Strength and Conditioning Knowledge Center

The Westside system, developed by Louie Simmons, differentiates three training methods: maximal effort, dynamic effort and repeated or repetition effort (Simmons, 2022). The difference between them is the load used, the velocity at which we move the bar and the fatigue reached, or how close we get to muscle failure. The ideal is not to …

What’s Dynamic Strength & Conditioning Training Dynamic strength and conditioning training are conducted with the objective of improving the ability to exert force repeatedly and continuously over time. Sessions include strength and fatigue endurance exercises (Wong, 1980). These exercises involve movement, unlike isometric strength training in which there is work, but the muscles and joints …

What’s The Force-Velocity Curve? In 1938, Hill reported a relationship between force and velocity in frog skeletal muscle and this formed a hyperbole (Hill, 1938). Since then, many researchers in the field of exercise physiology have been studying how strength training affects such a relationship between force and velocity (Sugi & Ohno, 2019). Gregory Haff …

Team sports make up a large part of the overall number of sports played in society. In fact, children and teenagers often focus on team sports such as soccer, basketball, volleyball, or handball, leaving aside other more individual sports such as athletics, swimming, tennis, or any contact sport. However, what children are not able to …

Sport has many positive aspects for kids and teens, as well as for adults. However, when it’s elevated to a high level, the psychological state of people, especially teenagers, must be very well controlled. If it is already difficult to manage stress, fatigue, pressure, training and all the other situations of daily life for an …

There Are as Many Performance Tests as Athletes Performance testing should be part of sports planning to obtain information about the athlete’s condition and the effectiveness of training. Recreational athletes train a few days a week because it is not their real way of life. Elite athletes train almost every day but cannot afford to …

How Interesting it is to Change Your Athletes’ Muscular Fibers? Skeletal muscle contains a heterogeneous composition of different fiber types on a continuum from slow to fast, which causes them to have different performances. Within each bundle of fiber types there are also structural and functional differences (Plotkin, Roberts, Roberts, Haun, & Schoenfeld, 2021). In …

VBT to Improve Strength and Conditioning (S&C) Velocity-based training (VBT) is one of the most exciting strategies for strength and conditioning (S&C) training. The use of increasing technology to measure the speed at which we move the load has made the association between VBT and S&C training a clear winning combination (Balsalobre-Fernandez & Torres-Ronda, 2021). …

What’s Undulating Strength Periodization?  Strength training results in numerous performance and health-related benefits in youth and adults. These benefits include improvements in athletic performance, musculoskeletal health, muscular strength, power and endurance, motor performance including jumping ability, balance and coordination, and cardiovascular and metabolic health (Faigenbaum et al., 2009). To obtain maximum benefits from strength training …

Muscle strength is a physical capacity that has proven to have great health and performance benefits. Several years ago, cardiovascular training was the goal of every athlete and every person when talking about physical exercise. In fact, “fads” such as jogging, running or spinning emerged. All of them aimed at improving cardiopulmonary capacity. The increase …

The world of personal and sports training has grown enormously in recent years. The practice of physical exercise and physical activity is intrinsic to human being. In fact, our ancestors used to make great physical efforts to hunt, plant, or move around, and the practice of physical exercise was common in human beings. So much …

There are many tips for strength and conditioning (S&C) training that I wish I had known about when I started my career in sports science. When you attend a university course or a weekend course, you receive theoretical and practical information about training, but nobody usually comments that you are going to spend many hours …