“I was a wrestler in college, wrestling was my big sport and 1 year I had a really terrible injury. I remember when people would ask me ‘how are things going’, ‘what are you into’, and I would only talk about wrestling. Wrestling was my whole identity. When I got hurt, it really seemed like wrestling wasn’t going to be an option for me anymore, it was really kind of a big shake up. It was something where it wasn’t just hard physically but it was hard mentally and emotionally. You know, just trying to figure out, ‘okay if I’m not a wrestler, what am I going to do?’ I was in Kinesiology at the time, I was in my 3rd year of undergrad and you know how undergrad is, you take some really general courses, it’s not really super specific yet to what you want to do. I kind of knew I was interested in sports, interested in performance but competing for myself had been my big goal, my main focus of all my attention and energy until that time.
When I got hurt, it was like ‘I don’t want to not be in the sports world anymore but I don’t know if I can participate in it the way that I want to.’ I happen to be extremely lucky, really within about 2 months of that happening, I had someone come into our undergrad lecture and say ‘hey I’m starting a strength and conditioning department at this school, it’s brand new, I’m looking for a group of undergrad students to work and volunteer here, get to know a little bit more about the field.’
If you know anything about wrestling, wrestling is really pretty old school in it’s methodologies or at least it was at that place and time. So I didn’t really know what strength and conditioning was, all I knew what to do was pick your partner up on your shoulders, do some squats, run some shuttles and that was about it. It was a totally new thing to me, I really had no idea what I was getting into, it was just that kind of very fortunate colliding of 1 incident I was going through, then opportunity in an area that sounded just enough like it could be something that I was interested in that I decided to take a chance on it. I was extremely lucky, the director was someone who was an extremely talented teacher, and coach not just for athletes but also for learners. The education I got and the opportunities I got to learn what the field was, to get a little bit of exposure, and to get some experiences hands on was amazing. He really helped me to get outside my comfort zone, pushed me in ways where, I was used to being pushed physically as an athlete but not often do you get lucky enough to have someone who will push you in terms of your career and thinking about those kind of things. That’s pretty rare to have someone like that. He thought right away, he’d have conversations with me where he said ‘you know I think you’re good at this, I think you’re a good teacher, I think from your background and from some of the things you’ve been through, you relate to this type of athlete audience in a really cool way and I think you should pursue it.’
That was pretty cool to me. That was something where I was like ‘I like it, and someone thinks I’m good at it, maybe there’s a career here.’ I worked there for a couple years, ended up through his connections and network, not only worked at Mcmaster with the varsity team, I was lucky enough to work with Hockey Canada in that time period. It was a whole other world, when you go into a national sport organization where all of sudden people are wearing the Maple Leaf on their chest, and they’re going out competing on the National level and you see how much pride, how much structure there is to the system. It was really exciting for me, Hockey is Canada’s National sport, it wasn’t like a small deal, it felt like I was in the big times. I learned so much but one of the biggest things I learned with that group is how much I didn’t know at all. Biggest thing I learned was that I didn’t really know that much but I wanted to learn more.
Once I finished my undergrad, I knew I wanted to learn a little bit more in the field. I sat down with that director, we did a ton of research, he helped me go through all kinds of different schools and programs because my point of view was I want to learn some things I don’t know right now, I want to go somewhere different, see something totally different. So we picked 4 schools that I applied to, got into all 4 lucky enough but kind of hard because then you’ll have to pick.
The school I ended up going to was called Springfield College, it’s a tiny little school in Springfield, Massachusetts. That is where the original basketball hall of fame is and there is so much history and culture around coaching, sport performance, the campus is one of those places where you walk on it and it almost feels like a church. It’s like ‘unnn’, but for sports. Everyone who goes to that school, they are affiliated with sport in some way, they are either an athlete or they are in a field of studies that’s related to sport performance. It’s a really cool place, it’s almost like a cult in a lot of ways. The education I got there was radically different. Our class was 12 kids, and of 12 people you go to all your classes together, you have a time in the day where you all train together then you go to the library afterwards and you literally debate everything. Every class is about not just learning material, but about getting comfortable sharing your opinions on it, debating it, being okay with there’s no right answer but you have to learn how to say what you think and how to get some feedback on those things without taking it personally. If you compare that to the Canadian system, it’s really different, a lot of times it’s hard to share opinions or people aren’t comfortable sharing opinions. I was there for 2 years, did several internships while I was there so I got to go all over the States and worked at private settings, Division 1, Division 2 schools, some Pro sports team and see what strength and conditioning looked like in a lot of different context. And after you’ve learned how to share what you know, how to ask good questions, when you start going places and you feel okay with those skillsets, you get to learn so much because it’s not about being judged anymore for the questions you ask. It’s about really learning, like what’s going on here, what’s happening, how are you using the information that I slowly started to learn and how are you applying that in a cool unique way for your setting.
Those 2.5 years I was there was just unbelievable, the most dense learning experience that I can’t imagine I will ever have an opportunity like that in my life again. After that I came here, to Fortius in BC, I knew I wanted to come back to Canada, I knew I wanted to work at a place where I can work with people with all different skillsets in all different disciplines. The private setting is really attractive to me just because you get a little bit more attention to individuals rather than training a whole massive group of people and trying to fit everyone into the same box. The learning experience is really different, when you apply something that you think should work, but for the individual it’s not just working, you have to figure out what else can we do, how can I take what I think should be working, figure out why it’s not working and find a new solution to a problem where the research is telling me this should work. So Fortius has been really really different, but for me it’s been a good place to go into more detail, relearn why I love the field, and apply it in ways that are truly meaningful to individuals. That’s kind of the longest possible answer to your question but that’s how I got here.” – Molly O’Brien, Director of Strength and Conditioning at Fortius Sport and Health. (1/3)