Netball is a team sport played worldwide. High-risk landing events containing biomechanical potential for noncontact knee soft-tissue injury (STI) occur frequently. Subsequently, noncontact knee STI is common after knee abduction collapse during landing tasks. Lower-limb mobility, strength, balance, movement, and hop test characteristics (intrinsic, modifiable risk factors) are associated with high-risk landing biomechanics and noncontact knee STI events. Such risk factors should be considered in netball-specific noncontact knee STI prevention preparticipation screening. Corresponding training methods should be included as indicated in netball-specific multimodal noncontact knee STI prevention programs. This article provides insight into noncontact knee injury–related aspects of netball and gives detailed suggestions for injury prevention screening and programming.

Elevate your soccer training game and learn how to help your athletes build strength and explosiveness at the 2020 NSCA Soccer Virtual Clinic! Whether you’re looking to learn how to improve movement patterns, or develop quickness in your athletes, the NSCA Soccer Virtual Clinic is an unmatched opportunity to learn coaching strategies for preparing your athletes to excel on the field.

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.

Access the video collection for the 2018 Hammer Strength West Regional Clinic.

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.

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.

Dietary supplement use is quite prevalent among bodybuilders to enhance their physiques for competition. Many of the dietary supplements used by these athletes are neither safe nor effective. Several reviews have been published detailing the efficacy of dietary supplements for athletes; however, none have been written specifically for bodybuilders and physique athletes. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an evidence-based review of the top 5 dietary supplements for bodybuilding competitors: creatine, caffeine, protein powders, free-form essential amino acids, and beta-alanine. This review will provide bodybuilders, coaches, and practitioners with information on each supplement’s mechanism of action, seasonal benefits, protocol for use, and special considerations to optimize supplement strategies for performance, physique, and overall competitive success.

Nutrition and dietary intake are key factors for exercise and sport performance. While a substantial body of research highlights the impact of nutrition on exercise, many dietary and nutrient recommendations are based on research studies only conducted in men. However, the distinct physiological, neurological, and hormonal changes across a woman’s life cycle significantly affect nutritional needs. This narrative review explores key recommendations for calories, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and select supplements, highlighting the absence of sex-specific guidelines in current dietary frameworks for strength and conditioning female athletes. The review synthesizes current literature to provide practical guidance for coaches, sport dietitians, and health practitioners to optimize both performance and health outcomes for female athletes.

Join the 2026 NSCA Training Prescriptions for Overhead Athletes Summit in San Diego on March 28. Learn advanced biomechanics, train hands-on, and earn 0.8 CEUs.