This article summarizes the adaptations of cartilage via anaerobic training.

Through a well-designed resistance training program, firefighter recruits can gain the movement skills, confidence to exercise, and foundational strength/physiological adaptations that they need for a long and healthy career.

This article briefly reviews the importance of the stretch-shortening cycle in power production.

This book excerpt is from Developing Agility and Quickness, Second Edition and goes over change of direction drills to help with speed and power development as well as an athletes cognitive and decision making skills.

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.

Understanding how the body adapts to the overload of aerobic exercise is critical to designing effective exercise training programs, monitoring exercise responses and progress, and assessing training outcomes.

This article briefly describes how individuals can have the same training program, but have large fluctuations in the adaptation responses due to genetic and life style factors.

Developing safe and effective exercise training programs requires the application of abundant training variables and the implementation of appropriate progression for each variable. Importantly, the outcomes of each training program are the product of these variables and their progression, so practitioners are keen to select methodologies and overload strategies that effectively support their target training outcomes. One such training variable is mechanical loading, which describes the forces of gravity, resistance, and muscle contraction and how these forces affect musculoskeletal adaptations. Numerous research articles and texts have been published regarding mechanical loading and its effects on exercise adaptations; however, these findings can be arduous to organize, which requires additional time investment by professionals. Developing a succinct system is critical because practitioners face clients and patients with a wide range of physical skills and challenges, and having an easily referenced loading guide may assist them in designing appropriate strength and conditioning or rehabilitation programs. Thus, the purpose of this review is to define and describe the mechanical loading continuum and its individual components to better assist the practitioner in identifying appropriate exercise modes and progression strategies.

This article provides personal insight and practical ways that mindfulness training can be incorporated into a physical training (PT) plan.

This PTQ article discusses current research examining the relationship between training volume and muscle hypertrophy and provides guidelines for optimizing training outcomes. Visit NSCA online to read more on exercise science and sport performance.