The purpose of this article is to address the key elements when designing a training program for firefighters, provide evidence for utilizing circuit training, and suggest recommendations on how to incorporate circuit training into the training program.

Competence, autonomy, and relatedness are three keys to promoting a more intrinsically motivated athlete. These components can be combined in nearly limitless ways, which is especially important for the long basketball season.

Contracted Human Performance and Optimization Coach of 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regimen Jeff Carroll talks to the NSCA Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Scott Caulfield, about his start in the field of strength and conditioning and his transition from professional athletes to a tactical population and setting. Topics under discussion include: Carroll’s career path, coaching professional athletes, transitioning to tactical strength and conditioning, and the future of tactical strength and conditioning.

This NSCA Coach article summarizes key findings on coach-focused strategies to help educators use resistance training to support healthy youth development. Visit NSCA online to read more on mental health and youth sports.

It is important in a coach’s journey to be motivated to find solutions instead of just unimportant problems. Steve Hess shares some of the lessons he has learned in his 21 years with the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

This article highlights the scientific evidence on exercises like the seated leg extension, leg curl, and adduction machines to highlight their potential benefits on enhanced performance and potentially reducing injury risk.

Elite sport often gets more attention, but youth training gives strength and conditioning coaches an earlier chance to build athletes’ competence and confidence. Kelli Brightwell specializes in youth development and brings more than a decade of sports training experience, including four years at Michael Johnson Performance. Brightwell defines peak height velocity as the period during which height increases fastest. She then explains why its timing can differ among teammates of the same age. So what should strength coaches test, and what do the results mean? The answer changes with each athlete’s maturity and training experience. Brightwell addresses the growth-spurt “awkward phase,” when familiar movement patterns can break down as an athlete adjusts to a changing body. She also considers how sport sampling can expand children’s range of physical skills and help them discover what they enjoy. Learn how maturation can affect movement, testing, and programming — and why young athletes need foundations before specialization.

There is no argument that periodization is successful, and that different models can be applied with success in different fashions. The question of how shift work really affects a periodized program—more specifically firefighter shift work—is less clear.

This article addresses emerging research that both supports and refutes betaine’s capacity to promote muscular adaptations.

This article considers some of the main differences between the training of Olympic weightlifters and the use of Olympic weightlifting exercises in strength training for sport.