Prepare for your CSPS® with confidence. Explore study timelines and optional NSCA Exam Prep resources — like the textbook, study guide, and practice questions.

This is the NSCA’s Coaching Podcast, where strength and conditioning coaches share their experience, lessons learned, and advice about how to thrive in a highly competitive profession.

Agility is a key and complex concept within team sports performance. Because of its multidimensional nature, agility benefits from perceptual and cognitive skills as well as physical capacity (e.g., ability to exert acceleration, deceleration, and changes of direction). Agility should be integrated in different and complementary ways in team sports training. From more analytical to more ecological tasks, there is a need to comprehend the respective adaptations and identify how to integrate such a spectrum and, eventually, combine them in the training process and manage it accordingly to the player’s needs. Based on this premise, the purpose of this article is to present alternative methods and recommendations that may help to develop agility in field-based invasion sports. The main concepts pertaining to agility and associated capacities will be explored. Afterward, a proposal for a more analytical approach based on the use of cones and ladders will be introduced, as well as approaches based on small-sided games. Finally, an integration of agility training and a combination of approaches will be presented using soccer as an example.

To maintain an NSCA certification, all certified individuals must complete a certain number of Continuing Education Units (CEUs), every three years. Earning CEUs mean certificants stay current on evolving knowledge and skills in the profession, and promote the ongoing competency of those certified.

On April 24, 2014, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) adopted a standard of certification for Division I strength and conditioning coaches. The article provides information and answers to frequently asked questions about the standard.

High school coaching is a rapidly-growing area of strength and conditioning, and can be an exciting career choice for strength and conditioning professionals who want to have a lifelong positive impact on young people.

Explore tactical strength and conditioning careers across military, law enforcement, fire, and EMS. Learn about roles, pay, credentials, and how to get started.