From one mom to another: Tips for being active after welcoming a new baby

Becoming a mother is an exciting milestone in a woman’s life. Once you welcome home a baby, nothing is ever the same again. While the transition to motherhood comes with many ups and downs, engaging in physical activity is a great way for new moms to protect their physical and mental health. For more information,…

Independence in Safe Sport

The importance of Safe Sport and how it can be further integrated into Canadian Sport is an ever-evolving process for many sport organizations. A key question for many organizations centers on what “independence” means in the context of investigative processes related to Safe Sport. A group of researchers at the University of Toronto led by…

Movement-based methods

Creative approaches to data collection can be useful for sport organizations to evaluate the effectiveness of youth programs. For example, movement-based methods use the structure or rules of a game to gather feedback from youth about their experience. They can also double as a program activity, helping to save time and keep kids on task….

Exercise as medicine for new moms

Physical activity can be an important component of healthcare, but many physical activity guidelines don’t address the needs of postpartum women. An inclusive and safe exercise environment, accountability and exercising with other new mothers can help address the challenges women face with physical activity engagement after childbirth. Find an evidence-informed, step-by-step postpartum guide to returning…

Lone girls in sport

If you type “lone girls in sport” into Google, you’ll find several newspaper articles and social media posts about girls creating #HERstory competing alongside boys. But on the academic front, there are few studies focused on girls who play in boys’ leagues, and until recently, none exploring the “lone girl.” Check out new research that…

The Canadian sport and physical activity community identifies topics for researchers to prioritize 

Highlights  Until recently, a typical research process would include generating ideas or research questions, gathering and analyzing data to test hypotheses, publishing the results in scientific journals and anticipating that the findings would be adopted or applied in the “real world.” Then, this cycle would repeat, replacing old questions with new lines of inquiry.   True, this outdated…

Community sports and climate change

As the effects of climate change continue to grow, so do its effects on local sports. A recent study found that community-level sport clubs are particularly vulnerable to extreme climate events through damage to playing fields, increased injury risks, and increased operating costs. Adapting sport management practices to counter these changes will be critical for…

Women’s hockey under the radar: What’s driving participation?

It has been almost a quarter of a century since women’s ice hockey debuted at the Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan. Despite a heartbreaking loss for Team Canada in the final of the first Olympic women’s hockey competition, it was a big step forward for women’s hockey on the international stage. Since then, Canada has…

Show pride

Research shows that sexual minority youth are less likely to participate in organized sports than their heterosexual peers. Encouraging all sport participants to display the rainbow pride sign, for example, by using pride tape on their hockey sticks or baseball bats, can help LGBTQI2S youth feel included and welcomed in sport environments. 

Hitting the wall

All marathon runners know the feeling of “hitting the wall,” when their pace slows dramatically due to fatigue and depleted energy stores. In fact, new research finds that most runners hit the wall in the 33rd kilometer of a marathon, and that it is as much a psychological phenomenon as it is physiological. Being cheered…