CSCA CONFERENCE 2021

REGISTRATION CLOSES THURSDAY APRIL 29TH AT 12NOON EST /

DATE: Saturday May 1st, 2021

WHERE: Virtual (Conference Link will be sent to participants the week leading up to the conference)

Pre Conference Session and Introductions 10:40 – 11am EST

BLOCK 1

12noon- 2:00 (AST), 11:00am- 1:00pm (EST), 8:00am- 10:00am (PST)

Speakers: David Behm, Darren Steeves, Jonathon Fowles, Josh Nowlan, Ethan Rendell-Watson

Moderator: Shauna Forsyth

David Behm: Benefits of stretching for health: injury risk reduction and pain control  Evidence for the effectiveness of acute and chronic stretching for improving range of motion (ROM) is extensive and strong. Improved flexibility can have positive impacts on activities of daily living and health. There is less expansive literature on the effects of stretching on other aspects of health such as injury incidence and pain reduction. The objective of this presentation is to examine the existing literature in these areas. The review highlights that stretching can provide a reduction in the incidence of musculotendinous injuries, which may be related to the increased force available at longer muscle lengths (altered force-length relationship) among other factors. While the very few acute stretching studies suggest a positive effect on pain reduction, there is more expansive literature demonstrating beneficial effects of chronic stretching on pain reduction at many sites. Hence, acute and chronic stretching do seem to have positive effects on health-related issues of injury incidence and pain reduction.  BIO: Dr. Behm has worked at Memorial University of Newfoundland since 1995 teaching more than 18 different courses and served as Associate Dean / Chair of the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation Graduate Studies for approximately 10 years. His research interests have been diverse with over 300 peer-reviewed articles, and over 21000 citations (h index of 70 with 60 classified as truly exceptional)  exploring neuromuscular responses to stretching, resistance training, balance, fatigue, foam rolling, and other topics. David has authored a number of chapters and a book entitled “The Science and Physiology of Flexibility and Stretching: Implications and Applications in Sport Performance and Health” (Routledge Publishers 2018). He has received a number of university, national and international awards such as the National Strength and Conditioning Association Outstanding Sport Scientist award (2014) and Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology Honour Award (2015). He has emphasized public engagement with many appearances on radio and television, a highly viewed TEDx talk on stretching, strength consultant for the Canadian Olympic curling gold medal winning team (2006) and numerous articles in popular fitness magazines and newspapers. Dr. Behm attempts to bridge the gap between his athletic background (drafted into the Canadian Football League, junior ice hockey player, provincial champion in both tennis and squash) and his research pursuits.

Darren Steeves: Want to flourish? Let your values guide you Whether it be a relationship with a coach, colleague, staff you lead, athletes or business partnership, value alignment is important. Practicing acceptance can help but no value alignment is hard to overcome. Darren will discuss his experiences across sport and business, the highs, and lows. Following a few basic principles can make the rollercoaster ride more enjoyable. Remember not all business is good business. BIO: Darren is passionate about improving the performance and resilience of the groups and people he works with. Darren’s purpose is to help people and is guided by and values trust, innovation, excellence, and collaboration. Darren is a professional Exercise Physiologist and has worked in the health and performance field for nearly 25 years. He is an Owner of a Health Strategy Consulting Company in Halifax since 2014 and a technology company started in 2020. He has consulted within corporations, with top level executives, Universities, Olympic Medalists, World Champion athletes and presents international on a variety of topics. Darren has written a book called “Are You Ready?” and a founding Director of the CSCA. When you have a free moment, watch his resilience TedTalk on YouTube.

Jonathon Fowles, Josh Nolan, Ethan Rendell-Watson: Adapting a varsity strength and conditioning program in the COVID environment – challenges and opportunities. The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged fitness and high performance centres to continue to provide services for clients with shutdowns and physical distancing limitations. Acadia University is one of the few locations in the country that was able to maintain a functioning High Performance Centre during the majority of the pandemic, to train varsity athletes and clients from the community, albeit while facing challenges and difficulties. This presentation will cover the challenges faced by two senior strength and conditioning interns who managed running the Acadia High Performance Centre for 280 varsity athletes and community members, without the benefit of a Head Strength and Conditioning Coach. Josh Nowlan and Ethan Rendell Watson are two Senior Interns in 2 the Acadia Performance training program and the Exercise Science and Training Option at Acadia, who will present the challenges and opportunities uncovered with their experiences delivering S&C programing to their student athlete peers and the community during the pandemic. This presentation will be of benefit to those who are trying to re-open S&C programming after COVID as well as those who may be thinking about delivering programming in resource strapped environments, such as high schools and community sport programs. BIOS: Jonathon Fowles, PhD, FCSEP, CSEP-CEP, HPS – Moderator Dr. Fowles specializes in neuromuscular adaptations to training and has published papers in fatigue, athletic training, testing and performance. He has worked with several Canadian national teams and Olympic athletes as well as a head strength and conditioning coach at three Canadian Universities. He is a Sport Science Advisor for the Canadian Sport Centre-Atlantic and was the Physical Preparation Lead for the National Coaching Institute Atlantic. Josh Nowlan, CSEP-CPT, BKin (cand.) Josh Nowlan is a graduating student at Acadia University. As a senior intern he started the year responsible for the Men’s Football program then, transitioned to the Men’s Hockey team. He is a lead coach with Acadia Performance Training where he has coached variety of age groups ranging from middle school aged children to adults along with athletes from Canadian Sport Centre-Atlantic. Ethan Rendell Watson, CSEP-CPT, BKin (cand.) Ethan Rendell-Watson is a graduate of the Acadia University’s Kinesiology program where he was the lead Strength and Performance Coach for the Women’s Basketball Team. At Acadia he was a part of the Exercise and Training Practicum where he worked with youth programs, chronic conditions, and special populations. Ethan is currently a Strength and Performance Coach at Atlantic Sports Performance.

BLOCK 2

2:20pm- 4:10pm (AST), 1:20pm- 3:10pm (EST), 10:20am- 12:10pm (PST)

Speakers: Scott Livingston, Ed McNeely, Jordan Foley

Moderator: Sam Eyles-Frayne

Scott Livingston: Reverse engineering movement through video analysis. In this session we will look at an important element of the Reconditioning process, analyzing sport movement using video. Recognizing the skill, defining the movement attributes that encompass that skill through thin slicing, and recognizing how movement attribute issues can be improved through training stimulus. Then integrating and assimilating the improvements into the overreaching skill. BIO: Scott Livingston is a designer of human and organizational performance solutions who has worked in the high-performance sports world for more than thirty years. As a performance coach and athletic therapist, he is known for his dedication to building more efficient, effective and resilient athletes. Scott has trained and re-built athletes at every level and has personally trained multiple Olympic and World Cup medalists. He worked for eleven seasons in the National Hockey league as an athletic therapist and strength and conditioning coach with the Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and New York Islanders. He co-owns ReconditioningHQ.com an educational business dedicated to teaching leading edge practices in performance and reconditioning. His newest passion is his podcast Leave Your Mark where he interviews people from all walks of human performance exploring their personal life stories. He is a dedicated and loving son, husband, father, and friend, and his purpose is to inspire people, create change and challenge convention through his own example and mentorship.

Ed McNeely: Transferring physical abilities to the field of play performance When working with athletes the ability to transfer changes in physical abilities to field of play performance is critical. The presentation will dig into the concepts of specificity and transfer of training and discuss how we can do a better job of ensuring true performance improvements and not just changes in performance surrogates like vertical jumps and linear sprints. BIO: Ed McNeely is the Lead of Strength and Conditioning at CSIO. He has been involved in high performance sport for over 30 years having worked with 20 NSOs. Ed is also one of the Founding Directors of the CSCA.

Jordan Foley: Demographics of Canadian strength and conditioning coaches The primary purpose of this presentation is to present information about the demographic characteristics of S&C coaches in Canada based on a survey conducted in the fall of 2020. The presentation will identify present state demographics of S&C coaches in Canada including age, sex, minority status, salary, certification, and educational status. BIO: Jordan Foley CSCS, RSCC*D, is a Strength & Conditioning Specialist with CANSOFCOM. Jordan is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and a Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach with Distinction from the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Throughout his career, Jordan has worked across a multitude of sports from the high school, collegiate, national, and professional levels

BLOCK 3

4:30pm- 6:30pm (AST), 3:30pm- 5:30pm (EST), 12:30pm- 2:30pm (PST)

Speakers: Samantha Pritchard, Joe McCullum, Georgia Grieve, Sierra Moores

Moderator: Elliott Richardson

Samantha Pritchard: A USPORTS integrated support team The University of British Columbia’s Athletics department is fortunate to have structures in place to provide varsity athletes with services from an integrated support team. This talk will provide an overview with the structure and services at UBC including the challenges that the team faces as well as the successes we’ve achieved. The session will end with a specific example of an ongoing collaborative project. BIO: Samantha is the Sr. Manager of Sport Science and Sport Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Prior to joining UBC in 2018, Samantha was lead, Sport Biomechanist and Performance Analyst for the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific. In her role, she worked with hundreds of provincial and national team athletes from a variety in sports ranging from freestyle skiing to wheelchair rugby. Samantha holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from McMaster University where she started her sporting career as a strength and conditioning coach.

Georgia Grieve: Coaching in an error-reduced environment Error reduced learning environments have been shown to improve learning in learners of all ages and skill levels. Motor learning concepts can help us to understand how to create these environments, and facilitate skill acquisition. Particular consideration is given to constraints, implicit learning, optimal challenge, and feedback. BIO: Georgia is a masters student in Dr Nicola Hodges’ Motor Skills Lab at UBC, researching how perceptual skills develop in youth athletes with age and practice experience. She is also a graduate assistant in the UBC varsity gym and works with the high performance department at the Richmond Olympic Oval.

Sierra Moores: Lost in translation High performance is achieved when the gap between sport and strength coach is bridged. Sport and strength coaches’ impact exponentially increases when their areas of expertise are actively integrated. This active integration requires conscious, continuous effort from both the sport and strength coach. While bi-weekly meetings/regular check-ins may seem like the obvious solution, it’s simply not feasible for many. During this session we will discuss the barriers facing the sport-strength coach relationship and possible solutions.   BIO: Sierra’s coaching career began in high school working as a coach and student trainer with swimming, figure skating, and rugby. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo with specializations in exercise physiology and nutrition. In 2018, Moores was the assistant coach for the University of Waterloo swim team, helping them to the Warriors to their best finish at OUA Championships in 30 years. In 2019, she began her Masters in Kinesiology, at UBC, with specializations in overtraining syndrome and load monitoring. Shortly after, she was hired as the interim assistant coach for the varsity swim team. As the interim assistant, Moores helped both the men and women’s teams become Canada West and U SPORTS champions. She was selected in 2019-2020 as the recipient for the Canadian Association of Coaches’ University Female Coach Mentorship initiative and at the start of the 2020 season Sierra was hired as the full-time assistant coach for the T-birds.

Joe McCullum: Re-evaluating traditional metrics for the Strength and Conditioning professional in team sport Generally speaking, the goal of the S and C coach is to increase performance and resiliency while decreasing the likelihood of injury in the population they are working with. These goals are often guided by speed, conditioning, strength and power metrics (to name a few) and with the advent of technology our focus has narrowed even further. This talk is not meant to argue the efficacy or replace said metrics but to consider there may be things we are missing that could enhance the likelihood of reaching the aforementioned goals. Sport coaches use key performance indicators (KPI’s) to assess athletes as we use our metrics to do the same. Can there be a symbiotic relationship between our traditional metrics and sport coaches KPI’s? BIO: Joe’s sport background began as a high school wrestler, rugby and football athlete and ended with a full football scholarship to the University of Utah. After his football career Joe worked as a full-time assistant for the University as a strength and conditioning coach. He spent the next two years working with all 16 teams ranging from football to gymnastics. After 6 years in Salt Lake City Joe moved back to Canada where he began working as the Director of High Performance Training and Staff Development for Level Ten Fitness in North Vancouver. During this time, he was also a volunteer sport coach for football, wrestling and rugby with his former high school. In his 12 years with Level Ten Fitness he worked and traveled the world with countless national teams and athletes including U20 Rugby, Sailing, Wrestling and close to everything in between while managing a staff of 20 plus personal trainers, therapists and coaches. He has coached multiple world and Olympic medalists in many different sports as well as many professional athletes ranging from the NHL to NFL. In September 2014 Joe took on the role of Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for the University of British Columbia where he is responsible for 26 teams and over 650 athletes.