This keynote will explore the Warfighter tactical athlete as a unique human-performance model for understanding physiological adaptation to the combined demands of intense physical exertion, operational stress, sleep and energy deficits, environmental extremes, and cognitive load. Drawing upon lessons from military human performance research, the presentation will highlight how integrated approaches spanning exercise physiology, neuromuscular performance, biomarkers, injury prevention, and emerging technologies can be leveraged to optimize readiness, build resilience, and accelerate recovery. These lessons will be translated beyond the military to illustrate how principles forged under extreme operational conditions can help redefine human performance across sport, rehabilitation, occupational health, and other high-performance environments.

This lecture will examine the effects of GLP-1 receptor agonists and related incretin-based therapies on human body composition. The presentation will review current evidence regarding the magnitude and composition of weight loss achieved with these medications, discuss factors that may influence variability in body composition outcomes, and address common concerns related to muscle loss during treatment. Practical strategies for preserving muscle mass and function will also be discussed, along with key research gaps and future directions in the field.

Perpetual dieting—constantly trying to eat less to control body weight—may not be the best strategy for supporting a healthy, high-functioning metabolism. This presentation introduces the concept of a high-energy flux lifestyle, an approach in which higher energy intake is matched by higher levels of physical activity and energy expenditure. Rather than focusing solely on restriction, we want to create an environment that supports a higher metabolic rate and sustainable weight management.

This lecture will explore the relationship between nutrition knowledge, dietary behaviors, and energy availability in athletes, with particular attention to the disconnect between knowing how to fuel and consistently meeting nutritional needs. It will examine factors that influence fueling behaviors and how inadequate energy intake may affect athlete health, recovery, and performance. The presentation will also discuss practical approaches for identifying fueling gaps and translating nutrition knowledge into sustainable behaviors that better support athlete health and performance.

Physical activity behaviors are shaped by dynamic physiological, psychological, and social factors that change across the female reproductive lifespan. This presentation will explore how emerging digital health tools, including ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and consumer-grade wearables, are transforming our ability to capture these influences in real time. Using examples from emerging adulthood, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause attendees will learn how context-specific data can reveal the mechanisms underlying physical activity behavior and inform more personalized, effective interventions. The talk will highlight the future of women’s health research and practice through continuous, real-world monitoring and context-aware behavioral support.

This lecture will examine the role of physical activity in promoting brain health in late adulthood through a Health Neuroscience lens, exploring the physiological pathways that may underlie the dynamic interplay between the brain and body. Further, this session will highlight innovative approaches that consider physical activity within the broader context of the 24-hour day, offering new insights into how daily time use may influence cognitive, brain, and physical health with aging.

This presentation will explore a fundamental question, how interacting with a consumer wearable device changes everyday health behaviors, and how those behavioral changes are reflected in cardiometabolic and autonomic physiology. Drawing on large-scale, real-world data, it will examine how behaviors such as alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use, along with physical activity, appear to shift with wearable use, and how engagement with wearables relates to cardioautonomic physiology, blood pressure, and body weight. The presentation will also consider how continuous, real-world monitoring can extend the reach of laboratory based physiology, offering new opportunities to understand how everyday behaviors shape health at scale.

This presentation will explore how rehabilitation and performance professionals collaborate to support player health within the Miami Marlins organization. Attendees will learn how objective testing, progressive loading, and sport-specific training can guide the transition from injury rehabilitation to full baseball performance. Practical examples will highlight strategies for restoring readiness, reducing reinjury risk, and preparing athletes for the demands of professional baseball.

Returning an athlete to sport is more than restoring strength, range of motion, and pain-free movement—it requires preparing the athlete for the specific demands they will encounter when they return to performance. This presentation explores a skill-based, reverse-engineered approach to rehabilitation, using the athlete’s required skills and performance demands to guide clinical decision-making from the beginning of rehab.

Rather than progressing through a generic rehabilitation timeline, we will identify the forces, loading rates, positions, velocities, impacts, repetitions, and technical demands associated with an athlete’s sport and work backward to determine the appropriate stimuli needed in the clinic.

Using gymnastics and performing athletes as the framework, this approach will demonstrate how to progressively bridge the gap from controlled clinical loading to high-impact, high-velocity, sport-specific performance.

This lecture provides a real world look at using an Exercise Science degree to work for yourself, make an impact on people’s lives and bring home a salary that well exceeds what most graduates expect. We will explore the journey of Gifted HQ through the eyes of a founder and CEO from concept and mission statement all the way to seven figure revenue with multiple branches and income streams. The goal of this session is to empower students to use the breadth of their knowledge and collegiate experience to never be limited in their career and grow as their interests develop.

Are overhead athletes truly recovered when they return to sport? This lecture will follow overhead athletes across the recovery continuum, from initial evaluation to return to sport. We will examine how psychological factors present at the start of rehabilitation relate to athlete-reported outcomes, explore changes occurring between return-to-throw and return-to-sport milestones, and discuss evidence that many athletes continue to demonstrate functional limitations despite being medically cleared to return to sport.

Recovery after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction is often judged by what can be observed: strength, symmetry, and movement performance. But similar performance does not necessarily reflect similar neural control. This presentation will explore ACL recovery through the lens of sensorimotor uncertainty, integrating unanticipated treadmill perturbations with resting-state neuroimaging. Recent findings show that although perturbation behavior may appear similar between ACLR and control participants, the relationship between functional brain connectivity and balance responses can differ substantially. These results highlight the potential for neural adaptations to remain hidden beneath seemingly recovered movement and suggest that understanding how the nervous system supports performance may provide important insight beyond traditional clinical measures.

This lecture will explore how central nervous system adaptations may contribute to persistent quadriceps dysfunction after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR), even when maximal strength appears restored. It will examine the relationships among primary motor cortex activation, corticospinal responsiveness, and corticospinal tract structure using multimodal measures, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and diffusion tensor imaging. The presentation will also discuss the potential role of corticospinal tract volume in conditioning these structure–function relationships, along with practical implications for interpreting neuromuscular recovery and developing neurophysiologically informed rehabilitation strategies after ACLR.