Transitioning from Amateur to Professional Sport
I don’t need to be the first to tell you that we are living through a very interesting time. A global pandemic taking shape and stopping everything we know...including sports! Who knew sports could be stopped?! Regardless of the current climate, let me walk you through some of the things I have experienced upon taking a new role in professional sport. Earlier this year, I left the Canadian Olympic Sport system, and took a role in strength and conditioning and sport science with the Chicago Cubs. I had been working at Institut National du Sport du Quebec for 6 years, [...]
International Hockey Performance Summit 2020 – Goes Virtual
The International Hockey Performance Summit has gone completely virtual due to the circumstances of COVID. We have retained all the amazing content, reformatted the schedule, and will be adding some content on the Friday evening as well! We are recording the entire event, so if you are registered, even if you miss some sessions, you’ll have access to all this amazing content after the event ends. We hope to see you on Zoom in a few months when all of hockey’s great performance minds come together! https://reconditioninghq.com/ihps/ click HERE to register
Langara College: The Perfect Starting Point For Your Kinesiology Journey
Langara College is located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Its inception was in 1965 and was part of Vancouver Community College. In 1970, Langara opened its West 49th Avenue campus and this is the College's current location. On April 1, 1994, under the Provincial College and Institute Act, Langara became an independent public college. Langara is currently celebrating its 49th anniversary on 49th Avenue. The college has grown tremendously over the last 49 years, and currently is one of BC’s leading undergraduate institutions. Langara offers University Studies, Career Studies, and Continuing Studies program for more than 21,000 students annually. The [...]
Insights into S&C in Ontario Colleges: Introduction
In the Winter 2020 Edition of our newsletter, we highlighted information about colleges in BC and Ontario. The links below focus on two options within Ontario. Click HERE if you are interested in Alternative Pathways to the Strength and Conditioning World: Four Ways the College System Creates Strong Coaches (by Adam Balan) Click HERE if you are interested in Insights into Strength & Conditioning in the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (by Teresa Arnini, Jason Melhado, and Rob Chrzaszcz) If you would like to share information about your University or College please reach out to us using our contact us page.
Alternative Pathways to the Strength and Conditioning World: Four Ways the College System Creates Strong Coaches
Every September, as incoming students enter their first college semester, Fitness and Health Promotion (FHP) faculty often hear, “I’m more of a hands-on learner” and “I want to work with athletes.” These students are in the right place. Currently, 17 Ontario colleges offer FHP, a two-year diploma program widely considered as a shorter version of the coveted Kinesiology/Exercise Science bachelor’s degree. For some, the college system may be the best vaulting point for aspiring strength and conditioning (S&C) coaches. Here are four reasons to support the college route. 1. Access to Kinesiology and Other Degree Bridges [...]
The Experience of Professional Sport
I will always remember one NHL GM saying; “We don’t need to test them, we just need to get them in a room with their shirts off to get a look at them, that’s all we need to know if they’ll be worth drafting.” I still can’t believe I heard that in 2008. On my podcast Leave Your Mark, I recently asked Duncan French, the performance director for the UFC, what his impression of his experience in the English Premiership was like? Did it live up to childhood dreams as he had the good fortune to work for his favorite [...]
Advisory Team Spotlight
CSCA Advisory Team Q and A with Steve Lidstone CSCA - How did you get started in the industry? SL - My interest in performance training began in October of Grade 9 (Early 90’s) when we initiated fitness testing for our grade 9 class. We completed various tests such as 20m sprints, broad jump, vertical jump, push-ups, and chin-ups. The class ranking was then posted outside of the physical education office and I distinctly remember finishing in the bottom third of the class. This did not sit well with me as my ranking did not match my confidence level in [...]
From Denmark to Canada – Challenges and Successes
My Take on How You Turn a Tortoise into a Hare – or, at Least, a Faster Tortoise My coaching career began as an assistant tennis coach in a small town in my native country, Denmark, when I was 13 years old. I was fortunate to have several great coaches. One of them had played professionally when he was younger and was the doubles partner with Boris Becker’s long-term manager, Ion Tiriac. A few of the exercises I learned as a teenager are still among my top picks 37 years later. One of my first memories of strength and conditioning [...]
Over 30 Years and Still Coaching: Part 1
CSCA Director Q and A with Ed McNeely CSCA - How did you get started in the industry? EM - I started in the high-performance world over 30 years ago. The landscape was very different, most sports were decentralized, with national team athletes training at their home clubs for most of the year and coming together for a short period of time for camps or competitions. Strength and conditioning as a profession did not exist in Canada and even in the US the NSCA was less than a decade old and strength coaches were still trying to gain traction as [...]
Over 30 Years and Still Coaching: Part 2
CSCA Founder and Inaugural President Sheldon Persad CSCA - How did you get started in the industry? SP - My passion has been coaching since I was in grade school. My first paid opportunity came in the mid-1980s as a result of one of my teachers (Doug Quarrington) having faith in me and seeing something in me I did not see in myself. Although he was a teacher, he had a part-time job as the convenor of a youth basketball league. At the last minute, just before the regular season started, one of the coaches had to drop out. He [...]
The Power of Mentorship: An S&C Family Tree Perspective
By Chris Chapman, Steve Lidstone, Joe Vecchione, and Jeremy Watkin Power is defined as the rate of work or work divided by time. This is the perfect descriptor for mentorship “as many hands make light work”. Mentorship can greatly increase the rate at which young professionals grow, it can increase the volume and quality of work that is produced through collective effort, and it can prevent the decay of relevance by keeping young unbiased minds learning, questioning and challenging the current systems. This article portrays 4 stories of mentorship through 3 generations of an S&C family tree. Chris Chapman [...]
University of Toronto’s Adrian Lightowler
After a serious neck injury ended his playing career as an elite athlete, Adrian Lightowler focused his time and energy into strength and conditioning. For the past eight years the student athletes at the University of Toronto (U of T) have been the benefactors of Adrian’s knowledge and passion. Adrian is a member of the CSCA’s Advisory Team. This interview will give you an opportunity to get to know him better. CSCA: Why are you a strength coach? AL: Sport has given me a great deal and, alongside my family, it has been my motivation to learn and achieve for [...]
Three Eastern Stars in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia
Doing an outstanding job in strength and conditioning for a small group is challenging enough but imagine managing over 200 athletes a year. This is what most professionals take on when employed by a Canadian university; although it was not that long ago when there was no strength and conditioning staff. Only in the past 10-12 years has there been a recognition and hiring of professional staff at this level. Previously it was volunteers, kinesiology interns, or left up to the head coach to write and manage the strength and conditioning programs for their athletes. The field has grown but [...]
