As Director of Sport Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Heather Farmer spearheads comprehensive integration efforts. This includes ensuring every stakeholder, from sport performance staff to academic advisors, has a seat at the table. Farmer also outlines developing an internship and graduate assistantship program to meet staffing needs and offer opportunities for practical experience. She recounts how leveraging relationships — not data — has been her key to scalability. Additionally, Farmer recognizes that to make an impact, she must meet athletes and sport coaches where they are, which she uncovers through “highlights” and “hurdles.” She suggests that sport scientists with strength and conditioning backgrounds, like herself, are uniquely equipped to excel due to their communication skills. Farmer and McMahon also discuss avoiding “analysis paralysis” and how to incorporate data to elevate the student-athlete experience — an unignorable factor as athletes bring an element of “self” in the age of name, image and likeness (NIL). Reach out to Heather by email at: heather.farmer@unlv.edu | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or LinkedIn: @ericmcmahoncscs

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.

There can be no doubt that protein is important and this article reviews the current research to help further understand the recommendations for protein intake.

A comprehensive but realistic battery of tests can reveal those who are sufficiently fit and athletic to immediately assimilate into training with the least possible likelihood of failure or injury. The Occupational Physical Assessment Test (OPAT) was designed to identify those individuals and screen out those who require further physical development.

For emerging athletes to move properly and develop athletic skills, they must first develop proficiency in fundamental motor skills. The ABCs of athleticism, therefore, must reflect the development of fundamental motor skills first, and specific athletic skills second.

This article features the recharge skate—an in-season hockey conditioning drill, designed by the authors, to maintain hockey-specific energy system fitness throughout the competitive season.

This article discusses overtraining risk factors in endurance athletes and provides strategies for optimizing effective programming. Visit NSCA online to learn more about athletic performance.

This column reviews recent literature that investigated the appropriateness of a commonly utilized on-duty exercise training modality for firefighters and describes the occupational demands of specialist tactical police officers.

Both unilateral and bilateral training should be used to optimally develop basketball players. This article compares single-leg and double-leg training options and provides considerations and potential implications for training basketball athletes.

This excerpt from NSCA’s Essentials of Sport Science highlights the importance of quantifying training load for both programming and monitoring an athlete’s progression or regression over time.