What does LTAD mean and how can parents get more involved with their child’s athletic development? Rick Howard provides an overview of youth development, important concepts to understand, ways to impact physical development, signs of overtraining, and further resources that are a great refresher for coaches and can be passed onto parents.

The squat is one of the most widely used exercises in resistance training programs. The aim of this narrative review was to analyze the effect of the squat on lower-limb muscle hypertrophy. Briefly, the available literature indicates that the squat is an effective exercise for inducing hypertrophy of the quadriceps, mainly the vastii, but also the rectus femoris, although to a reduced magnitude. Multiple lines of evidence suggest little to no hamstring hypertrophy from the back squat. Although the gluteus maximus clearly participates mechanically in the back squat, few longitudinal studies exist on the topic. The limited evidence available on this topic suggests deeper squats may be more hypertrophic for the gluteus maximus, and that, squat depth beyond 908 of knee flexion may not provide further hypertrophy of the knee extensors. Despite the popularity of the many squat variations, there are still controversies surrounding their hypertrophic potential for lower-limb musculature. Further studies are needed to investigate the hypertrophic effects of different squat variations, as well as differences in hypertrophy because of squat depth, stance, barbell position, and different squat apparatuses/machines.

Joe Denk, a strength and conditioning instructor for the Navy SHAPE Program, discusses ways to integrate autoregulatory training and recovery systems into your training programs.

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.

In this video from the 2022 NSCA National Conference, Allison Randall discusses effective instructional strategies for coaches to utilize to promote psychomotor skill acquisition and performance in student-athletes.

From the 2024 NSCA’s Coaches Conference, Kelly Jones helps coaches with practical nutrition strategies to maximize physical and mental performance, as well as optimal recovery methods.

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.

Strength and Conditioning Coaches who are NSCA-Certified are preparing youth for training, using proven strategies that improve their safety and competitiveness.

Learn, participate and network with colleagues at (location) while earning CEUs. Hosted by the state, provincial and regional directors, this local event brings cutting-edge research and application to your backyard.

Here are more reasons why award-winning Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach Scott Sahli is happy when kids are involved in multiple sports programs and supervised by certified strength coaches.