Chris Osmond: A Unique Coach Within the CSIC

Chris Osmond, a Strength and Conditioning Coach at the Canadian Sport Institute Calgary, has the difficult task of providing individualized services to athletes from a variety of sports. While the majority of the CSIC's strength and conditioning coaches work with groups of athletes who belong to a single sport, Osmond has taken on the role of coaching athletes who are not part of a training group.

Osmond typically works with five to eight athletes at time, all from varying sports. His athletes' levels range from junior national teams to the professional or Olympic level. Some of the athletes that he is currently coaching are modern pentathlete Joshua Riker-Fox, baseball player Mike Soroka, curler John Morris, and ice cross athlete Kyle Croxall.

Osmond enjoys the challenge of working with a diverse range of individuals. He says that in order to create the best plan for each athlete, "I educate myself about each sport. The programs I create are individualized based on assessments of movement, power and capacity to do work, together with my analysis of the sport and athlete."

After the initial assessments and testing are performed through the CSIC's High Performance Laboratory, Osmond creates a yearly training program (YTP). Once the YTP has been established, more detailed programming takes place with other coaching staff who will be involved in training a specific athlete. The training process includes establishing small cycles within the YTP that enable the coaching staff to focus on priorities that have been identified through the assessment process.

Joshua Riker-Fox's athlete-coach relationship with Osmond is still in the early stages. However, he already has a strong belief in Osmond's coaching style. When asked about Osmond, Riker-Fox says, "We started with a thorough review of where I am at currently and what my goals are moving forward. I really appreciate that Chris has worked with a variety of sports and athletes. He has an understanding of the asymmetric movement in the event of modern pentathlon. Chris is obviously experienced and shares the rationale behind what we do. I really enjoy Chris' expertise and the fact that I am learning so much from him. I feel stronger and it is obviously rewarding for me to see its impact. Chris is a great coach!"

Canadian Sport Institute Calgary: @csicalgary

Written by Brittany Schussler: @BSchussler

Photo by Dave Holland: @csicalgaryphoto