The Canadian Healthy School Standards offers tips and resources to create system-level changes for students, as well as the entire school community. By advocating for policies and investments that address health and well-being for students, staff and leaders, schools can chart their journeys toward improved health.
In a recent survey, Quebec women identified 3 primary sources of motivation for participating in hockey: desire for self-accomplishment, enjoyment, and acquisition and mastery of new skills. When coaches and sport leaders are sensitive to these motivations and provide supportive environments with positive role models, they support girls and women’s hockey participation.
The Youth Concussion Awareness Network (You-CAN) is a novel, peer-led program focused on concussion education and awareness for high-school students across Canada. Findings from the use of You-CAN program in school settings show that youth with higher concussion knowledge are more likely to report a concussion to an adult and to provide social support to a peer.
Physical literacy provides youth with the fundamental movement skills to engage in all types of sport and physical activity. It also helps to build self-image, self-concept and self-efficacy. Giving youth the right skills to enjoy movement for the long-term helps them come back and sustain their motivation to participate in sport and physical activity throughout their life.
Father’s Day is this Sunday! Although entering parenthood can be an exciting time, it comes with new challenges and responsibilities. This can often limit the amount of physical activity that fathers partake in. Research shows that fathers who maintain optimal physical activity levels have better physical and mental health, enhanced positive father-child bonding, and are better able to promote positive health for their children.
To improve mental health, teens (13 to 15 years old) need more exercise and less screen time. New research shows that adolescents’ mental wellbeing declines with more than 1 hour of recreational screen time a day. On the other hand, daily exercise has been consistently shown to help improve teens’ mental health and life satisfaction.
Most triathletes use a “positive” pacing strategy, where they gradually decrease their speed as the race progresses. However, research shows that starting slower or staying at a constant speed leads to better results. By adopting a more conservative pacing strategy, triathletes and coaches can improve race performance.
Encouraging youth to try multiple sports increases their odds of staying active into adulthood and doesn’t interfere with their chances of reaching high levels of performance. But trying multiple sports means that youth will eventually drop out of at least some of these sports, and existing sport participation models rarely (if ever) discuss sport withdrawal or dropout. Is it time to rethink out long-term sport participation models?
You do not need special equipment to reap the physical and mental benefits of physical activity. Simple bodyweight exercises, like running in place and burpees, performed vigorously over short periods, can boost cardiorespiratory fitness. A big advantage of short bodyweight routines is that they don’t require extra time, motivation, or access to expensive gym equipment.
“My daughter once told me, ‘Mum, you do everything for us. You should do something for yourself,” recalls 4-time Paralympian Ina Forrest, reflecting back on the early days of her wheelchair curling career. Over the years, Forrest has come to appreciate how her involvement in sport has modeled important values for her children, including how to set goals and support each other to achieve them. This #MomsGotGame.