(updated July 2026)
The CSCS exam covers a lot, and the Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning is a thick, dense book. I wrote this guide to sit next to it and do the sorting for you. It's built on the new 5th edition and mapped to the exam's Detailed Content Outline (DCO), so the hours you put in go toward what the test actually covers, and simplifies it for you.
It runs over 400 pages, but it's built for speed and efficiency, and written in my words and with examples that make sense to me. Every chapter gives you the concepts boiled down, the reasoning behind them, review questions to test yourself, and a glossary of the terms that matter, each one tagged to the DCO so you can see exactly where a topic shows up on the exam. My students in the Accelerator come back to it constantly. When they blank on something mid-study, they can find it and get it back in about a minute, which is most of the point.
And now it comes in 4 formats—PDF and HTML in either light or dark mode.
I'm Dr. Jacob Goodin. I teach this material at the university level as a strength and conditioning turned professor, and I wrote the guide to be the resource I wish I'd had when I sat for the exam.