From the 2020 NSCA Coaches Conference, Jim Davis, Founder of the Good Athlete Project, presents his mission for maximizing the potential of athletics as education and the many components that create the framework of a high order performance goal.

This article is the second part of a two-part series that considers the potential role strength and conditioning coaches have in developing student-athlete leadership.

Athletes engage in training programs that develop physical and physiological attributes to improve performance over time. However, ensuring athletes are optimally prepared just before competition is also of utmost importance. Indeed, such approaches may often adopt 1 or more strategies in the days, hours, and minutes preceding competition, including exercise priming, active warmup, and/or postactivation performance enhancing (PAPE) activities. Despite a plethora of discrete research, such information seems poorly synthesized, making it difficult for coaches and athletes to implement optimal evidence based physical preparation approaches in many sporting contexts. This article aims to provide a scoping overview of evidence, facilitate discussion, and where possible, propose practical exercise based recommendations that may be useful leading up to (~48 hours–~1 minute) tasks with a short or prolonged endurance component or requiring repeated intermittent efforts (e.g., team based field sports). Well-timed and –designed activities can facilitate several aspects of physical performance, potentially improve athletes’ psychological state(s) and mental preparedness. The benefits of a warm-up are most well documented, but priming and PAPE strategies also warrant consideration. It is intended that the evidence and suggestions presented will be useful for strength and conditioning professionals preparing athletes for competition.

This article from Personal Training Quarterly reviews tart cherry supplementation and its role in strength training. Visit NSCA online to read more on athletic performance and sport nutrition.

Biomarkers: Potential Applications for the Military “Soldier-Athlete”

CC 2020

In recent years, performance and prevention strategies have grown to include monitoring training load (TL) to understand fatigue and the potential effects of fatigue on training adaptation and performance.

This article from TSAC 76, describes first responder wellness and the effects of PPE on occupational performance. Visit NSCA online to learn about exercise science and tactical fitness.

This PTQ article reviews scientific literature on concurrent training and examines whether combining aerobic and resistance exercise has meaningful impacts on performance. Visit the NSCA online to read more about personal training.

The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) announces today the release of the organization’s newest textbook, the NSCA’s Essentials of Sport Science. This cutting-edge publication brings together many of the world’s top experts from the sport science field to build a definitive resource for the profession.