This excerpt briefly describes key aspects of this nonessential amino acid including its effect on the body, efficacy, and adverse effects.

This article addresses emerging research that both supports and refutes betaine’s capacity to promote muscular adaptations.

The purpose of this article is to present a brief review of research on the safety and efficacy of caffeine used by athletes participating in anaerobic-dominant sports.

Some of the major misconceptions concerning Olympic-style weightlifting for sport are addressed in this article, providing evidence-based recommendations to better implement the snatch, clean and jerk, and their derivatives in the training of high school and collegiate athletes.

This article is the 11th in a continuing series of tactical strength and conditioning (TSAC) research reviews. It is designed to bring awareness to new research findings of relevance to tactical strength and conditioning communities.

This article aims to explain why integrating multiple tests such as Anaerobic Speed Reserve (ASR), Intermittent Fitness Test (IFT), and Maximum Aerobic Speed (MAS) can provide a comprehensive evaluation of soccer players’ fitness levels and help to design effective training programs tailored to their individual needs.

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.

This excerpt from NSCA's Essentials of Tactical Strength and Conditioning aims to educate on some fundamentals of energy systems training in tactical personnel.

This TSAC Report article highlights the need for recovery strategies to support both physical readiness and psychological resilience in military training. Visit NSCA online to learn more about tactical athletes.