What is Shinny Idol, you ask? And will I get sued for making up a contest name based on a trademarked name? Great questions! The first question I will answer here; the second – I’ll keep you posted!

I’ve had a couple of conversations about shinny hockey since I posted my shinny blog post last month, and I realized that for Canadians, shinny hockey is one of those great shared experiences. Don’t you love reading and sharing stories about these great shared experiences? I sure do, which is why I’m launching Shiny Hockey Idol!

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When I ask someone if they work out, a common response I hear is “Yes, I run three times a week”, or “yes, I play hockey twice a week and go skiing on weekends”, or “I play ultimate four times a week”. The list of options that people provide after the “yes” is endless, but more often than not, it does not include actual working out.

Participating in sports is good for you on so many levels: physically, socially, intellectually, and even emotionally. But can playing sports be deemed working out? Can you play sports to get in shape?

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For more ideas about training for skiing, check out the interview I did for the Ultraskier.com podcast.

It was a cold winter Tuesday evening in Ottawa and I was eager to get a bit of exercise – It was too soon since my last workout to hit the gym, maybe skiing? I have a night season pass and the hill is only 20 minutes away, but we’ve had a few days of rain followed by a deep freeze – not exactly ideal conditions. Maybe a skate on the canal (Ottawa has a 7km long canal that turns into the World’s largest skating rink each winter)? And then suddenly I remembered the boards at the Plant Recreation Centre. Shinny hockey. The gem of winter. Read more…

I for one complained about the lack of snow in November. I’ll admit it.  And while I am super happy to be able to ski now, I can’t say I look forward to the driving and walking related issues that snow brings.

For many, shoveling is the big frustration.  It’s hard work if you have a big driveway.  I’m not sure if this is a surprise to anyone, but emergency rooms fill up after big snow falls.  Okay, I’m sure that doesn’t surprise anyone.  Many of the visits are from falling injuries – slippery sidewalks, ski or snowboard tumbles, and of course toboggan injuries.  But did you know there is also an increase in cardiac incidents? Read more…

Even though I am a trainer and have the equipment to work out at home or at the sports therapy clinic where I work, I still prefer going to the gym.

It’s partly a social thing I suppose – I’m not a big chatter at the gym, but I do have the people I say hi to or nod to. Strangely it’s also partly being able to tune out. I love to put my mp3 player on and enjoy some loud tunes. Aside from at the gym and in the car, I don’t listen to a lot of music. Maybe I need to do that more. ..

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“Foam rolling is great, we have quickly become best friends” was a recent response from a client when I inquired about his progress with some foam roll exercises that I had recommended.

I can honestly say that I feel the same way.  I didn’t feel that way initially mind you – we really had to work through some painful spots, but thankfully we were both willing to keep working at them, and soon enough it was smooth rolling.  And that lead to happy running and skiing for me.  But after a while the old white foam roller started to feel a little soft.  Then one day, my wandering eye got the best of me – I just couldn’t resist that fancy blue foam roller, standing in the corner of the fitness store, so hard and rugged.  Who could resist? Read more…

Raise your hand if this sounds like you:

You book a great week-long ski vacation somewhere out west. Maybe Heavenly? Lake Louise? Whistler? You can’t stop thinking about knee deep powder, and 3,000+ vertical feet, and runs that take half an hour to ski down. Then you start thinking about that, and you remember the last ski vacation you took:

• Your legs were tired by lunchtime on the first day;
• You woke up on day 2 and they felt like cement pillars but you pushed through.
• Day 3 was more of the same, and Read more…

This week’s post is a follow on to last week’s post with some basic information about low-back pain, covering some slightly different topics and getting into a bit more detail.

The post will primarily address whether and how much we should bend, extend and rotate our backs.

Dr. McGill has lectured and written extensively on why flexion is bad for our backs, and yet what exercise does your physical therapist give you to address your low back pain? Crunches! Somehow in the last 20 years it has become a universal truth that situps are bad but crunches are good. Take a look at these two photos. Read more…

I had the pleasure of spending two days at a Dr. Stuart McGill seminar about “Building the Ultimate Back”. Dr. McGill is a spine biomechanist at the University of Waterloo, an internationally renowned speaker about low back dysfunction, an equally renowned clinician, and the author of Low back Disorders and Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance.

Because Dr. McGill covered so much amazing information, and because back function is such an important topic, I have split this into three articles. This first article provides what I view as the 4 basic points he addressed.

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