We Are the Ultimate Winners

“Who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs . . . who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if they fail, at least fails while daring greatly . . .”

– Teddie Roosevelt

I recently experienced my first, and probably my last, viral post.

What struck me was not the reach, but the reason. It was not provocative. It was not critical. It did not assign blame. It simply gave language to something many people were already feeling but had not expressed. Sometimes resonance happens not because you say something bold, but because you say something true at the right moment.

It came after the Olympics, when I found myself reflecting on how we often treat losing gold instead of winning silver.

Here is what I wrote:

There will be no outrage from me.
No second guessing.
No dissecting line changes or overtime decisions.

What I witnessed over these Olympic hockey tournaments was something far more important.

In more than thirty years in high performance sport, I have watched women’s hockey and women’s sport in general rise from the margins to the main stage. What we are seeing now would have been unimaginable a generation ago.

One moment crystallized that truth for me.

When Mikaël Kingsbury earned his 100th World Cup victory in January, the congratulatory video he received came from two captains: Sidney Crosby and Marie-Philippe Poulin.

Two leaders.
Two equals.
One country.

Thirty years ago, that symbolism would have been rare. Today, it feels exactly right. Captains’ Canada. Side by side. We have come a long way.

The second perspective?

Silver is not failure.

Both finals were decided in overtime. Three on three. Razor thin margins between glory and heartbreak. That is the nature of elite sport. It demands everything and often gives nothing back but the knowledge that you dared greatly.

Gold is celebrated.
Silver is scrutinized.

But both require excellence beyond comprehension.

We, the audience, were the real winners.

We witnessed perhaps the finest men’s and women’s hockey ever played. Two weeks of speed, skill, courage, and sacrifice. Sometimes rewarded with a medal, often not, but extraordinary regardless.

Our captains and their teams gave us effort worthy of the Maple Leaf. Red. Black. Worn with pride.

Silver is not a consolation. It is proof of belonging on the highest stage in the world.

Thank you to every athlete who represented Team Canada and Équipe Canada.

What an exhibition of excellence.

The message resonated with millions. The overwhelming majority of those who commented said the same thing. It felt like someone had read their mind.

There was another moment that deserves equal recognition.

In victory, the US men’s team carried the jersey of the late Johnny Gaudreau around the arena. They did not allow the celebration to become self absorbed. They made space for memory. They made space for loss. They honored one of their own.

Then they brought his children into the team photo.

That is character.

That is leadership.

That is legacy.

Medals tarnish. Records are eventually broken. Banners come down. But how you carry yourself, how you honor your teammates, how you treat family in moments of triumph, that endures.

In that act, they reminded us that the true measure of a program is not only what it wins, but what it stands for.

We speak often about culture in high performance environments. Culture is not a slogan on a wall. It is revealed in moments like that. In how you win. In who you elevate. In whether you remember that the game is played by human beings whose lives extend far beyond the rink.

That moment will be remembered longer than the final score.

There is something strange about the silver medal, especially in tournament play.

You win silver by losing to the gold medalist.
You win bronze by defeating someone else.

You finish with a win when you earn bronze.
You finish with a loss when you earn silver.

Strange, but true.

Silver is rarely viewed as a surprise achievement. More often it is framed as a consolation for almost reaching the summit. Many athletes wrestle with that image. Only weeks, months, or even years later does the pride settle in.

The larger truth is that winning any Olympic medal is almost improbable and often feels nearly impossible.

I recently shared a parable on an Olympic broadcast about what it really means to become an Olympic champion and what it means to strive for that objective.

Imagine walking into your first year of medical school. The professor steps to the podium, welcomes the class, and calmly says to the one hundred plus students in the room:

Only one of you will graduate in four years with a license to practice medicine.

Most of us would quietly gather our books and begin looking for another degree.

That is the statistical reality of becoming an Olympic gold medalist.

And more importantly, it is the reality of not becoming one.

You still train relentlessly.
You still overcome setbacks.
You still rehab injuries, sacrifice comfort, and organize your life around a dream.

For most, the podium never comes.

That is what it means to be an Olympian.

So when we look up in inspiration at what the Olympics represent, think of the Theodore Roosevelt quote:

“Who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if they fail, at least fails while daring greatly…”

When you watch the Olympics, let the stories move you. Let the triumphs inspire you. Let those who dare greatly remind you to pursue something worthy in your own life.

That is the ultimate gift of the Olympic Games for all of us who witness.

Life Has a Way of Finding Us

“Some men see things and say, why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?“

– George Bernard Shaw

This week I’ve found myself reflecting on a career born more of faith than foresight.

In 1983, when I came to Montreal to attend Concordia University, I had no idea what an Athletic Therapist was. I came to play football. That was the plan. The dream.

There was a program called Exercise Science that seemed practical enough. My father wanted me to earn a university degree. He gently steered me away from becoming a radio DJ. I suppose he was right.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered Athletic Therapy. Or perhaps it discovered me. It offered a way to stay connected to sport, to serve athletes, and to stay immersed in an environment I loved.

After certification, my first mentor hired me into his clinic. He didn’t just give me a job. He gave me a start. I didn’t realize then how much mentorship would shape my life.

Around the same time, my love of lifting weights led me toward strength and conditioning. One afternoon at the YMCA, I came across the journal of the National Strength and Conditioning Association. The next day I registered for the exam. It felt impulsive at the time. In hindsight, it was pivotal.

I never imagined I would return to Concordia as Assistant Athletic Therapist and Strength Coach. For eight years I had the privilege of helping build a performance culture for varsity teams and walking alongside athletes chasing their goals. Somewhere in there, I was invited to teach.

Teaching changed me.

Standing in front of students forced me to ask better questions. Why does this work? Why are we doing it this way? Teaching ignited a lifelong curiosity that would shape every chapter that followed.

The work at Concordia quietly prepared me for the National Hockey League. I could not have predicted moving to New York City and working with the Islanders and Rangers. I could not have foreseen sharing space with leaders and legends, or witnessing young players at the beginning of extraordinary careers.

Returning home to work with the Montreal Canadiens felt surreal. The men I once watched as a boy were now colleagues. The players I helped were beginning stories that would inspire a generation.

Then came Olympic sport.

A chance opportunity to help a mogul skier named Jennifer Heil manage back pain opened a door I never knew existed. Her gold medal in 2006 did more than crown a champion. It led to B2Ten and a new chapter helping Canadian athletes pursue Olympic dreams.

Over the years I have found myself in places I could never have scripted. At the bottom of the Streif in Kitzbühel, watching Erik Guay race after overcoming back pain. On the Olympic pool deck as Alexandre Despatie competed in his fourth Games after battling a stubborn patellar tendon. In rinks, on mountains, beside athletes chasing something extraordinary.

This past week, I watched a young man I’ve worked with for seventeen years win his fourth Olympic medal at four separate Games. I met him as a boy. Now he is a veteran champion. Moments like that remind me how quickly time passes and how privileged we are to walk alongside someone’s journey.

None of it was planned the way it unfolded.

If there is a thread through all of it, it is this: say yes to opportunity. Stay curious. Serve the person in front of you. Keep asking why. And trust that if you do those things long enough, the road will take you somewhere meaningful.

We should make plans. But we should also leave room for life to surprise us.

Looking back, I see less of a career built by design and more of a life shaped by faith, mentors, relationships, and a willingness to step forward when doors opened.

Life has a way of finding us.

The Quiet Work That Actually Wins

“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. An that is why I succeed.“

– Michael Jordan

After enough years in high performance environments, you start to notice a pattern.

The coaches who last.
The athletes who progress year after year.
The programs that survive chaos, turnover, injuries, and pressure.

They are not doing more things.
They are doing fewer things, better, and for much longer than most people are willing to tolerate.

Early in my career, I thought success came from solving everything. Every asymmetry. Every weakness. Every metric that did not look quite right. It felt responsible. Thorough. Professional.

It was also naïve.

What experience teaches you is that performance lives inside bandwidths, not perfection.

Define the Bandwidth Then Chip Away

Every athlete has an acceptable range of movement, force, coordination, and resilience that allows them to express their sport safely and effectively. The goal is not to build an ideal human. It is to define the minimum viable bandwidth required for their game.

To understand what is truly necessary for success.

Once you see this clearly, your job becomes simpler, but harder.

You stop trying to fix everything.
You start chipping away at the few constraints that actually matter.

That means choosing one or two deficits, not weaknesses, and committing to them long enough to move the needle.

A weakness is simply a missing quality.
A deficit is something that limits expression of the sport.

If it does not show up on the field, the ice, or the track under real demand, it does not deserve your best training energy. This distinction alone can save years of wasted work.

Take the long jump as an example. An athlete may have a low VO₂ max. That is a weakness in the general sense, but largely inconsequential to performance. A lack of single leg power, however, is a true deficit. That is what counts.

Improve what matters most.

The Advantage of Not Having Everything

There is a quiet advantage to not having every piece of technology at your disposal.

When you do not have force plates, GPS, dashboards, and endless data streams, you are forced to develop something else. Judgment.

You learn to see.
You learn to listen.
You learn to feel when something is off before a screen tells you it is.

Coaches who grow up tech dependent often struggle when the technology is gone. Coaches who grow up with basic tools tend to adapt anywhere. They become craftsmen.

Technology can enhance good coaching.
It cannot replace it.

High Performance Is Boring That Is the Point

One of the hardest lessons for young coaches to accept is that high level success is boring.

It is not built on novelty.
It is built on repetition.

The same warm ups.
The same movement standards.
The same conversations.
The same expectations.

Day after day.
Year after year.

The moment you start chasing what is sexy is usually the moment you abandon what actually works. The best programs do not look exciting from the outside. They look consistent.

Consistency with variability can sound like an unachievable paradox. It is not. Consistency lives in the routine of doing what matters. Variability lives in thoughtful, incremental adjustments that keep the system responsive. That balance is what allows adaptation.

Control the Controllables Especially in Chaos

Organizations get messy.
Schedules change.
Roles shift.
Injuries happen.
Politics creep in.

When chaos rises, the best thing you can give an athlete is anchors.

Simple, controllable behaviors include morning routines, nutrition basics, sleep habits, and recovery rituals.

These become stabilizers when nothing else feels stable.

Teaching athletes where they still have agency is one of the most underrated performance skills and one of the most transferable.

Theory Gives You the Map The Athlete Is the Compass

Research is invaluable. It gives us guardrails. It tells us what tends to work, on average, across populations.

But the athlete in front of you is not an average.

Research defines bandwidths.

The athlete’s response defines direction.

If you are not willing to override a model when the organism says not today, you are no longer coaching. You are managing a spreadsheet.

This becomes especially important when you move between sporting environments.

Closed sports such as sprinting, jumping, and throwing reward tighter models and clearer cause and effect relationships.

Open sports such as hockey, soccer, and basketball demand intuition, adaptability, and tolerance for chaos. Too much rigidity in a chaotic system creates fragility.

Expectations Without Attachment

One of the most powerful things you can model as a coach is the ability to hold expectations without clinging to outcomes.

You can expect excellence.
You can demand standards.
You can push growth.

But if you are emotionally attached to a specific result, you lose adaptability, and so does the athlete.

Resilience is not about lowering expectations.

It is about staying flexible when reality inevitably disrupts them.

Coaching Beyond the Game

At some point, every athlete leaves the sport.

What stays is not their vertical jump or VO₂ max.
What stays is their ability to self regulate, to focus on controllables, to adapt under pressure, and to anchor themselves when structure disappears.

Whether we intend to or not, we are teaching people how to live.

The longer I do this work, the more I believe that might be the most important outcome of all.

Risk vs Reward

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.“

– George Bernard Shaw

Living in the world of human performance at the highest levels for most of my career has given me a front-row seat to the human psyche. At our core, we are creatures of habit. We like to feel safe. We like to feel in control.

That instinct is not learned. It is wired into us from birth. It governs our primitive reflexes, informs how our brain filters information, and shapes how we respond under pressure. Safety first. Performance second.

While this wiring can be overridden by our thinking mind, by reflection, reasoning, and deliberate choice, that capacity has limits. The more time pressure, urgency, and consequence involved in a decision, the more we default to reflex and bias rather than thoughtful analysis. When the stakes rise and the clock shrinks, instinct takes the wheel.

On the surface, high performance sport, whether professional or Olympic, appears to be a laboratory for innovation. From the outside looking in, it feels like a space where pushing boundaries, exploring the unknown, and shaping what has never been done before should be the norm.

In reality, it is the exception.

Far more often, what you see in so-called high performance environments is the same behavior, recycled year after year, under the banner of best practice. Same ideas. Same language. Same solutions. Different day.

There are reasons for this, and most of them trace back to survival.

Innovation requires risk. To do something differently is to accept that it may fail more often than it succeeds. Anyone who has spent time in entrepreneurship understands this reality. Failure is not a flaw in the process. It is part of the cost of admission. Many people avoid entrepreneurship altogether because they are unwilling to accept that trade-off.

High performance sport adds another layer of constraint.

There is only so much room at the top. Each sport has its own culture, its own hierarchy, and its own narrow funnel of opportunity. There are 32 teams in the NFL and NHL, 30 in the NBA and MLB. That means roughly 30 head coaching jobs, 30 general manager roles, and a limited number of senior performance positions in each league. In some sports there are more total roles, but many come with significant travel, instability, or personal sacrifice.

As you climb that ladder, opportunities become fewer and competition becomes fiercer. Movement between sports is not nearly as fluid as it appears from the outside. A practitioner seasoned in hockey does not simply walk into a baseball clubhouse and apply the same understanding without earning trust and navigating a steep learning curve. Meanwhile, there are many capable people already embedded in that sport, waiting patiently for their chance to move up.

This reality shapes behavior.

Once someone reaches a coveted role, something subtle begins to shift. Without consciously deciding to, they become more protective. Less experimental. Less willing to risk what they have earned. The goal quietly moves from exploration to preservation.

True innovation becomes dangerous.

When someone does take that risk and it works, when success follows, which in sport is defined almost exclusively by winning, another phenomenon emerges. Copying.

Sometimes others see the innovation and think, this is possible, it works, maybe we should try it too. Occasionally that spreads an idea. More often, it dilutes it. What worked in one environment worked because of the person implementing it, their constraints, their intuition, their context. When stripped of that and applied elsewhere, the outcome rarely survives.

The other pathway is through what people like to call a coaching tree. Those who learned under the innovator carry the process forward, often faithfully, often rigidly. What began as a creative act slowly hardens into doctrine. The innovation becomes institutionalized. Same process. Same language. Same day.

Job protection, safety, and survival are the true rate limiters of innovation.

Those who genuinely innovate are not driven by success, nor are they paralyzed by failure. They are possessed by curiosity and an almost unreasonable desire to explore what might be possible. George Bernard Shaw captured this perfectly when he wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Reasonableness is safe. It breeds sameness.

Unreasonableness, however, comes at a cost. Swimming against the current is exhausting. Innovation is not for those seeking comfort or certainty. It demands that you risk what you have accumulated in service of something that may never materialize.

And yet, every meaningful leap our species has made has come from those willing to accept that bargain.

That is the great paradox.

Without innovation, we preserve nothing of consequence. With it, we risk everything we hold dear.

So the question remains.

Who is up for the ride?