CSSD Study Guide 2026
Everything you need to pass the CSSD exam in one place: the exam format, every topic to study, real practice questions with explanations, flashcards, and full-length practice tests. Free, no sign-up needed.
📋 CSSD Exam Format at a Glance
📚 CSSD Topics to Study (71)
✍️ Sample CSSD Questions & Answers
1. A 65 kg female soccer player wants to lose 4 kg of fat in 8 weeks. Approximately what weekly caloric deficit is needed?
Losing 0.5 kg/week requires roughly a 500 kcal/day deficit (3,500 kcal ≈ 0.45 kg fat), totaling ~4 kg over 8 weeks.
2. Which concept explains why athletes performing concurrent training (strength + endurance) may see blunted strength gains compared to strength training alone?
Endurance exercise activates AMPK, which can phosphorylate and inhibit mTORC1, the primary anabolic signaling hub for muscle protein synthesis and hypertrophy.
3. An athlete completing a food record reports eating a 'medium banana.' To convert this to a quantitative nutrient value, the dietitian should FIRST consult which resource?
USDA FoodData Central provides standardized nutrient values by food portion, making it the primary reference for converting food descriptions to nutrient data.
4. Sports anemia (dilutional pseudoanemia) in endurance athletes is best characterized by:
Endurance training increases plasma volume proportionally more than red cell mass, diluting hemoglobin concentration without true iron deficiency—serum ferritin remains normal.
5. The thermic effect of food (TEF) contributes approximately what percentage of total daily energy expenditure in most individuals?
TEF accounts for approximately 5–10% of total daily energy expenditure, representing the energy cost of digesting, absorbing, and metabolizing food.
6. During a high-altitude competition (>2,000 m), an athlete's carbohydrate needs are altered primarily because of what physiological change?
At altitude, reduced partial pressure of oxygen shifts substrate use toward carbohydrate oxidation, increasing carbohydrate demand relative to sea-level competition.
🎯 Free CSSD Practice Tests
📖 CSSD Guides & Articles
What Practice Test Geeks adds beyond an AI chat for CSSD
An AI chatbot can quiz you, but it can't reproduce the exam conditions or keep your record. Here you get:
- A timed, full-length CSSD mock exam — 150 questions in 210 minutes with a 70% pass mark, modeled on the official exam's question count and time limit, followed by a score report broken down by exam domain.
- A fixed CSSD question bank: the same test every attempt, so your score is comparable from one try to the next instead of changing with every regenerated quiz.
- Progress saved on your device: completed tests, scores and missed questions stay in My Progress, so you can retake only what you got wrong.
- A printable CSSD cheat sheet you can print or save as a PDF.
- CSSD flashcards built from the same question bank.
- Free CSSD practice tests with the correct answer shown after each question.