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ISSA (International Sports Sciences Association): Sports Conditioning Instructor

Course program

Sports Conditioning Instructor is a self-paced specialization from ISSA for personal trainers who want to work with athletic clients. The course teaches you how to break down a specific sport or physical activity and translate it into a training program that develops the strength, conditioning, and performance an athlete needs.

This course is built for personal training professionals who want to specialize in working with athletes. ISSA pitches it directly at trainers whose clients have sport-specific goals — improving performance in their chosen sport, staying on a team, or competing at a higher level. It assumes you already have a personal training background.

The curriculum centers on sport-specific training methodology. You’ll gain an advanced understanding of how training methods affect an athlete’s fitness, conditioning, and performance, and learn the process trainers use to break down any sport or physical activity into its component demands.

You’ll learn how to identify and collect the performance information that matters most for each athlete, recognize where additional instruction is needed, and translate that analysis into a comprehensive training program. The course covers how to address sport-specific needs — whether that means upper or lower body strength, power, speed, or endurance — and how to use the same approach for individual clients or full teams in a given sport. The training includes online course material, course videos, and course worksheets to support your study.

ISSA delivers this course through its own education team rather than a single named instructor: industry professionals break complex concepts into clear, actionable steps in video and audio lessons, and a dedicated student support team stays with you through to the open-book exam. ISSA has been educating fitness professionals since 1988.

The course is fully self-paced and online. You enroll, get access within 24 hours, and study from anywhere using ISSA’s online course material, videos, and worksheets. Customer support is available throughout. There are no live sessions or fixed schedule, and the program is delivered with support from ISSA’s partner Train Fitness.

After passing the online open-book exam and uploading a CPR card, you receive an e-Certificate as an ISSA Specialist in Strength and Conditioning. The course is built to help you work credibly as a strength coach and apply advanced programming for strength, speed, and endurance, along with periodization and injury prevention.

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