SIRC

With almost 200,000 Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injuries occurring annually in the United States and nearly half of them requiring reconstructive surgery, years of research have been conducted on this common orthopaedic surgery. Following the surgical procedure, the need for a scientifically based rehabilitation program and a well-designed return to sport plan are essential. This article provides the reader with a review of the recent advancements and treatment goals for a successful rehabilitation following ACL surgery.

Expanding on earlier work by these same authors, this article provides the most recent summary of the dietary supplementation practices and perspectives of high performance athletes from across Canada. It is a must-read for all stake-holders in Canadian sports nutrition.

Post-activation potentiation (PAP) is the enhancement in muscle force production that occurs following a conditioning activity involving submaximal or maximal muscular contractions. For example, a coach may prescribe a set of heavy back squats done at 90% of an athlete’s maximum followed by explosive jumps with the intent of eliciting greater force production in the jumps than would have been seen otherwise. While PAP has been well documented in controlled laboratory settings, supporting scientific evidence in real-world situations such as the weight room or field of play is more tenuous. Many experts argue that the underlying reason for this lack of evidence is due to the sensitivity of PAP to the loading parameters of the conditioning activity such as its timing, intensity and volume.

As we approach another summer Olympic Games we inevitably reflect on the athletes that are in their final preparation stages, the level they have reached and the level of their international rivals. Many sports discuss which of their top performers will be around for another quadrennial and where the next ones will come from. It is the examination of what current elite performers have done that can offer us some insight into where the next round may come from.

This is one of the first analyses that I have seen examining the functioning of an NSO from a psychological perspective. Even though the research was completed in Great Britain, I certainly think that the findings are relevant and applicable to any Canadian NSO or PSO as well as their ISTs.

The goal of postexercise nutrient intake is to restore the body’s primary fuel source, to repair muscle damage caused during the training session and to build new muscle tissue. When the training or competition schedule of an athlete demands repeated performance over a short period of time, less than 8 hours between sessions or events, the timing of nutrient intake is crucial.

The discussion around the most effect training methods for improving exercise performance will be one that is always followed closely. The increasing demands on athletes and coaches time and the search for the most efficient and effective use of that time is one driving force behind training methods research. 

The number one predictor of injury is previous injury. With this the ultimate goal of every therapist is to be able to screen an athlete and determine if they are at risk of a certain injury, develop an appropriate corrective exercise training program to address the identified risk factors and hopefully prevent the injury from occurring or rehabilitate the athlete to prevent the recurrence of future similar injuries.

This article is a review of the literature on the use of Agonist- Antagonist Pairing in resistance training. Agonist-antagonist pairing is the pairing of opposite muscle groups (e.g. elbow flexors/elbow extensors) or biomechanically dissimilar exercises (e.g. power cleans/incline bench press or bench press/pull-up) for the purpose of improving maximal strength and muscle power.

When working with high performance athletes, we need to remember that most of these individuals do not fit within the normal population bell curve. This distribution becomes a problem when developing a treatment plan for them, as the majority of evidence based research for therapy intervention is based on normal individuals using parametric statistics.