The 15 Best S&C Podcasts (2026)

Running since 2007, this is one of the longest-standing S&C podcasts in the game. Anthony Renna hosts, but the real draw is the regular involvement of Coach Michael Boyle, who has trained professional athletes across the NHL, MLB, and NFL for decades. Episodes alternate between Boyle's solo takes on training philosophy and guest interviews with college and pro strength coaches who are actually on the floor working with athletes every day.

The show sticks to practical topics: anti-rotation progressions, glute activation sequences, sprint mechanics, and how to structure a training week for in-season athletes. You also get business-focused segments with fitness entrepreneur Mark Fisher, which are surprisingly useful if you run a gym or train clients. With over 520 episodes in the catalog, there is a massive backlog to work through. Recent episodes have covered training Olympic athletes and sport psychology's role in performance. Audio quality occasionally dips, which longtime listeners have noted, but the depth of coaching knowledge shared on this show consistently makes it worth the listen. If you coach athletes at any level, this should already be in your rotation.

Joe DeFranco built DeFranco's Gym from a 500-square-foot storage closet into one of the most respected training facilities in the country. He has trained NFL Combine athletes, WWE superstars, and everyday people looking to move better. This podcast is where he shares the training philosophy behind all of it.

Episodes run about an hour and cover a wide range: programming for peak performance, longevity-focused training as you age, mindset work, and real conversations with other coaches and athletes. DeFranco does regular Q&A episodes where he fields listener questions on everything from deadlift variations to sleep optimization. Recent topics include a breakdown of how Detroit Lions S&C coach Cam Josse handles the personal side of training pro athletes, and a practical list of simple health habits most people overlook. The show has a 4.9 rating with over 1,200 reviews, which is almost unheard of for a niche fitness podcast. DeFranco is direct, occasionally funny, and never comes across as someone selling something he does not use himself. With 560+ episodes since 2015, this is one of the most consistent weekly shows in the strength space.

John Welbourn played 10 years in the NFL as an offensive lineman, and he brings that intensity to Power Athlete Radio. This is not a polished corporate fitness podcast. Welbourn, alongside co-hosts Tex McQuilkin and Luke Summers, talks training with the kind of bluntness you would expect from someone who used to block 300-pound defensive linemen for a living.

The show has racked up 840+ episodes and covers everything from Olympic lifting technique to grappling prep for ADCC competition to nutrition strategies that go beyond counting macros. Recent episodes featured a deep look at results from their HAMMER 90 training challenge and a conversation with Vikings lineman Will Fries. The format leans long-form, usually 45 minutes to over an hour, and the hosts are not afraid to go on tangents that end up being the most interesting parts. Some listeners have pointed out that Welbourn tends to dominate airtime during interviews, but that is partly what makes it engaging: you are getting his unfiltered take rather than softball questions. If you train for power, speed, or any contact sport, this show speaks your language.

Joel Smith runs Just-Fly-Sports.com and has made this podcast into one of the go-to resources for coaches who care about speed and power development. The show goes deep on athletic performance, pulling in guests from strength and conditioning, track and field, biomechanics, and sport psychology to have conversations that typically run over an hour.

Recent episodes are a good example of the range: Dan Cleather discussing flow states and the biomechanics of force production, Zac Cupples breaking down hamstring development and movement mechanics, and Tanner Care on athlete archetypes and isometric testing standards. These are not surface-level chats. Smith asks detailed follow-up questions and clearly does his homework before each interview. The show has a 4.8 rating across nearly 370 reviews, and with 500+ episodes released biweekly since 2016, there is an enormous library of content covering everything from plyometric programming to sprint mechanics to how different training methods affect jump height. If you coach speed or work with field and court sport athletes, this podcast regularly delivers ideas you can take straight to the training floor.

Brett Bartholomew is a best-selling author and performance coach who built this podcast around a question most S&C shows ignore: how do you actually communicate with athletes to get them to buy in? The show sits at the intersection of strength and conditioning and leadership, focusing on the human side of coaching rather than just sets, reps, and percentages.

With over 415 episodes and a 4.9 rating from 600+ reviews, the show covers topics like getting someone to open up when something seems off, overcoming fear of saying the wrong thing to an athlete, and how to become a better presenter. Bartholomew draws from his background working with NFL athletes, members of special operations forces, and corporate executives. The episodes typically run 25-30 minutes, which makes them easy to fit into a commute or warm-up period. This is the podcast for coaches who have realized that program design is only half the job and that the ability to read people, adapt your message, and handle difficult conversations is what separates good coaches from great ones. The content applies well beyond the weight room, which is intentional.

Rob Pacey has been hosting this podcast since 2014, building up a catalog of 625 episodes that reads like a graduate-level syllabus in sports performance. The format is straightforward: Pacey sits down with a guest from the performance world and asks genuinely good questions about their philosophies, methods, and practical insights.

The guest list is impressive. Recent episodes have featured Loren Landow on reintroducing linear speed and change of direction after injury, Yoeri Pegel on strength and power training for goalkeepers, and Enda King on diagnosing and preventing hip and groin pain in athletes. Episodes typically run 45-55 minutes and stay tightly focused on one topic rather than bouncing around. The show has a strong following among professional S&C coaches, particularly in soccer, rugby, and other field sports that require complex physical preparation. Pacey works in the UK performance scene and brings in guests from premier league clubs, national sport institutes, and university research labs. If you are a working S&C coach who wants to hear from other working S&C coaches about the specific problems they solve daily, this show delivers that consistently.

Barbell Shrugged has been one of the biggest names in the strength podcast world since it launched, and with over 1,300 episodes and 2,500+ ratings, it has the track record to back it up. The current hosting crew includes Doug Larson, Travis Mash, Anders Varner, and Dr. Mike Lane, each bringing a different perspective on training, nutrition, and health.

New episodes drop every Wednesday and typically run about an hour. Recent conversations have covered the training benefits of heavy carries for grip and core development, deadlifting strategies that work across different age groups, and a breakdown of the Forever Strong protocol with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. The show started with a strong CrossFit focus but has broadened over the years to cover general strength training, health optimization, and nutrition science. Travis Mash brings serious weightlifting credibility, having coached at the international level, while Dr. Lane adds a medical perspective that keeps the health claims grounded. The tone is casual and conversational, which makes it easy to listen to but occasionally means topics get covered at a high level rather than in granular detail. Still, for a weekly show that keeps you current on strength training trends and research, it is hard to beat the consistency.

The National Strength and Conditioning Association is the organization behind the CSCS certification, which is essentially the gold standard credential in the field. Their coaching podcast, hosted by Eric McMahon, features interviews with strength coaches from college programs, pro teams, and private facilities talking about how they actually do the work.

With 217 episodes released monthly since 2017, the show focuses heavily on career development and applied coaching. Recent episodes include Jill Costanza breaking down sport science frameworks used at the NFL level, Lee Bell discussing fatigue management and deloading strategies, and Morgan Smith on building applied experience through formal education. The pacing is slower and more structured than most indie S&C shows, which makes sense given it is backed by an academic organization. Audio quality has been a recurring complaint from listeners, with occasional background noise issues, but the content itself is solid and well-researched. This is particularly valuable for early-career coaches trying to understand how the profession works beyond just programming: how to get hired, how to navigate working within a sports organization, and how to keep growing once you are in. It carries the institutional credibility that comes with the NSCA name.

Kyle Hunt is a powerlifter, author, and fitness entrepreneur who has been running this show since 2016, stacking up 545 episodes along the way. The podcast is built around strength culture broadly, pulling in guests from powerlifting, bodybuilding, and general fitness to talk training, nutrition, and the business side of the industry.

Recent episodes tackle practical questions: Is static stretching actually overrated? How do you stay strong without spending your entire life in the gym? When does it make sense to go all-in on a muscle-building phase versus maintaining? Hunt does regular Q&A episodes where he works through listener questions with detailed, experience-based answers. He also brings on guests like Nick Shaw from Renaissance Periodization and veteran powerlifters who have been competing for 20+ years. Episodes typically run about an hour and the tone is conversational without being unfocused. Listeners frequently mention that Hunt manages to give advice that works regardless of your equipment access or training experience. The show has a 4.8 rating from 226 reviews. If you are someone who trains for strength and wants a podcast that respects your time and gives you something useful each week, this consistently delivers.

Jared Bidne is a strength and conditioning coach who focuses specifically on developing explosiveness, speed, and power for field and court sport athletes. The podcast zeroes in on how weight room work translates to on-field performance, which is the question that every S&C coach is really trying to answer.

With a perfect 5.0 rating across 463 reviews, the show clearly resonates with its audience. Episodes cover velocity-based training mistakes, why box squats deserve a place in athletic programming, speed training principles for team sport athletes, and the conjugate method applied outside of pure powerlifting. Bidne's last visit to Westside Barbell, documented in episode 100, is a standout. Episodes run 25-45 minutes, which keeps things tight and focused. What sets this podcast apart from more general S&C shows is the specificity. Bidne is not trying to cover every aspect of fitness. He is drilling into the explosive athletic development niche and sharing documented case studies where athletes made measurable gains in speed, power output, and sport-specific performance markers. If you coach athletes who need to be fast and powerful rather than just strong, this is one of the more targeted resources available.

Richard Graves hosts this weekly show that brings the research side of sports performance to practitioners in a format that is actually digestible. With 306 episodes, the podcast draws from a guest roster of elite athletes, professional coaches, and sports scientists who work at the highest levels of global sport.

Recent episodes have featured Brendan Fahrner discussing performance science applications in AFL and NRL, a look at building resilient athletes in high-pressure environments, and John Noonan's unusual career path from football to Formula One performance work. Episodes typically run 28-38 minutes, making them compact enough to listen to during a training session. The show covers strength and conditioning, nutrition, recovery, talent identification, and coaching methodologies, always tying back to what the evidence actually says. The audience skews toward working professionals: sports scientists, physiotherapists, S&C coaches, and nutritionists looking for professional development content. At 4.7 stars with 32 reviews, it does not have the massive audience of some bigger shows, but the signal-to-noise ratio is excellent. If you want your training decisions informed by current research rather than gym lore, this podcast bridges that gap effectively.

BarBend is one of the most recognized media brands in the strength world, covering weightlifting, powerlifting, CrossFit, strongman, and everything in between. Their podcast, hosted by co-founder and editor David Thomas Tao, brings the same breadth to audio format with weekly interviews featuring top athletes, coaches, and influencers from across strength sports.

With 285 episodes and a 4.9 rating from 187 reviews, the show has built a loyal following. Conversations run about 25-30 minutes and cover a lot of ground: how to build muscle with kettlebells, balancing life as both an athlete and a coach, whether CrossFit competitors should try strongman, and deep-dive profiles of competitors preparing for major events. Tao is a skilled interviewer who keeps things moving and asks questions that reveal something beyond the standard talking points. The podcast pulls from BarBend's extensive reporting network, which means guests often include athletes and coaches you would not find on other shows. Note that new episodes slowed in late 2023 and early 2024, but the existing catalog remains a strong resource. If you follow strength sports competitively or just appreciate the culture around heavy lifting, this show captures that world well.

This is the audio companion to the Strength and Conditioning Journal, the NSCA's official publication that has been a cornerstone of evidence-based practice in the field for decades. Ben Reuter edits the podcast and brings in authors and researchers to discuss their published work in a format that is more accessible than reading a journal article.

With 50 episodes released bimonthly since 2011, this is not a high-volume show. But what it lacks in frequency it makes up for in substance. Recent episodes have covered women in strength and conditioning as a special issue, the physiological demands of wheelchair racing, exercise strategies for managing Parkinson disease, and menstrual cycle phase-based training for elite female team sport athletes. The topics reflect the journal's commitment to serving the full spectrum of S&C practice, not just training healthy college athletes. Episodes integrate practical coaching experience with peer-reviewed research, which is exactly the kind of content that separates this from opinion-based shows. The 4.3 rating with 27 reviews reflects a niche but dedicated audience. If you want S&C content that is grounded in published science and goes beyond the usual training advice, this is one of the few podcasts that operates at that level.

Three coaches, Jon, Luke, and Todd, each with experience training CrossFit Games athletes, get together to break down what actually works in programming for competitive fitness athletes. The Legion Strength & Conditioning Podcast is tightly focused on the CrossFit training space, and the hosts are not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom about how to prepare athletes for competition.

Episodes run about 30 minutes and come out roughly monthly, covering topics like how to write programming faster without sacrificing quality, template structures for group training programs, and whether fitness racing formats have staying power as a competitive category. The discussion on learning how to program is particularly useful for newer coaches trying to understand the reasoning behind program design rather than just copying templates. With 165 episodes and a 4.8 rating, the show has a small but dedicated audience of coaches and serious competitive athletes. The shorter format means each episode stays on point without filler. If you coach CrossFit athletes or program for competitive fitness, this is one of the few podcasts made specifically for that audience by coaches who have produced results at the highest level of the sport.

Adam Ringler is a Boulder, Colorado-based S&C coach who currently works with collegiate basketball programs and has built this podcast around a specific idea: you can reverse-engineer what makes excellent performers excellent by having honest conversations with them about their process. The show describes itself as a deconstruction of the architecture behind human excellence.

With 84 episodes, it is a smaller catalog than some of the bigger names on this list, but the content is dense. Recent episodes include a look at how wearable technology and workload monitoring data gets misused in coaching settings, practical discussions on NordBord testing and creatine research, and reflections on coaching legacy and reverse dieting. Ringler also produces casual "Cardio Talk" segments recorded during ruck walks, which have a different, more reflective energy than the standard interview format. The show has a perfect 5.0 rating, though from a small review pool. He also runs a community called the Former Athlete Society and offers membership tiers for extended content. If you appreciate a more thoughtful, philosophical approach to S&C coaching rather than just exercise prescription, Ringler asks the kinds of questions that stick with you after the episode ends.