SIRC articles provide evidence-based and actionable insights from sport researchers, athletes, coaches, sport organizations and thought leaders to advance sport in Canada.
Concussions and Confidence: Why Mental Readiness Matters in RecoveryÂ
For most of her career, Jen Kish was known as one of the best and most fearless female players in rugby sevens. She captained Canada’s women’s team to an Olympic bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. And, she also endured more than 30 concussions with only five of them formally diagnosed. “Your brain health…
For athletes, sport is about pushing limits of skill, strength, and endurance. But what happens when the greatest challenge isn’t physical at all? For many, especially young athletes, the most persistent struggle exists in their own minds: body image. Dr....
Keeping active during pregnancy and postpartum is so important for a whole host of reasons and, fortunately, there’s no shortage of advice out there on how to do so. Generally speaking, for those without any health issues during pregnancy, most...
Brynna Kerr and Reema Shafi, University of Toronto
Highlights Concussion recovery depends on many factors, including biological factors (for example, anatomy) and gender-based factors (for example, societal norms in sport). Research shows that female athletes have a higher risk of concussion than male athletes, male and female athletes...
Project summary Many people who adopt the goal of improving physical activity do not succeed. The aim of this research was to examine goal conflict as a uniquely contributing factor to the low rate of success. Our experiments showed that...
Project summary Sport team membership provides people with opportunities to work together toward a common goal and build supportive social relationships. Quite simply, being a member of a sport team is associated with a host of psychosocial benefits. However, joining...
Some coaches rely on de facto drills that seem to be an essential part of their sport as a foundation for their practices; others turn to the latest gadgets and technology to drive their practice plans. Before integrating tradition or...
Whether you are a high performance athlete training for the Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games in Tokyo, or a weekend warrior working on a personal best, learning to manage heat stress should be a priority. Heat stress and fatigue can...
At a time when athletes and coaches have been inundated with pseudoscientific ideas about the importance of accumulating 10,000 hours of practice, the importance of practice quality often does not receive the attention it should. Contrary to popular belief, there...
Project Summary A Hockey Intervention Program (HIP) was established as an innovative vehicle to evaluate the infrastructure-athlete relationship for training athletes in the sport of ice hockey. This research examined both system level and athlete level factors that influence stakeholders’...
It might be surprising to hear concussions are a serious risk in the sport of volleyball. But data collection from Volleyball Canada—dating back to 2016—has revealed exactly that. “Our research has shown that about 1 in 10 youth athletes in...
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