Synergistic development of muscular strength and motor skill competency is central to long-term athletic development. However, these qualities need to be developed in a logical and progressive manner, and training methods need to be developmentally appropriate, engaging, and enjoyable for young athletes to help them build a positive association with strength and conditioning-based activities. This article aims to provide a resource for coaches to use when developing the athletic motor skill competencies in youth, including game-based activities, and a more structured resistance training curriculum.

Dr. Whitney Moore and Val Smith from Wayne State University use this session, from the 2019 NSCA National Conference, to provide evidence-based motivational strategies and leadership behaviors, strength coach tested relationship-building strategies, and explain different levels of informal leadership training opportunities

This continuing education opportunity explores a variety of topics as they pertain to sport psychology and coaching. To earn your CEUs, it will be necessary to review several articles and pass a 50-question quiz. Please note: this quiz awards 1.0 CEU (10 contact hours).

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.

Verbal cues are tools used by practitioners in developing a youth athlete’s motor skill abilities. External cues may optimize athletic performance and movement competencies in adults with trends for youth athletic populations following suit. However, maturation, training age, and cognitive age may interact with the efficacy of cues used. To better assist practitioners working with youth, this article reviews current empirical evidence on how youth populations respond or may respond to cues and offers practical applications.

Cal Dietz, Head Olympic Strength and Conditioning Coach for the University of Minnesota, explains how training is a process that takes time. He shares his insight into the most applicable adaptation and the most effective applications for tactical performance at the 2019 NSCA Tactical Annual Training.

Taurine is a well-known free amino acid that has gained prominence in recent years despite its little or no role in protein formation. Few studies on the ergogenic effect of taurine exist with inconsistent results. The answer to the question of whether performance markers demonstrate the benefit of taurine remains unclear. This study aimed to reach a consensus about whether taurine supplementation is effective on aerobic (time to exhaustion [TTE], maximal oxygen uptake [V̇O2max], and rating of perceived exertion) and anaerobic (power outputs, fatigue index, jumping, and blood lactate level) performance outputs. Google Scholar, PubMed databases, clinical trial websites, and gray literature were reviewed until November 2021. Mean differences (MDs) were pooled using random or fixed-effects models according to the heterogeneity degree of the related output. Although 18 studies were detected for the meta-analysis between 2001 and 2021, 16 studies were grouped. Only randomized controlled trials (single or double-blind) were considered. Taurine supplementation had a significant effect on vertical (MD 5 3.60; 95% confidence interval [CI] [2.32 to 4.89], p , 0.00001) and countermovement (MD 5 8.50; 95% CI [4.78 to 12.22], p , 0.00001) jump performance when compared with a placebo group. Taurine supplementation had no significant effect on the V̇O2max level and rate of perceived exertion (respectively, MD 5 20.54 mL/kg/min; 95% CI [26.84 to 5.75], p 5 0.87; MD 5 20.24; 95% CI [20.74 to 0.27], p 5 0.35) when compared with a placebo group. Overall, it looks to be effective for jumping performance and TTE. Taurine supplementation may be useful for people who want to improve these performance outputs.

Athletes engage in training programs that develop physical and physiological attributes to improve performance over time. However, ensuring athletes are optimally prepared just before competition is also of utmost importance. Indeed, such approaches may often adopt 1 or more strategies in the days, hours, and minutes preceding competition, including exercise priming, active warmup, and/or postactivation performance enhancing (PAPE) activities. Despite a plethora of discrete research, such information seems poorly synthesized, making it difficult for coaches and athletes to implement optimal evidence based physical preparation approaches in many sporting contexts. This article aims to provide a scoping overview of evidence, facilitate discussion, and where possible, propose practical exercise based recommendations that may be useful leading up to (~48 hours–~1 minute) tasks with a short or prolonged endurance component or requiring repeated intermittent efforts (e.g., team based field sports). Well-timed and –designed activities can facilitate several aspects of physical performance, potentially improve athletes’ psychological state(s) and mental preparedness. The benefits of a warm-up are most well documented, but priming and PAPE strategies also warrant consideration. It is intended that the evidence and suggestions presented will be useful for strength and conditioning professionals preparing athletes for competition.

A significant number of resistance training injuries occur at the shoulder complex. However, there is a lack of research identifying predictive variables, which may increase the risk of these injuries. Certain exercises, such as those requiring the apprehension position (glenohumeral abduction with external rotation), have been investigated and found to be associated with shoulder pain and injury. However, there are additional exercises or positions that may also be associated with increased injury risk. The position of end-range glenohumeral extension, particularly as it pertains to a dip, is a vulnerable position that may have previously been overlooked.