Early sport specialization involves physically immature children participating in intensive year-round training and/or competition for a single sport. The lack of sport exposure and diversification during the developmental years may underlie the increased risk of overuse injuries, blunting of motor skill development, psychosocial issues, overtraining syndrome, burnout, and potential dropout from sport. With increasing number of youth choosing, or being encouraged, to specialize at an early age, we aim to provide evidence based recommendations for the integration of strength and conditioning into the development programs of young athletes who participate in sports with a culture of early specialization. In addition to the principles of programming, strategies are provided relative to monitoring of growth, maturation, and training load to illustrate the potential complexities of attempting to optimize long-term athletic development in early specializing athletes.

This book excerpt from Developing Agility and Quickness describes the windows of opportunity in youth athletes to time progressions in speed and agility training with their biological and chronological development.

Robert Linkul presents, "Developing a Career as a Certified Personal Trainer"

This article discusses the balance between muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and muscle protein breakdown (MPB) to help individuals better achieve their goals in muscle hypertrophy.

Castle View High School Strength and Conditioning Coach says science is leading to safer training methods being used in high school weight rooms.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the different opinions regarding the validity of early sport specialization as opposed to diversification, specifically the effect these two methods have on injuries, motor development, skill acquisition, and social and psychological aspects.

This article describes the long-term athletic development programming pillars and suggests practical applications for strength and conditioning practitioners.

CASCE accreditation is chosen by programs looking to be seen as a leader in strength and conditioning education.

The “five Ss” of trainability and performance are critical periods of development that all youth strength and conditioning coaches should consider when creating a training program. Coaches should take advantage of each window to maximize a youth athlete’s potential and help ensure a long athletic career.