Eat. Sleep. Train. Repeat: keys to building strength from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats conditioning coach
CBC
For Hamilton Tiger-Cats head strength coach Marcellus Bowman, the most important ability an athlete can have is availability.
“Speed is awesome, strength is awesome, and power is awesome. But if you're not able to express that speed, power, and strength 18 games a season, it doesn't matter,” he told CBC Hamilton.
Working for Hamilton’s CFL team, he says his job is preparing players to perform at their best, then making sure they’re back next game.
Bowman focuses on nutrition, sleep and recovery — a philosophy he’s outlined in his book, The 1% – The Athlete’s Guide to Nutrition, Sleep, and Peak Performance, which came out Dec. 5.
As a player, Bowman was “high-output, high-effort”, but didn’t know how to maintain that, he said.
He started getting injured and by the time he figured out that his training, nutrition and sleep were out of whack, it was too late, Bowman said, and his career was over.
“Unfortunately, it was injury and it was agony, it was frustration and it was an inability to fully maximize my potential that really created this,” Bowman said. “The goal in writing this book was so that the athletes who still have time can apply it before it's too late.”
Bowman played for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers from 2010-2012 and the Ticats in 2013 and 2014. After that, he coached in the U.S. before joining the Ticats as head strength coach in 2023.
Bowman said he realized the best athletes, who he calls the one-per-centers, “get better and stay there,” whereas most people can’t maintain peak performance.
If you want to run faster, Bowman said, you can take the right supplements and eat well. But if you don’t sleep well, you won’t get faster and your risk of injury will increase.
Stuart Phillips, who chairs McMaster University’s kinesiology department, said he’s familiar with Bowman and looks forward to reading his book.
For Phillips, the idea that building strength requires more than time in the weight room is “spot-on.”
“All the training that you do in the gym and everything else is great but all the magic really happens in recovery,” he said.
Exercise is a stressor, Phillips said, and managing stress and recovery is key to career longevity in sport.
Hundreds of thousands of used tires are piling up across Ontario as some companies responsible for tire recycling have stopped processing tires amid reduced provincial recycling regulations for tire producers, industry experts say.
People in Guelph facing homelessness will soon have a new place to go during the day.
Islanders are reminded to plan their rides ahead of holiday festivities if they plan on drinking alcohol or using cannabis.
Even before Gwen Healey Akearok began her new role as Nunavut’s Minister of Family Services, she was tuning into the Office of the Auditor General’s (OAG) hearings on the state of the Family Services department.
The racial reckoning of the COVID era saw Canada grapple with its checkered past — a process that led to statues of some foundational figures being removed, in some instances by force.
Holiday traditions are front and centre for many people at this time of year. But one Uxbridge family's Christmas tradition goes above and beyond the standard Christmas carols or holiday party.
A pedestrian is dead, and police are investigating following a collision in a north London parking lot on Tuesday afternoon.
Police have lifted a shelter-in-place order for parts of St. John's.
Nova Scotia Power is providing more information about the cyberattack on the utility earlier this year and its response in the months that followed.
A rare old-growth forest in Quebec’s Mauricie region is at the centre of a growing conflict between conservation advocates and the provincial government, after forestry roadwork was authorized in an area currently under review for protected status.
The FBI and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York sought an interview with ex-prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor for connections to Canadian sex offender and fashion mogul Peter Nygard.
A mother is grieving after a carbon monoxide incident killed her 11-year-old son and put her husband in hospital in critical condition.
Just as Alberta begins to dig out from its last winter storm, most of the province is preparing for another blast of snow and brutal cold, just in time for the holidays.