Dietary fat has both long-term and short-term effects on an athlete and athletic performance. “Fat loading” as a strategy to improve athletic performance remains unproven.

By understanding the means by which athletes encounter risk, strength and conditioning professionals can integrate exercise programs that may offset one of the steps toward injuries.

Scenarios that provide a stimulus relevant to the sporting environment may help athletes develop better anticipation skills through the refinement of search strategies, response speed and accuracy, pattern recognition, and decision-making abilities.

The NSCA is a nonprofit association dedicated to advancing strength, conditioning, & related sport science professions.

This article discusses the effects of instability on force and velocity throughout the body.

As Director of Sport Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Heather Farmer spearheads comprehensive integration efforts. This includes ensuring every stakeholder, from sport performance staff to academic advisors, has a seat at the table. Farmer also outlines developing an internship and graduate assistantship program to meet staffing needs and offer opportunities for practical experience. She recounts how leveraging relationships — not data — has been her key to scalability. Additionally, Farmer recognizes that to make an impact, she must meet athletes and sport coaches where they are, which she uncovers through “highlights” and “hurdles.” She suggests that sport scientists with strength and conditioning backgrounds, like herself, are uniquely equipped to excel due to their communication skills. Farmer and McMahon also discuss avoiding “analysis paralysis” and how to incorporate data to elevate the student-athlete experience — an unignorable factor as athletes bring an element of “self” in the age of name, image and likeness (NIL). Reach out to Heather by email at: heather.farmer@unlv.edu | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or LinkedIn: @ericmcmahoncscs

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

Research on the benefits of using goals to increase athletic performance has shown that performance generally increases for athletes that use goals consistently. Learn how to move beyond generalities and see how a systematic goal setting approach can be paired with training athletes.

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.