Meet the 2026 NSCA Career Awards recipients and learn about their leadership, service, and contributions, which will be honored at the NSCA National Conference.

This is the NSCA’s Coaching Podcast, where strength and conditioning coaches share their experience, lessons learned, and advice about how to thrive in a highly competitive profession.

From the 2022 NSCA’s Coaches Conference, Head of Combat Sports at the Star, Matt Crawley, discusses the importance of sleep in athletes, examines some high performance case studies involving sleep tracking, and provides sleep health resources for strength and conditioning coaches.

This continuing education opportunity explores a variety of topics as they pertain to running. To earn your CEUs, it will be necessary to review several articles and pass a 50-question quiz. Please note: this quiz awards 1.0 CEU (10 contact hours). Articles 1. Running in Cold Weather: Exercise Performance and Cold Injury Risk 2. Running in the Heat: Performance Consequences and Strategies to Prepare for Hot-Weather Racing 3. Influence of Gait Retraining on Running Economy: A Review and Potential Applications 4. Stiffness in Running: A Narrative Integrative Review 5. Keeping Pace: A Practitioner-Focused Review of Pacing Strategies in Running 6. The Importance of the Foot and Ankle in Athletic Performance

The CSCS examination reflects the most current and accepted KSA standards within the health and fitness industries. Further, the examinations may be developed from references that may be in addition to resources listed below. NSCA materials survey important content area, but are not a comprehensive study of the Exercise Science.

Resistance training (RT) is a nonpharmacological complement to cancer treatments due to its effectiveness in attenuating sarcopenia, cardiotoxicity, fatigue, and emotional disorders common in oncology patients. To adequately program and evaluate the acute or long-term effects of this type of training, a proper evaluation of the patients’ strength levels is necessary. Strength evaluations traditionally applied to this population required reaching muscle or technical failure, which could increase their discomfort levels, risk of injury, or other complications associated with the disease. In this regard, this manuscript described different dynamic and isometric evaluations recommended to accurately and safely evaluate the strength of the oncology population. Concerning dynamic evaluations, the velocity based method is recommended to determine the capacity of the patient to apply force against maximal (i.e., 1 repetition maximum) and submaximal loads. The sit-to-stand or vertical jump tests are also proposed as alternatives to evaluate dynamic strength using body weight. For isometric assessments, the knee extension and handgrip tests could complement dynamic evaluations or replace them for patients with very low strength levels. Besides describing in depth the aforementioned evaluations, the current review proposes important methodological aspects to ensure their accurate, reliable, and safe implementation.