Athlete Nutrition On The Road

I had an incredible start to my the 2015 year. I’ve had the opportunity to represent Canada at 7 world cups in the past 3 months on my road to Rio 2016. Starting the journey in Tunisia, Africa then visiting France, Belgium, Poland and Bulgaria. The going over to South America to compete in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. As amazing as it was, it did come with its challenges : making weight every single weekend without an access to a kitchen.   Making weight meant I had to lose 3-5kg to step on a scale on Friday night weighing less...

#RoadToRio : Champion Ana-Laura Portuondo Isasi

Ana-Laura Portuondo is an 18 year old athlete who has been practising judo for the past 10 years, and is a member of the Canadian National judo team. Her dream is simple : represent Québec and Canada at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.  Her biggest challenge is financing. Without external funding, she simply cannot go to any international competitions. Ana-Laura is one of the early users of MAKEACHAMP who has been successful at getting the community behind her.  Thanks to MAKEACHAMP, she is more determined than ever to make her dreams a reality, and to do so, she trains 10 times...

Secrets of successful crowdfunding campaigns

Two years ago, I was naive and thought crowdfunding was easy. How hard is it to share on Facebook, produce a fun video, and send a few emails to friends? It sounded like the easy life. Get the page up and a few weeks later, you get $5000 or even $20k in the bank from MAKEACHAMP. I got burnt, had my shares of complete failures and sheer disappointments after months of *hard* work. It was even more discouraging when seeing friends relying on you to fund their dreams. A friend even retired for 4 months in a far-away farm after...