Strength and conditioning professionals must be proactive in fighting the challenges associated with time constraints and overtraining with their youth athletes. By applying the strategies explained in this article, a strength and conditioning professional can help a youth athlete perform at a high level when it matters the most.

Brett Bartholomew talks about the risks posed to athletes who are partaking in randomized and unstructured training practices often supervised by non-certified professionals. This session from the NSCA’s 2017 Coaches Conference will help you identify ways in which a “skills not drills” approach towards movement training design can not only lead to enhanced transfer of training to the competitive environment, but also better retention on behalf of the athlete as they progress through future training.

Growth and maturation are two important processes that occur throughout an individual’s childhood and adolescent years. The purpose of this article is to review the dimensions, proportions, stature, body mass, and maturational events of all female pediatric athletes in general. It also serves to identify how early sport specialization and different modes of training of the female pediatric athlete affects her growth and maturation.

This infographic outlines a two-step approach to resistance training for endurance athletes.

The rise of adaptive and Paralympic sports provides an opportunity for strength and conditioning professionals to share their expertise with a wider range of athletes. This article summarizes working with a physical therapist to build an annual training program with a focus on periodization for a Paralympic discus thrower.

Monitoring training load is essential for determining if athletes are adapting positively or negatively to their training program. This article goes over the various measurement metrics and includes recommendations to monitor training load for football athletes.

Learn about programming tactics you can use for your strength/power athletes who are preparing for the 2018 Olympic Games. Brad DeWeese, coach for several Team USA athletes, shares his first-hand experience preparing athletes for the Olympic Games in this session from the NSCA’s 2018 Coaches Conference.

This section from the book, Developing Endurance, gives an overview of how to plan and develop a program for endurance athletes by following four steps.

Strength and conditioning professionals should consider mental skills training when creating a training program to maximize performance. Developing mental skills is a very long and challenging process; however, the benefits are worth it. Utilizing these skills will put the athlete in a position to succeed in sport, as well as life.

This excerpt briefly explains nutrition periodization for different training cycles to help maximize performance for endurance athletes.