By gathering information about potential risk factors associated with basketball injuries, strength and conditioning coaches can create individualized programs to help keep their basketball athletes healthy and performing at the best of their abilities.

There are many factors to consider in the planning and implementation of any strength and conditioning program. With proper planning, tactical facilitators may be successful in preparing potential soldiers for the APFT.

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.

Typically, a coach may follow a process in which they first identify the key performance indicators of their sport, determine the physical attributes that map back to them, and then distribute the development of those capacities over the allocated timeframe. Furthermore, effective training plans are based on a theoretical or biological basis for how we move and adapt to exercise stimuli, coupled with an understanding of how these are best sequenced, such that one stimulus and subsequent adaptation can potentiate the next. Thus, reverse or backward engineering, when appropriately converged with the plans of those devised around nutrition, conditioning, technical, and tactical training, for example, likely gives athletes the best chance of attaining their performance goals. The aim of this article is to describe the application of reverse engineering, exampling it within the context of developing an athlete who can demonstrate a high level of agility.

Learn about the pros and cons of popular diets, and how each diet will impact the training of your clients. In this session from the 2016 NSCA National Conference, sports nutritionist, Marie Spano explains the key factors that determine dieting success, and shares resources to help your clients decide which approach is best for them.

Learn about Loren Landow’s philosophy-based system of multidirectional training and explore how to best integrate multidirectional training to straight-line speed performance through a full progression of bilateral and unilateral exercises. In this session from the NSCA’s 2017 National Conference, Landow addresses the factors that influence agility with special attention to the feet and hips

Learn to identify and combat risk factors among high stress tactical personnel; how they affect performance, sleep, and recovery; and how to begin managing stress. In this session from the 2016 TSAC Annual Training, Jeff Nichols explains how to lay out a clear and concise process to evaluate stress and create a plan specific to each individual to combat the negative side effects of stress.

Netball is a team sport played worldwide. High-risk landing events containing biomechanical potential for noncontact knee soft-tissue injury (STI) occur frequently. Subsequently, noncontact knee STI is common after knee abduction collapse during landing tasks. Lower-limb mobility, strength, balance, movement, and hop test characteristics (intrinsic, modifiable risk factors) are associated with high-risk landing biomechanics and noncontact knee STI events. Such risk factors should be considered in netball-specific noncontact knee STI prevention preparticipation screening. Corresponding training methods should be included as indicated in netball-specific multimodal noncontact knee STI prevention programs. This article provides insight into noncontact knee injury–related aspects of netball and gives detailed suggestions for injury prevention screening and programming.

The article discusses the talent crisis that is currently plaguing United States first responders, public safety agencies, and military organizations, and concludes with highlights of select successful programs.

Repeated sprint ability (RSA) may be one of the most important factors to consider when developing strength and conditioning programs for high-intensity repeated sprint sports. In this session from the NSCA’s 2016 Coaches Conference, Ernie Rimer reviews the latest science behind RSA, compares the pros and cons of RSA protocols performed in the laboratory and in the field, and suggests methods to improve RSA.