Stephanie Thompson is a registered kinesiologist and owner of Empowered Performance in Markham, ON. In January 2021, she was one of five recipients of a Gender Equity Award grant from Curling Canada. Her plan was to create a "virtual group fitness program for young girls, focusing on reducing curling-related injuries." In this episode, we update her grant idea, talk about the mission of her business and spend time talking about my favourite topic: Little Rocks and what to do for warmup and (maybe) cooldown. She even invents a new curling term!
Some of the topics we discuss include:
* Where did the idea of a virtual fitness program for young women come from? (1:30)
* 1/3 of girls drop out of sport by late adolescence (2:53)
* Why fitness equipment is being sent to teams inside the Calgary bubble! (5:36)
* The topics covered in her virtual fitness program (9:54)
* Young females need upper body strength (11:11)
* Men typically have heavier weights than women (13:03)
* The main goal of Empowered Performance (21:00)
* Do we need a warmup and cooldown when working with U12s? (23:32)
* Warmup ideas for Little Rocks (26:24)
* Do we need a cooldown for young kids? If yes, then what? (29:34)
* The new term Stephanie invented (33:02)
* It's okay if you're doing less activity/training during these pandemic times! (34:51)
Links to the resources mentioned in this episode:
The Rally Report: Encouraging Action to Improve Sport for Women And Girls (2020)
https://womenandsport.ca/resources/research-insights/rally-report/
Empowered Performance For Curlers Podcast
https://empoweredperformance.ca/podcast/#
Stephanie's e-mail address: steph@empoweredperformance.ca
Follow our podcast on Twitter: @kidscurling
Glenn Gabriel is an NCCP-certified curling coach who lives in Pickering, Ontario, Canada. He has been the coordinator of the Little Rocks (U12) program at East York Curling Club in Toronto since 2011. If you have a question or feedback on the podcast, send us an e-mail at coachingkidscurling@gmail.com
The intro and outro music is "Golden Sunrise (Instrumental Version)"
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise
By Josh Woodward
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward
Licensed under CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/