This article applies LTAD principles to guide the process of generating an athletic profile (part 1) and sample program design (part 2) for a middle school athlete and a high school athlete.

Joe Kenn, MA, CSCS,*D, RSCC, spoke at the NSCA's 2012 National Conference on using movement screen to identify weakness in athletes.

The first in a planned article series to review essential considerations of each Functional Movement Screen (FMS™) pattern, this article will examine the FMS active straight leg raise (ASLR).

Static and dynamic conditioning of the core musculature is important in activities of daily living and in sport. This book excerpt includes sample static exercises to strengthen the core muscles responsible for stabilization against, or movement through, the four basic movement patterns.

The importance of recognizing a closed-chain activity lies in the fact that the motions of multiple joints are coupled. Weakness at any one joint will consequently limit performance of the entire movement.

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.

This second article of a two-part series continues the discussion of long-term athletic development (LTAD). This article provides practical application of the LTAD principles by examining two sample programs.

Learn to identify and understand the key factors of movement competency and skill acquisition, and how to develop an effective motor learning process using foundational movement patterns. In this session from the NSCA’s 2016 Personal Trainers Conference, Joe Sansalone explains how improving motor control and foundational movement patterns leads to optimal one-arm push-up skill acquisition.

This article outlines some very basic procedures for video analysis that strength and conditioning professionals can use to identify the physical demands of specific activities.

In this session from the 2014 NSCA Personal Trainers Conference, Barton Bishop explains how to utilize the body’s natural way of learning movement. This will help athletes become more efficient at movement for improvements in exercise and athletic performance, and help in preventing future injuries.