Post Exam Thoughts · CSCS Accelerator Community

Post Exam Thoughts

Yesterday, I took the exam and passed the Practical Section with 98/110. However, I failed the Science Section by 1 point. 🙄

For me, I thought the Practical side of things would be the hardest section, but turns out not. So I want to list out a reflection on the exam and what to do differently for the Science section.

For the Practical

—> What Went Well

• For several days, I had reviewed all of the agility tests in the CSCS book + I watched videos on them. I am really glad I did because there were a lot of questions on them in the exam (which I was surprised about).

• Fortunately through my own coaching experience, I understood the faults to look for in the major lifts, like Back Squat, Front Squat, Bench, Clean and so on. I also knew the progressions for each, specifically the power clean and clean. I think if you don’t know what to look for, and how to progress these, you absolutely should as there are several questions / videos / photos on this.

• I understood what the exercise order should be for testing day and training day.

• I had a good understanding of what counts as power development, strength development, hypertrophy, and muscular endurance. And I’ve written programs on these already. There were questions like:

“ Sally has the below characteristics:

Height: 5’6

Weight: 124lbs

Vertical jump: 15”

1RM Back Squat: 145lb

What should Sally work on in her programming?”

• There were a few questions on nutrition I felt good with. Such as, referral to an RD, understanding how much protein a person needs, carb loading strategies, and issues to look for such as bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating (and which sport has the most at risk for these disorders).

What did not go as well:

• Facility rules. I’m a little disappointed in this one as I feel like I should know, but spacing between racks, policies and procedures in the S&C gym, who a club team should ask to use the S&C gym, role of an assistant S&C coach…😅

• I forgot some calculations for some of the nutrition questions. Specifically calculating caloric needs using body weight only (“Bill is a college athlete weighing 100kg. What should his daily caloric intake be?”)

Science Section

—> What Went Well

• I had a decent understanding of nutrition (minus the one above because it was too arbitrary for my Type A brain). I understood when someone was consuming too much carbs, not enough protein, and needed to space out their meals.

• Psychology was OKAY. Neither a strength or weakness for me. (I was a 75% here). I understood what arousal, attention, intrinsic / extrinsic motivation, & goal setting strategies. I mostly lost points when asked specific definitions of things. I understand the concepts just not how to define them.

What Did Not Go As Well

• Exercise Physiology. For Me personally, I understand concepts, how someone should adapt, and programming logic. However, I tend to forget the specific enzymes, metabolic pathway steps, hormone functions, and CV fitness response to exercise. I kept getting confused on Cardiac Output and altitude. Does someone have lower stroke volume at higher altitude? And that makes exercise harder? I should have studied a bit harder there.

• What exactly happens in the muscle tissue in response to strength training? Cardio? What happens in the sarcoplasm reticulum? What are the acute and chronic hormonal responses to resistance training? What should a novice athletes VO2max training intensity be?

These are the areas I will focusing on studying for the next few weeks and will go complete the Science portion next month!

For my study strategy:

I followed 95% of what
@Jacob Goodin
suggested in my original post. I wrote down a list of everything I needed to do and spent about 3-4 hours each day reviewing calculations, concepts, and so on. I also watched videos of each of the tests in the book, such as the T-Test, Line Drill, Hexagon, Sit and Reach, and so on.
I reviewed videos from the course and on Dr. Goodin’s website, although to my fault, I only viewed ones relating to the Practical Section as that’s the test I kept failing on in the course and on the NSCA website.
I took 2 Practice Exams in the Course and 1 Practice Exam from the NSCA website.

Hopefully this helps whoever else is going to take their test soon!

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