Steve Olson’s The Strength & Conditioning Coach's Guide to Microsoft Excel is a highly practical and in-depth resource designed to help strength coaches, sports scientists, and performance professionals harness the power of Excel for data management, program design, and athlete monitoring. Recognizing that strength and conditioning is increasingly data-driven, Olson provides a comprehensive guide to using Excel’s tools and functions to streamline workflows, improve decision-making, and enhance the overall effectiveness of a training program. The book is structured in a way that gradually builds a coach’s proficiency with Excel, starting with fundamental functions before progressing to more advanced techniques such as conditional formatting, data validation, pivot tables, and even basic automation using macros. Throughout, Olson emphasizes real-world applications, ensuring that every Excel tool and technique discussed has a direct and practical use case within strength and conditioning. By presenting clear, step-by-step instructions with accompanying screenshots and examples, he makes Excel accessible even to those with little prior experience using the software for data analysis. This makes the book a valuable resource not only for seasoned professionals looking to refine their processes but also for younger coaches and students who want to develop strong data-handling skills early in their careers.

One of the key strengths of The Strength & Conditioning Coach's Guide to Microsoft Excel is its focus on automation and efficiency. Olson understands that coaches often juggle numerous responsibilities, from programming workouts to tracking athlete progress, conducting testing sessions, and analyzing performance trends. By leveraging Excel’s capabilities, coaches can reduce the time spent on repetitive administrative tasks and instead focus more on coaching and athlete development. He demonstrates how to build dynamic templates that automatically adjust based on inputted data, reducing the need for manual updates. For example, coaches can create load calculators that adjust an athlete’s training prescriptions based on real-time strength test results, ensuring that each athlete is training at an optimal intensity. He also covers how to use Excel to track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as strength-to-weight ratios, power output, and training load over time, allowing for a more data-informed approach to programming. These automated systems not only save time but also improve accuracy by minimizing human error in data entry and calculations.

Beyond just tracking individual athlete performance, Olson also explores how Excel can be used for team-wide data management. He provides examples of how to create large-scale tracking sheets for entire rosters, helping coaches oversee training progress across multiple athletes and identify trends within groups. This is particularly valuable in collegiate or professional team settings, where coaches may be responsible for dozens of athletes at once and need an efficient way to monitor progress without being overwhelmed by raw data. He also explains how to use pivot tables to quickly summarize and analyze large datasets, making it easy to compare different athletes, assess team averages, or drill down into specific performance variables. For coaches working in environments where data-driven decision-making is critical, such as strength and conditioning departments that report to sport coaches or front-office executives, these skills are essential for presenting insights in a meaningful and actionable way.

Perhaps most impressively, The Strength & Conditioning Coach's Guide to Microsoft Excel is not just a technical manual—it is a practical guide tailored specifically to the real-world needs of strength and conditioning professionals. Olson consistently ties each Excel function and feature back to a strength and conditioning application, ensuring that readers not only learn how to use the software but also understand why it is valuable in their coaching practice. The book is full of case studies, templates, and examples taken directly from the field, making it an applied resource rather than a purely theoretical one. Even for coaches who may already use Excel to some extent, the book offers numerous advanced tips and tricks that can elevate their ability to analyze and interpret data.

Overall, The Strength & Conditioning Coach's Guide to Microsoft Excel is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to integrate data-driven strategies into their training programs. Whether a coach is looking to streamline daily tasks, improve athlete monitoring, enhance communication through better visualizations, or develop a more analytical approach to programming, Olson provides the tools necessary to do so efficiently. As the field of strength and conditioning continues to embrace technology and data science, proficiency in Excel has become a crucial skill, and this book serves as an excellent roadmap for coaches looking to improve their ability to manage and analyze performance data. By demystifying Excel and making it accessible to the coaching community, Olson has created a resource that will undoubtedly benefit strength and conditioning professionals at every level.