Building a genuine feedback culture within your sport starts at the top

Sport is often held aloft as an example of an environment where feedback flows easily. As a communications coach and management consultant working with business leaders across North America, I often publicly herald the virtues of the feedback culture I witnessed and experienced in the sport arena, and criticize the dearth of effective feedback habits in the corporate world. But using sport as the...Read more
Tags: 
feedback
Communication
Leadership

Tapping into the evidence: The Sport Canada Research Initiative Conference

This year marks the 12 th Sport Canada Research Initiative (SCRI) Conference, hosted by SIRC. First held in 2005, the SCRI Conference provides an opportunity for the Canadian sport sector to connect with sport-related resaerchers. The conference program is designed to engage key stakeholders, share research and evidence to inform decision-making, and ultimately enhance the impact and performance...Read more
Tags: 
SCRI
applied research
Sport Canada Research Initiative Conference

Inclusion requires action! Creating inclusion for newcomers to Canada

It is clear that the next generation will be diverse, multicultural and, apparently, much less fit than the previous generations. Research points in this general direction, but results from the recent TOPO survey , released in May 2018, demonstrates this trend clearly. The 2017 survey engaged 13,400 children and 7,800 parents across all school boards on the Island of Montreal to explore lifestyle...Read more
Tags: 
newcomers
diversity

Promising practices to support multi-sport programming

When kids specialize early in one sport or activity, it doesn’t guarantee they will be successful athletes in the long term (Malina 2010). To the contrary, research has revealed that they tend to get injured more frequently, burnout, and quit (Jayanthi et al. 2013, Jayanthi et al. 2015, Fraser-Thomas et al. 2005). This is why many coaches and health professionals are now saying that we should...Read more
Tags: 
multisport
early specialization

The Car Ride Home

Active for Life has declared the first week of October “ Parents in Sport Week .” Parents play an undeniably important role in the lives of young athletes – providing opportunities for participation, serving as role models, and helping athletes make sense of their sport experiences. The ways that parents engage with their children during the car ride home after games and practices has the...Read more
Tags: 
Sport Parents
Athlete Development

#ThanksCoach – Celebrating National Coaches Week 2018

National Coaches week #ThanksCoach
September 22 - 30, 2018, marks the fourth annual National Coaches Week – an opportunity to celebrate the tremendous positive impact coaches have on athletes and communities across Canada. There are many reasons why people get involved in coaching sport: as parents, we want to spend time with our child in an active way; as individuals, we want to volunteer and get involved in our community; as...Read more
Tags: 
NCCP; National Coaching week; eLearning; SIRC; #ThanksCoach

Happy birthday? How your birthdate contributes to success or failure due to the “relative age effect”

Have you ever stopped to wonder the difference a day can make? Say, being born December 31 st or January 1 st ? This small 24-hour window could be the difference between competing in elite vs. recreational sport, or being identified as “gifted”, or (mis)diagnosed with a learning disability in school. Many youth development systems (e.g., sport and education) rely on arbitrary cut-off dates to...Read more
Tags: 
relative age effect
talent identification

Self-awareness – a key driver in developing well-rounded leaders

“First, know thyself.” -Socrates Self-awareness is the ability to recognize, understand and manage one’s feelings, thoughts and behaviours. To better manage the complexities of the current sport and social landscape, self-awareness is a foundational skill that is being increasingly recognized as an essential trait for all leaders. As renowned bestselling author Daniel Coleman of Emotional...Read more
Tags: 
Leadership
self-awareness
NOVA Profile

Tips on how to deliver a quality youth sport program

Many individuals and organizations have devoted considerable time to identifying core ingredients to achieve desired outcomes from youth sport participation. For example, Eccles and Gootman (2002) have identified eight program setting features that have been proposed to foster positive development in youth programming, including providing an appropriate structure, opportunities for belonging,...Read more
Tags: 
youth development

Marginal Gains Reconsidered: How Sport Organizations Hold the Key to Boosting Sport Performance

The concept of marginal gains has caused many professional and amateur teams to chase every tiny gain available relating to nutrition, physiology, psychology, technology, and strength and conditioning. As a result, in the past decade sport has taken a huge step forward through innovation, much of it driven by partnerships with external experts with world-leading expertise in related areas that...Read more
Tags: 
marginal gains
Canadian Sport System
High Performance
Mental Health
techolnology