The NSCA Collegiate Program of Distinction honors colleges and universities that demonstrate the highest standards in strength and conditioning.

This excerpt from NSCA’s Guide to Sport and Exercise Nutrition discusses carbohydrate loading strategies for athletes to achieve optimal athletic performance.

Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD) models have provided a youth sport framework for more than 2 decades, aimed at improving skill progression, training outcomes, and athlete preparation. Although influential, traditional LTAD approaches are limited by their sport-centric orientation, linear design, and focus on elite performance, leaving them less relevant for most youth and adults who do not pursue competitive sport. In response, we propose reframing LTAD as Long-Term Activity Development (LTActD), an accessible and flexible model designed to promote lifelong engagement in physical activity, including recreation, exercise, and sport. LTActD emphasizes 5 dynamic phases—Explore, Develop, Apply, Sustain, and Thrive—that accommodate diverse pathways, periods of inactivity, and opportunities to re-enter active living at any age. Represented as a curvy road, the new model underscores that participation in physical activity is rarely linear, more like a winding journey shaped by health, motivation, environment, and social context. LTActD bridges sport science and public health, positioning physical activity as a lifelong resource for health, independence, and fulfillment. LTActD offers a practical framework to empower individuals of all ages and abilities to discover meaningful ways to move, re-engage, and embrace active living throughout the life course.

Ultimately, there is no “one magical exercise” that can be programmed to appropriately develop all physical training adaptations required in competition, but the JOP Matrix can be used to help address several necessary adaptations needed for lacrosse players.

This consensus statement provides specific conditioning recommendations with the intent of ending conditioning-related morbidity and deaths of collegiate athletes.

Discovery Canyon High School’s Sam Melendrez explains how experts in his profession are having a profound impact on youth in sports.

This article explores the process and reasoning behind integrating an athletic trainer within a fire department to provide clinical care and injury prevention protocols.

This excerpt from Developing Speed describes an agility drill that aims to develop acceleration and defensive positioning.