies that provide a clear breakdown of the outcomes, adaptations, exercises, and testing methods. The current article articulates this process related to a canoe slalom national performance program. You must pass this quiz (by answering at least 7 out of 10 questions correctly) to earn 0.2 CEU in Category D. Upon passing, your CEUs will be recorded automatically. You are given only ONE attempt per purchase to pass the quiz.

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.

Researchers and practitioners have highlighted the necessity to monitor jump strategy metrics and the commonly reported outcome measures during the countermovement jump (CMJ) and drop jump (DJ) tests. However, there is a risk of confusion for practitioners, given the vast range of metrics that now seem to be on offer via analysis software when collecting data from force platforms. As such, practitioners may benefit from a framework that can help guide metric selection for commonly used jump tests, which is the primary purpose of this article. To contextualize the proposed framework, we have provided 2 examples for how this could work: one for the CMJ and one for the DJ, noting that these tests are commonly used by practitioners during routine testing across a range of sport performance and clinical settings.

Concurrent training (CT), which combines resistance exercise and energy systems conditioning, is the default approach to preparation in high-intensity intermittent (“stop and go”) team sports. This review provides an overview of CT, emphasizing its complexities and challenges in managing fatigue and optimizing performance. These complexities are specifically compounded by the variability in game demands across the season, where the presence of intensified and nonintensified competition periods necessitates a flexible and adaptive training approach. In this context, there are essential training variables to consider, including intensity, volume, session order, and recovery intervals between sessions. In addition, nontraining variables such as travel, sleep, and nutrition play a role in the fatigue experienced while training and competing. These variables interact to influence acute performance and training adaptations and can be strategically adjusted by strength and conditioning practitioners. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive understanding of fatigue management for practitioners in team sports, emphasizing the complexities and challenges of CT and offering simplified practical recommendations for adjusting training variables within any given microcycle.

Maximal force can be expressed across a range of conditions influenced by the external load and the time available to express force. As a result, several distinct and specific strength qualities exist. Conversely, some expressions of maximal force are similar and can be categorized as a single quality. Therefore, strength assessment systems must be sophisticated enough to isolate and measure each quality while minimizing redundant information. This article presents a contemporary, evidence-based and practical framework that reduces the many strength and speed-strength metrics into 5 distinct qualities. Alongside this, we present case examples of the application of strength diagnosis.