The importance of physical fitness is never greater than when lives are at stake. Specifically, professionals in law enforcement, fire/rescue, and the military need fitness and tactical athleticism to efficiently respond to calls and complete missions regardless of the obstacles, mixed terrain, interference, and dangerous environmental conditions involved

Physical assessments have evolved as a result of developments in scientific research, equipment loads, operational environments, and doctrine.

This excerpt briefly discusses different assessments of internal and external load measures.

Velocity-based training (VBT) is an increasingly popular programming strategy used by strength and conditioning professionals to develop their athlete’s ability to express force rapidly. To implement the varying forms of VBT effectively within their training regimes, strength and conditioning professionals need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of strategies, such as predicting 1 repetition maximum using the load-velocity profile, modulating training loads using the load-velocity profile, and controlling training volume using the magnitude of velocity-loss. The aim of this review was to highlight these strengths and weaknesses and then provide practical examples of when each programming strategy may be most effectively implemented.

Justin Roethlingshoefer, Strength and Conditioning Coach at Miami University, talks about ways to utilize global positioning systems (GPS) and heart rate technology to identify and adjust loads for in-season time periods—and keep players fit and healthy—without creating fatigue. This is a recording of a session from the NSCA’s 2016 Hockey Clinic.

This infographic explains how to build a load-velocity profile for velocity-based training (VBT), and is the second of a three part series explaining the theory behind and application of VBT.

This article looks to explain why law enforcement recruits have higher incidences of lower extremity bone stress responses and stress fractures. It also explores injury mitigation pathways to increase the graduation rates among law enforcement academies.

NSCA Coach 11.3 is an exercise research article providing strength coaches, considerations to design effective sports performance programs for collegiate soccer.

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.

Integrating unbalanced load training into a strength or hypertrophy phase, or any workout program, can add a tremendous amount of demand on the lateral aspects of the core to help the athlete develop a strong core. Using unbalanced load training may help produce increases in athleticism, balance, and motor coordination without sacrificing strength or explosiveness.