Knowledge Nuggets

The Winter 2022 SIRCuit is now available! The SIRCuit is designed to highlight important research and insights to advance the Canadian sport system. With Bell Let’s Talk Day on the horizon, this edition of the SIRCuit takes a deep dive into the topic of mental health. Get up to speed on the new Mental Health...

Physical activity during pregnancy has many benefits for mom and baby, but many expecting moms have concerns about the safety of exercising while pregnant. The Get Active Questionnaire for Pregnancy is a self-assessment tool that helps moms-to-be determine if exercise is safe for them, and if they should seek medical advice before starting or continuing to exercise.

For children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, quality participation is built from six building blocks: autonomy, belongingness, challenge, engagement, mastery, and meaning. Sport and recreation programs that actively support these building blocks create satisfying, enjoyable and meaningful experiences for their participants, which, in turn, supports lasting participation.

Racecar driving is one of the few sports in which women compete alongside men. But while women have been gaining ground on the racetrack, there is still a long way to go. In a recent study, professional women racecar drivers called on the auto-racing industry to make racecar driving more accessible to women and girls...

In the journey to achieve excellence in sport, there’s a tendency to focus on performance-related factors such as medal counts and marginal gains. But those are only 2 pieces of the puzzle. Mental and physical health and well-being, physical safety, psychological safety and self-determination are key person-related factors that contribute to successful high-performing sport cultures.

Did you know that travel to-and-from practices and competitions accounts for more than 80% of emissions in sport? The COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity for the sport sector to work towards a new ‘environmental normal’ that limits its climate impact. Check out the Sports for Climate Action Framework to learn more about how your sport...

Psychological skills training can help athletes enhance performance, self-satisfaction, and enjoyment in sport. For this reason, researchers at the University of Windsor developed a free, online psychological skills training program for para-athletes. This evidence-based program provides training to support skills such as goal-setting, concentration, and relaxation.

Coaches, teammates, family, and friends can play an important role in recognizing the early warning signs that an athlete may have relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S). Warning signs include physical, behavioural, and psychological changes such as recurring injury and illness, restrictive eating, sleep difficulties, and becoming withdrawn and reclusive.

Safe Sport is about optimizing the sport experience for everyone involved in sport. The focus is often on athletes, but parents can also have negative experiences in their children’s sport environments. Inclusive language, behaviours and program design can help youth sport organizations to create positive, inclusive spaces for LGBTQI2S parents and participants.

For students, a blog writing assignment can enhance learning of course concepts through opportunities to self-reflect and put the research into their own words. Blogs are also an important tool for delivering evidence-based research and information to sport stakeholders. In the SIRC blog, discover three steps that instructors can use to integrate blog writing into...