Join the 2026 NSCA Performance Science Integration Summit in Austin, TX, on March 28. Explore applied sport science research, train hands-on, and earn 0.8 CEUs.

The purpose of this article is to explore trauma-related mental health issues and help human performance professionals more effectively train tactical athletes.

From the 2019 NSCA’s Coaches Conference, Andrew Paul, Senior Athletic Performance Coach for the Oklahoma City Thunder in the National Basketball Association (NBA), discusses the importance of the emerging role of the dual-credentialed physical therapist/strength and conditioning specialist and identifies communication strategies to help facilitate good relationships and player transitions between the medical and performance teams.

When isolating aerobic capacity as a determinant of performance, traditional interventions have focused on increasing an individual’s VO2max. Based on the large acute improvements from a single positive psychology research study, investigations into the application of integrated psychophysiological strategies to optimize performance should be explored.

Learn about the anthropometric, kinematic, kinetic, and asymmetric variables that contribute to sprint performance, as well as how a coach can design effective speed development programs for male youth athletes.

Learn how to differentiate between the three critical tactical psychological skills related to enhancing tactical athlete performance, and how each tactical psychological skill impacts performance for the tactical athlete. In this session from the NSCA’s 2017 TSAC Annual Training, Peter Jensen, PhD, teaches how to apply each tactical psychological skill in a training setting to improve tactical athlete performance.

This is an excerpt from NSCA's Essentials of Sport Science by NSCA -National Strength & Conditioning Association, Duncan N. French & Lorena Torres-Ronda.

In this session from the 2016 NSCA Coaches Conference, the Sports Science and Performance Manager for the Seattle Sounders Major League Soccer (MLS) team, David Tenney, discusses the “high performance model” in the American elite sports environment. Tenney delves into how this model impacts hierarchy and daily decision making, as well as the obstructions that many organizations face, how this model can help to drive decision making and optimize training strategies, and the different strategies that can help make this happen.

Research shows that the appropriate integration of resistance training into the endurance athlete’s training can result in significantly better performance when compared to classic endurance training plans that focus only on aerobic endurance.

In this lecture from the NSCA's 2013 Coaches Conference, Dr. Brian Gearity talks about the impact that coaching can have on athletic performance.