Hi there: Hope you have a great weekend. I was at the Okanagan Sport Leadership Conference at UBC on Saturday. Okanagan Peak Performance had a booth at the trade show and was there to provide information and hand out t-shirts. It was great to meet a lot of athletes, coaches and sport practitioners at one time. You can definitely see the impact the Olympics has had on the sports being practiced locally. This was the first time there was such a large contingent of freestyle skiers, ski and boardercross, figure skaters and other winter sport athletes.After the conference the rest of the weekend was spent landscaping and watching the UFC over at some friends. While I don't follow the sport that closely I do appreciate the training that goes into preparing for a UFC event. You have to be versatile in a number of martial arts and develop your energy systems for both quick explosive efforts and to be able to go five-five minute rounds. And so this part I find fascinating.And after years of study, research and training both myself and other athletes I have found that we all have certain abilities and strengths. For example some people respond better to higher volume training and others are better suited to a lower volume of training. Some athletes are very effective with short burst efforts and others really shine when the challenge is longer in duration. So what accounts for these differences?Part of it has to do with your body type. An ectomorph is going to find it easier to move themselves then to move an external load. And the opposite is true for an endomorph who can pile the plates on a leg press but may have difficulty performing overhead bodyweight squats.So what do we do to improve? The answer is...

Hey there: This past spring I was contacted regarding training a few Special Olympics athletes. Richard, Glen and Andrew compete in track in field and were looking for some help in getting ready for the Nationals in July. So I agreed to do my best to help these guys out. What a great experience it was.At the very first meeting we sat down and discussed their goals, training history, previous injuries, rest habits and anything else relevant to realizing success in track and field. And I was really impressed how much focus these guys had. They were dedicated to their training. They avoided empty calories and made sure to get at least hours of sleep a night. If I remember correctly Andrew told me he really likes having stir-frys for dinner. Unless there's pizza!And so we got started. I didn't realize their level of dedication until one day Richard was quoting one of my more recent emails that you all receive. It didn't make sense how accurate he was it being able to recall the content until I realized he was printing them all off and collecting them in a binder. He would bring the binder to our training sessions and then share them with others.Lastly I'll remember Glen for going for runs into between our training sessions. Even if his training partners were busy he'd still be out there putting in his mileage then come inside the gym for a workout. Although I seem to recall him teasing me about how poorly Italy did in the World Cup.Recently one of these guys received a very admirable acknowledgement. Richard was named Special Olympics Canada's male athlete of the year. While Richard will be receiving the award all there of these guys are deserving. And knowing Andrew and Glen they are proudly...