Professional Journals: The Trainer’s Best Kept Secret

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By Sal | January 6, 2010



Refer to, and rely on, professional journals on a regular basis and you will continually improve as a personal trainer and strength coach.

If you have designs on being a serious strength and conditioning professional you must be certified by, and be a member of, the National Strength and Conditioning Association, (NSCA), American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and/or USA Weightlifting.  These organizations represent the gold standard for personal trainer certification and, just as importantly, the continuing education of their certified members and members-at-large.  Personal trainers and strength coaches should read their journals regularly.

I attended a conference several years ago, and a very high profile strength professional made a comment that most people in the field are lucky if they read one or two research-based articles per month given the demands of our profession.  I was pretty surprised that this trainer didn’t urge us to do a better job of keeping up with the vast amount of research that is at our disposal thanks to the efforts of these first-rate organizations.

Well I guess that’s what I’m here to do.  The information given to us by these organizations providing the personal trainer certification can do more to enrich us from a training standpoint than any other action we take.  It requires a little discipline and a little effort to set some time aside every week to review these publications. The expense associated with attending a national conference can be prohibitive, but it costs less than a few cents per day to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered within the pages of these journals.

The NSCA and ACSM both publish educational journals that members receive for free and are far superior to any other publications offered - for a price - by other certifying organizations.  The NSCA offers both certified and non-certified 2-year memberships at a little over $200 that gives access to their four, must-have publications:

• Strength and Conditioning Journal (bi-monthly),
• Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (bi-monthly),
• Performance Training Journal (monthly)
• Tactical Strength and Conditioning Report (bi-monthly)

Members also get access to the NSCA’s voluminous on-line library of back issues of their publications.

The ACSM offers a similar membership option that provides subscriptions to three journals:

• Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise
• Exercise and Sports Science Reviews
• Sports Medicine Bulletin

You can access and search these journals on-line, as well.

Professional strength coaches and personal trainers will improve themselves, and improve their business, if they make an effort to read their professional journals.

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