Ascend Coaching App

Tag: Sports Coaching

  • Building Smarter Training Plans with the Ascend Sports Coaching App

    Building Smarter Training Plans with the Ascend Sports Coaching App

    Sports coaching is the process of guiding athletes to improve their performance, skills, and confidence through structured support, instruction, and feedback. At the core of effective coaching are training plans, which are organized roadmaps that outline what athletes will train, how often, and why.

    What are Training Plans?

    A training plan brings structure and purpose to the coaching process by breaking long-term goals into manageable sessions and phases, ensuring athletes develop physically, technically, and mentally over time. Rather than training randomly, athletes follow a clear progression that balances workload, recovery, and skill development. Training plans also help coaches track progress, adjust for individual needs, and keep athletes focused, motivated, and aligned with their performance goals.

    When coaching young athletes today, having the right tools can significantly elevate both performance and the overall coaching experience. Ascend is a modern sports coaching app designed to simplify how coaches build, manage, and deliver training plans—without sacrificing quality or personalization. Whether you coach individual athletes or entire teams, Ascend helps you organize your ideas, communicate clearly, and keep athletes engaged in their development.

    Create and Manage Training Plans with Ease

    One of Ascend’s biggest strengths is how easy it is to create and manage training plans. Getting started is simple: go to your account profile and click Training Plans. From there, you can create a brand-new training plan or edit any of your existing ones. This intuitive setup saves time and removes the friction often associated with athlete data, coaching documents, game plays, or scattered notes. Everything lives in one centralized place, making it easy to stay organized and consistent.

    Ascend allows coaches to go far beyond basic workout lists. You can build rich, dynamic training plans that truly reflect your coaching philosophy. Within each plan, you can add coaching videos to demonstrate proper technique, explain concepts, or reinforce key cues. This visual element helps athletes better understand expectations and reduces confusion, especially when they’re training remotely or independently.

    In addition to videos, Ascend lets you include helpful articles and informative series that support athlete education. This is especially valuable for teaching topics like recovery, mindset, nutrition habits, or long-term development. Instead of repeating the same explanations over and over, you can embed high-quality educational content directly into the training plan, allowing athletes to learn at their own pace while reinforcing your coaching message.

    Built for Individual Athletes and Flexible Sports Coaching

    Customization is at the heart of Ascend. Every athlete is different, and the app makes it easy to tailor training plans to individual needs. Whether you’re adjusting workloads, emphasizing specific skills, or scaling difficulty levels, Ascend gives you the flexibility to adapt without rebuilding everything from scratch. You can update plans as athletes progress, recover from injury, or transition into new phases of training, ensuring the plan always matches their current situation.

    Another major advantage of Ascend is how it improves communication. Athletes can access their training plans anytime, from any device, which eliminates confusion about what they should be doing and when. Coaches can provide clarity, context, and purpose within the plan itself, helping athletes understand not just what they’re doing, but why they’re doing it. This clarity increases buy-in, consistency, and overall effort.

    Spend Less Time Managing, More Time Coaching with Ascend

    Ultimately, Ascend empowers coaches to spend less time managing logistics and more time coaching. By centralizing training plans, educational content, and media in one easy-to-use platform, it streamlines your workflow while elevating the athlete experience. Everything you need to customize athlete training such as videos, articles, series, charts, and photos are easily accessible to you. For coaches who value efficiency and clarity, Ascend isn’t just a convenience, it’s a game-changing tool for creating training plans.

  • How Hockey Canada’s Coaching Playbook Went Digital — and Why It’s Changing the Game

    How Hockey Canada’s Coaching Playbook Went Digital — and Why It’s Changing the Game

    For decades, Canada’s coaches relied on sports binders, DVDs, and stacks of printed manuals to train the next generation of hockey players. Today, all of that fits in the palm of a hand. With the launch of the Hockey Canada Network app — powered by Ascend — coaching content has gone fully digital, transforming how knowledge is shared with athletes, parents, and coaches nationwide.

    The Shift to Digital Coaching

    Since partnering with Ascend, Hockey Canada has moved its entire minor hockey coaching program online, a shift that has eliminated the expense and inefficiencies of producing and distributing physical manuals. The app now serves as the official platform for all NCCP coaching resources approved by Sport Canada, delivering drills, videos, practice plans, and development information directly to coaches.

    Coaches have responded enthusiastically. They highlight the ease of use, age-specific content, and the ability to create and share custom practice plans. Weekly and monthly updates tailored to specific levels have become a favorite feature, streamlining preparation and communication across Canada’s hockey community.

    Corey McNabb, Director of NextGen Development at Hockey Canada, has worked with players and teams across all ages and levels. Through his experience, he’s learned that athletes express their skills in ways unique to them.

    How Coaches Really Use the App

    “The Hockey Canada Network App is a one-stop shop for everything a coach needs throughout the season,” says Corey McNabb, Director for NextGen Development, Hockey Canada. “Before this platform, we faced major challenges with outdated delivery methods from printing manuals, burning DVDs, and shipping hard copies. With Ascend, we now have a tool that’s modern, adaptable, and built for how coaches actually work today.”

    McNabb also sees the app as a bridge to the future, “I see the HC Network evolving into a desktop version that mirrors the app, giving coaches more flexibility. The goal is to let them create and share content seamlessly across devices whether at home or on the rink.”

    Innovation at the Intersection of Sport and Technology
    Founded by entrepreneur Ted Hellard and technology leader Aaron Glenn, Ascend was born out of a belief that coaching deserves more than outdated tools. Their platform empowers teams and organizations to deliver personalized training, advanced drill libraries, and instant updates all while creating lasting connections between athletes and coaches.

    At its core, Ascend is guided by a simple principle: don’t just embrace change, pioneer it. Every solution is designed to unlock potential, create smarter pathways forward, and ensure that the communities they serve are always one step ahead.

    For Ascend’s co-founder and CEO, Aaron Glenn, the company’s culture reflects his own approach: fast-paced, practical, and fueled by a love of the game. That passion comes through in his vision: “We focus on giving coaches the resources they need to make a real difference in athletes’ performance and confidence.”


    A Partnership Powering the Future of Coaching

    The collaboration between Ascend and Hockey Canada is more than a technology upgrade, it’s a reimagining of how knowledge, mentorship, and training reach every corner of the sport. By bringing Hockey Canada’s trusted development resources into the Hockey Canada Network app, and combining it with Ascend’s expertise in mobile coaching platforms, the partnership has created a digital hub that equips coaches with the right tools at the right time.

    As Head of Product and Operations, Joy Domingo, puts it, Ascend’s strength lies in the details — from refining drill libraries to ensuring updates roll out instantly — so coaches get a tool that feels natural to use. “When we hear that a coach used the app to save time planning practice or found a drill that clicked with their players, that’s when we know we’re doing our job right. For us at Ascend, success is measured in the everyday moments during training, where better tools lead to better experiences for coaches and athletes.”

    Together, Ascend and Hockey Canada are setting a new benchmark for how sports organizations can evolve in the digital age: shifting from outdated distribution means to now agile, on-demand mobile solutions. The result is a platform that empowers coaches, inspires players, and strengthens the connection between communities and the game they love.