Adam Gant grew up in Kelowna, British Columbia in the Okanagan Valley, which provided the opportunity for him to pursue a variety of outdoor sporting activities, including rock climbing, sailing, skiing, basketball, baseball, and mountain biking.
He eventually found his way onto the Varsity Rowing team at the University of British Columbia. His preparations for all the other sports in his life, in actuality, prepared Adam for an incredibly successful career on the water. He quickly developed into one of the leaders on the team, setting records on the rowing machine during his novice year. He later went on to win medals at Canada Cup and the National Championships.
After earning the British Columbia Provincial Premier’s Award for achievement in sport in 2002, Adam Gant decided to move to Victoria to begin training with the National Team. He was grateful to have the opportunity to compete under Mike Spracklen, an internationally renowned rowing coach who has led multiple teams to success at both the Olympic games and Rowing World Championships. With a focus on the next round of trials for world championship team selection, Adam went on to win silver medals in the World Cup at Princeton and the Nations Cup in Italy.
Although Adam Gant no longer rows competitively, he does continue to train and pursue various athletic challenges including marathons and triathlons. Most notably, Adam has begun to get back into mountain climbing along with a friend from rowing. Mountains climbed include the North East Ridge of Bugaboo Spire, Forbidden Peak, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, the Golden Hinde, and other alpine climbing routes.
Throughout all of these athletic endeavours, Adam Gant has learned a great deal about the importance of fitness, nutrition, and proper training. Having trained at high levels in many different sports focused on both strength and endurance Adam has come to understand how to quickly change body weight and muscle composition to adapt to the best body type for an individual sport. Between the right kinds of timing of nutrition to the management of sleep there are numerous insights and important techniques to achieving high performance.
This understanding of human conditioning has also provided a big benefit to improved productivity at the office and for business travel when international travel with short turn-arounds have been required to fit in all of the components of a busy schedule.
In training for any sport there is a tug of war between two different states of mind — relaxation and intensity. Training to be relaxed allows you to perform in the “zone,” which is especially important for longer endurance events. Meanwhile, extreme intensity and stress forces the body to become stronger.
One of the great Mike Spracklen quotes, “the body will adjust to whatever stress is placed upon it,” describes the simple relationship that exists between hard training or work and improved ability to perform. In Mike’s case it included the clear intention to win a gold medal, which required a training schedule and intensity that no other team would match (otherwise why delude ourselves into thinking we have a chance to win). Holding ourselves to a standard of such height naturally forces us to become better athletes.