Mental health is increasingly being recognized as a key component of elite athletes’ overall functioning and sport performance. Globally, research on antecedents (e.g., sport culture) and consequences (e.g., athletic performance) of mental health and illness in elite athlete populations is growing. However, little is known about the relationship between mental health, mental illness, sport culture, […]

Localized cooling of the lower body to maintain core body temperature in Paralympic athletes during heavy exertion

This project aims to increase the scientific knowledge base on recovery and rehabilitation after knee injury. Noninjured winter slope sport athletes will undergo a battery of baseline testing including quadriceps and hamstrings maximum strength and rapid force producing abilities, lower body power endurance, workload capacity and fatigue tolerance at the start and end of the […]

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) was first characterized by the International Olympic Committee in 2014 and characterizes a range of negative health (endocrine function, bone health) and performance outcomes that result from chronically low energy availability. Despite recognition of its significance for health and performance, and a prevalence rate of 3-60% in athletes, our […]

Currently, elite athletes and their coaches rely on the subjective self-awareness and measurement of muscle force, heart rate, and the amount of blood lactic acid level to monitor body fitness and athletic performance. These methods, however, are not ideal and always reliable due to subjective errors, technological limitations and individual confounding factors that limit the […]

Short track speed skating is a fast-paced sport where athletes routinely reach speed above 50 km/h. It is one of the leading Canadian sports for medal count at the Olympic games. Unfortunately, given the fast-paced and pack-style skating, athletes often fall on the ice, which may lead to concussion. There is no clear data on […]

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) was first characterized by the International Olympic Committee in 2014 and characterizes a range of negative health (endocrine function, bone health) and performance outcomes that result from chronically low energy availability. Despite recognition of its significance for health and performance, and a prevalence rate of 3-60% in athletes, our […]

The vision of Own The Podium is for Canada to be a world leader in high performance sport. With this vision comes the required investment into our understanding of how athletes adapt to training and how this understanding can be leveraged to provide our national level athletes a competitive edge on the world stage. This […]

This series of projects will provide coaches and sport scientists with a greater understanding of the relationship between training and performance. While there are several methods for monitoring how much and how hard athletes train, how these can be best used to predict future performance is still in question. The sports of rowing and middle-distance […]

This research aims to understand athlete recovery and training adaptation by monitoring athlete fatigue. The research will have a direct impact on multiple podium-performances in both Summer and Winter Olympic and Paralympic athletes since knowing how fatigue is present in athletes can help to improve training prescription; specific training prescribed during varying periods of fatigue […]

The purpose of this multi-project study is to investigate the effects of two different doses of protein supplementation following exercise training on muscle damage and inflammation, as well as on post-recovery exercise performance in young swimmers. Sub-project 1 examines whether whey protein supplementation following a training session enhances exercise performance and affects post-exercise muscle damage […]