Derek M. Hansen - November 2025

Introduction

Even though I started my career in the sport performance field, working in Strength and Conditioning and focusing on speed development, the majority of my major projects in the last ten years have focused on injury management.  Teams are finding that the biggest challenge in modern sports is staying healthy and ensuring players are available to make an impact in games.  With all the so-called advancements in training, equipment, nutrition and rehabilitation, we still find ourselves at a precipice where the prospects of a team can be thrown into turmoil with a handful of serious injuries to key players at the wrong time.

As such, team staff are scrambling – at all levels including professional, collegiate, national team and high school – to maintain a healthy lineup throughout the season.  While there are new technologies and methods for treating injuries, these innovations have not necessarily contributed to a reduction in the incidence o...

Derek M. Hansen - September 2023

This past summer I have spent more time going back to my roots and watching the sport of Track and Field, also referred to ‘Athletics’ outside of North America.  All of my kids are still competing in the sport and I still have lots of friends coaching at all levels.  It was enjoyable to watch a sport where individual performances and results based on quantifiable times, distances and heights determined success and gratification.  Of course it is always nice to win and take home a medal.  However, achieving a measurable improvement in your discipline can still be rewarding and worth the thousands of hours of time and effort.

When you have had the chance to work with a multitude of sports over the years, it is both easy and embarrassing to try to take credit for the success of a team.  The aggravating reality of the situation is that there are so many factors that go into achieving a championship season.  Rarely is one person the source of the achiev...