Self-compassion and injury recovery
After injury, athletes can experience a range of negative emotions and coping strategies (e.g., anxiety, worry, ruminating or dwelling, avoidance). Self-compassion can enable athletes to focus on healthier, more proactive ways of moving forward with recovery, and may even reduce injury occurrence by decreasing athletes’ physiological activation to stress and facilitating their ability to focus…
True North Challenge
Research shows that time spent outdoors being active is excellent for your mental health. When you exercise (especially outside), your body releases endorphins and feel-good chemicals that help boost your mood and beat the winter blues. If you’re looking for an easy way to get moving this month, join ParticipACTION’s True North Challenge, running February…
Why youth sport isn’t just for kids: it benefits mom too!
Highlights With approximately 75% of Canadian youth involved in organized youth sport, it’s uniquely positioned to promote mothers’ mental health and wellbeing. Youth sport offers opportunities for moms to: gain meaning through coaching and leadership experience pride and joy from observing their child compete interact with other adults and expand their social networks strengthen their family…
Exercise during pregnancy
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.
Culture of excellence
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.
Warning signs of RED-S
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and psychological changes such as recurring injury and illness, restrictive eating, sleep difficulties, and becoming withdrawn and reclusive.
“Playing for team motherhood”: Returning to team sport after childbirth
“After each pregnancy, I wonder if I’m gonna be able to get back to where I was before. I want to be able to jump and hit the ball or catch the frisbee. I want to be able to perform the way I used to. I put this pressure on myself to be back where…
Cold weather exercise
Have you ever found it hard to breathe after hard exercise in cold weather? To prevent possible lung damage from high-intensity exercise in extreme cold, consider doing an indoor warm-up, decreasing the intensity of the activity, and wearing a mouth covering or mask.
Remembrance Day
Today we observe Remembrance Day and reflect on the sacrifices our Veterans have made, past and present. Take some time today to learn more about the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) Sports Program, a program that plays an important role in promoting sport and physical activity in the military community.
We are family: How sport programming can support military families after illness and injury
“I think the whole notion is that it’s the family that serves and it’s the family that heals together through something like this. Nobody does it alone. So I think it’s recognizing the whole family and how they’ve had to work together to get to this point or to heal.” Invictus Games family member Remembrance…