Colorado Springs, CO – The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) is proud to announce a new partnership with the National Basketball Strength and Conditioning Association (NBSCA). The agreement establishes a mutually beneficial relationship between the two associations that will support each organization’s mission to improve athletic performance and fitness.

Stuart Hart, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for women’s basketball at the University of Nebraska, talks to the former NSCA Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Scott Caulfield, about his journey from high school athlete to personal trainer to volunteer coach to full-time college strength and conditioning coach. Topics under discussion include a day in the life at the University of Nebraska, building relationships throughout the entire athletic staff, and the value of going to conferences for both educational and networking reasons. Find Stuart on Twitter: @No_DaysOff06 or Instagram: @strength_byhart

Eric McMahon, Assistant MLB Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Texas Rangers Major League Baseball (MLB) team, talks to the NSCA Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Scott Caulfield, about his path to becoming an assistant strength and conditioning coach in MLB. Topics under discussion include utilizing the NSCA in helping his career development, velocity-based training, and managing a wide range of player profiles in the MLB. Find Eric McMahon on Twitter: @EricMcMahonCSCS or @rangerstrength and on Instagram: @rangerstrength | Find Scott on Instagram: @coachcaulfield

The playing field has changed in collegiate athletics, but Kaz Kazadi knows the keys to longevity. Get to know the Texas Christian University (TCU) Assistant Athletic Director of Football Human Performance, renowned for his ability to inspire athletes. Follow his roots from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) to playing for the National Football League (NFL) Los Angeles Rams — later becoming a “roaming gladiator” in the Canadian Football League (CFL) and NFL Europe to secure tenure. As a leader in the weight room, strength and conditioning was a natural transition. He recalls choosing a graduate assistantship to embody his “long money” philosophy of purpose-driven education, networking, and positivity. Kazadi compares new Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policies to free agency and talent acquisition versus recruiting. Additionally, he drills decision-making and delayed gratification as players transition into adulthood. He concludes with advice for creating a coaching network and career vision. Connect with Coach Kaz by email: kaz.kazadi@tcu.edu | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs and LinkedIn: @ericmcmahoncscs

This article provides a review of sessions presented at the 2019 National Basketball Strength and Conditioning Association (NBSCA) Performance Summit including strength and conditioning methods and coaching strategies, in-season strength programming, force plate assessment, injury prevention, and player monitoring.

If you want to manage the performance of assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, you better know what you’re doing. At the elite and professional levels of sport, strength and conditioning coaches are responsible for managing the performance of teams’ most valuable assets – The Athletes.

This NSCA Coach article explores how combining strength and plyometric training can improve volleyball hitters’ vertical jump and power. Visit NSCA online to read more on athletic performance and sports science.

The exerciser with 8 to 12 months of training experience can begin to include exercise complexes that combine trunk movement patterns with multijoint movements. Single-plane and multiplane movements can be performed using both open- and closed-chain exercises.

Agility is a key and complex concept within team sports performance. Because of its multidimensional nature, agility benefits from perceptual and cognitive skills as well as physical capacity (e.g., ability to exert acceleration, deceleration, and changes of direction). Agility should be integrated in different and complementary ways in team sports training. From more analytical to more ecological tasks, there is a need to comprehend the respective adaptations and identify how to integrate such a spectrum and, eventually, combine them in the training process and manage it accordingly to the player’s needs. Based on this premise, the purpose of this article is to present alternative methods and recommendations that may help to develop agility in field-based invasion sports. The main concepts pertaining to agility and associated capacities will be explored. Afterward, a proposal for a more analytical approach based on the use of cones and ladders will be introduced, as well as approaches based on small-sided games. Finally, an integration of agility training and a combination of approaches will be presented using soccer as an example.

Steve Hess, Chief Performance Officer at Panorama Orthopedics and Spine Center, talks to the NSCA Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Scott Caulfield, about creating buy-in with sport coaches and athletes, becoming one of the first National Basketball Association (NBA) strength and conditioning coaches, and staying current in an ever-changing field.