The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) is proud to announce the recipients of the organization’s 2025 Tactical Awards.

The official position statement of the NSCA on long-term athletic development.

The top concern of strength coaches should always be athlete safety. For this reason, the NSCA has compiled a list of resources to raise the standard of care when working as a strength coach at any level. By reading and sharing these examples of standards and guidelines, policies and procedures, position statements on vital topics, mental health best practices, and more, strength coaches can push to increase the safety of athletes around the world.

This excerpt from NSCA’s Essentials of Sport Science highlights the importance of quantifying training load for both programming and monitoring an athlete’s progression or regression over time.

The purpose of this article is to review various gravitational running (GR) techniques from an evidence-based approach, then recommend whether to include GR techniques in the training of tactical 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.

Get NSCA's Essentials of Training Special Populations — a trusted resource for students, personal trainers, exercise science professionals, and CSPS® exam prep.

The purpose of this article is to propose a training model for the aging firefighter to improve the athletic qualities of aerobic fitness and muscular strength so that they may remain healthier longer into their careers.

The goal of this brief review is to describe what classifies as high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and summarize the potential benefits for various populations: athletic, general, and clinical.

Ground-based free weight lifts, especially the explosive Olympic-style lifts, are highly recommended for athletic conditioning for the core muscles. They can provide a moderately unstable stimulus to augment activation of the core and limb muscles, while still providing maximal or near maximal strength, velocity, and power output.