National Council on Strength & Fitness - NCSF

National Council on Strength & Fitness - NCSF Setting Standards, Developing Professionals, and Serving the Public through Education and Certification
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A previously sedentary sixty-year-old who starts training is working on two different timelines. Total arterial compli...
09/10/2026

A previously sedentary sixty-year-old who starts training is working on two
different timelines.

Total arterial compliance, blood pressure, and cardiac afterload improved with even a modest lifelong dose of two to three sessions a week. Similar improvements were reported after one year of endurance training in previously sedentary seniors. The functional components of arterial compliance are more readily influenced by exercise training.

Aortic structure runs slower. One year of training at over two hundred minutes a week of moderate and high-intensity work did not substantially improve biological aortic age in previously sedentary seniors. Age-related changes in large elastic vessel structure are not reversible by exercise training alone when initiated later in life. One theory is that lifelong vigorous endurance exercise inhibits the remodeling of the aorta toward stiffness, and that the effect accrues across a lifetime of training — which is why one year has little impact.

How much weekly exercise it takes to keep an artery compliant depends on the size of the artery.A cross-sectional study ...
09/08/2026

How much weekly exercise it takes to keep an artery compliant depends on the size of the artery.

A cross-sectional study of 102 seniors with more than twenty-five years of consistent exercise history sorted them by weekly frequency: sedentary (fewer than two sessions), casual (two to three), committed (four to five), and Masters athletes (six to seven plus regular competition).

At the casual dose, carotid stiffness, left ventricular afterload, and central blood pressures were lower than in the sedentary group. Central arterial stiffness was not. Biological aortic age and central pulse wave velocity only differed from sedentary at the committed dose and above - four to five sessions a week, each longer than thirty minutes.

Peripheral arterial stiffness showed no significant difference at any dose. This is cross-sectional data on lifelong exercise histories, not a training trial.

Sources: NCSF — What Does Science Reveal About Heart Health and Exercise Frequency — NCSF Blog, 2018. Shibata, S., et al. — The Effect of Lifelong Exercise Frequency on Arterial Stiffness — The Journal of Physiology, 2018

When a client starts a GLP-1, the resistance training floor moves. Programs should emphasize hypertrophy and strength t...
09/02/2026

When a client starts a GLP-1, the resistance training floor moves.

Programs should emphasize hypertrophy and strength training matched to the individual's capabilities. Higher loads and higher volumes are what demonstrate effective lean mass maintenance, and they should be applied consistently alongside the pharmaceutical therapy.

Strength training volume should exceed the Guidelines for Americans, at least three days a week.

Nutrition is the other half of it. These drugs significantly lower food intake, which is why protein and micronutrient sufficiency has to be checked rather than assumed.

One caveat worth stating plainly. Most of the research on GLP-1 receptor agonists and exercise has looked at aerobic training, and less is known about how GLP-1 signaling affects skeletal muscle adaptations to resistance exercise. The figures for supervised resistance training past ten weeks - roughly 3 kg of lean mass and 25% strength, in both men and women - come from the resistance training literature generally, not from trials in patients on these drugs.

Lean mass loss associated with GLP-1 treatment runs to roughly 10%, or about 6 kg. In aging terms, that equates to a dec...
08/28/2026

Lean mass loss associated with GLP-1 treatment runs to roughly 10%, or about 6 kg. In aging terms, that equates to a decade or more.

The scale of it varies across studies. Semaglutide alone over 20 weeks produced reductions in both fat and lean mass, about 5 kg and 2 kg respectively.

Maintaining muscle mass and function as people age is crucial to avoiding sarcopenia and osteoporosis, and both are strongly linked to morbidity and mortality. Which is what makes lean mass the variable to track through a course of treatment.

Aerobic exercise appears to interact positively with GLP-1 treatment here. In that same 20-week study, no further declines in muscle mass were observed when treatment was combined with cycling.

A 16-week obesity trial paired GLP-1 treatment with a diet and exercise program built to the Guidelines for Americans. F...
08/25/2026

A 16-week obesity trial paired GLP-1 treatment with a diet and exercise program built to the Guidelines for Americans. Fat-free mass still came down 2.3 kg, against 1.5 kg.

Guidelines-level activity was insufficient to prevent muscle mass loss during treatment.

Exercise is recommended alongside GLP-1 receptor agonist treatment. What that recommendation does not settle is the dose. This finding marks one end of it - the general activity floor sits below the line.

The strength training recommendation that follows sits above the guidelines, at least three days a week.

For a working coach: a client on a GLP-1 who is meeting the activity guidelines is not, on this evidence, doing enough to hold lean mass.

The greatest force acting on a bone during activity is muscle contraction.Muscles work synergistically. When one side of...
08/17/2026

The greatest force acting on a bone during activity is muscle contraction.

Muscles work synergistically. When one side of a synergy is meaningfully stronger or tighter than its partner, the stress arriving at the bone attachment is unequal, and that inequality repeats with every stride. On easy days as well as hard days. Over thousands of repetitions it accumulates.

This is the contributor that tends to go unexamined in athletes who are otherwise doing everything right. Progression is conservative, footwear is appropriate, nutrition is handled, and the stress fracture still happens. Muscle imbalance may be the cause nobody screened for.

For the working coach: when a client with a clean training history develops bone stress, imbalance testing belongs in the workup, with resistance training and flexibility work to correct what it finds.

The most common error in rebound box jump training: box height keeps climbing while movement speed drops, particularly d...
08/14/2026

The most common error in rebound box jump training: box height keeps climbing while movement speed drops, particularly during the amortization phase - the ground contact between jumps.

Rebound work at moderate heights, around 50% of max jump height, exists to train reactive strength, turnover speed, and center-of-mass control. Two focus points protect those qualities: both feet land at the same time, and ground contact speed stays the emphasis, not box contact time. That second point is very important when working in the frontal plane.

For lateral repeat jumps, start lower than sagittal-plane heights and increase the rate of movement before considering any height change.

For the working coach: watch the amortization phase. That is where the error shows first.

For maximal box jumps: a box above 70% of max jump height, a target line on the box, a stepdown dismount, and rest betwe...
08/13/2026

For maximal box jumps: a box above 70% of max jump height, a target line on the box, a stepdown dismount, and rest between efforts.

The height above 70% provides adequate demand to elicit maximal force and power without chasing near-max boxes.

The horizontal indicator goes 2–4 inches in from the edge of the box, and the heels must clear it for a successful jump. It works the way sight marks work during repeat broad jumps - the increased afferent (incoming sensory) data encourages elevated efferent (motor output) outcomes.

The stepdown dismount pays twice. It reduces residual impact stress, and it reduces risk for injury.

A 20-second recovery between reps of maximal efforts provides for improved effort across multi-rep maximal work. 90-second + between sets.

Combined, these raise the likelihood of maximal performance for the intended adaptation.

Box height, use of the stretch-shortening cycle, and jump direction all change the adaptation response - and the heights...
08/10/2026

Box height, use of the stretch-shortening cycle, and jump direction all change the adaptation response - and the heights that matter are percentages of an individual's maximal jump height, not fixed box sizes.

Above 70% of max.

Countermovement jumps to a high box, for vertical and horizontal power development. This range provides adequate height to elicit maximal force and power, with rest between maximal efforts.

Around 50% of max.

Rebound work. The rebound effect improves reactive strength, turnover speed, and center-of-mass control. Performed forward-to-backward or laterally - lateral variants elicit a greater response from the frontal-plane stabilizers and global movers such as the abductors, and build body control through rehearsal.

At 10–15% of max - a 3- or 6-inch box.

Repeat jumps here promote ankle stiffening and reactive stiffening within the trunk for enhanced transitional rigidity. Commonly programmed as physical readiness for speed, agility, and quickness training after a general warm-up, in 10-second bouts with ground contact speed as the initial focus, progressing to maximal contact speed off the ground and box.

The decision to use box jumps rests on the exerciser's capabilities and the adaptation goal. The key is the competence and speed of the movement at transitions.

A maximal-effort jump to a lower box can produce the same peak outputs as a jump to a near-maximal one.In one study, eli...
08/06/2026

A maximal-effort jump to a lower box can produce the same peak outputs as a jump to a near-maximal one.

In one study, elite female athletes performed maximal-intention jumps at 70% and 90% of their maximal jump height. Researchers found no difference in peak center-of-mass displacement, peak force, peak power, peak rate of force development, or concentric time to takeoff.

Their conclusion: with no performance difference, the added risk of failure at high boxes "cannot be justified."

That is one study in elite female athletes, so calibrate accordingly - but the practical rule holds: you do not need 100% of attainable height to elicit a maximal adaptation response. Above 70% of max jump height provides adequate demand for maximal force and power.

In practice: if a client can clear a 36-inch box once, maximal jumps to a 30-inch box elicit the same internal response with a lower threat of injury.

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