Joël Blanchard

Joël completed his B.Sc. in Kinesiology with a specialization in sports performance as well as an undergrad microprogram in Sports Didactics at the University of Sherbrooke. During these years, he had the opportunity to deepen his knowledge and abilities in various track in field disciplines not only as a decathlon athlete, but also as a fitness coach. Having developed a particular interest in the assessment of the cardiorespiratory system during exercise during those years, Joël decided to undertake a master’s degree (M.Sc.) in Sport Studies in the same institution. His research project aiming the development of reference values for cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET; VO2 max assessments), he significantly increased his understanding of human physiology at submaximal and maximum effort. He has used this expertise on several occasions with more than 1,500 supervised CPET in healthy children, children with congenital heart diseases, adolescents, healthy adults, adults with chronic diseases (diabetes, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and high-level athletes. As a teaching assistant and lecturer in exercise physiology at the University of Ottawa, Joël constantly renews his theoretical notions and use his experience to teach, among other things, the different methods of evaluating aerobic and anaerobic fitness to undergrad students.

Considering that an immense correlation exists between movement skills development and cardiorespiratory fitness, Joël decided to start a PhD in Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa and with a thesis focusing on which movement skills should be maintained and developed during adolescence to optimize the learning of new and specialized movement skills. It was incidentally while starting his doctorate in the region that Joël developed a particular interest in endurance sports, especially cycling. He quickly fell in love with the different routes, but also the community. Since then, he has fun every day applying the different advanced concepts he learned during his master’s degree (cardiopulmonary system) and his doctorate (motor learning) to his own development as a cyclist, but also to the people he supervises.