Author: Cole Summers

Cole Summers is a Master StrongFirst Certified Instructor ad honorem, based in Winnipeg, Canada. He began with a life in hockey, football, and other sports in the 1950s and ‘60s. In the 1970s, he was certified as a Yogendra Hatha Yoga instructor, received his black belt in Gung Fu, and wrestled for Manitoba in the Western Canada Games.

He introduced the first separate men’s and women's intramural weight training courses at the University of Manitoba in 1978. He has been a head strength coach to several university teams (volleyball, basketball, track) and longtime advisor to the head track coach for Team Canada. Cole was co-coach during the inaugural (1979) season of Winnipeg Wasps Women's Rugby, one of the first women's rugby teams in the world. He was also the strength coach for Team Canada women's volleyball.

Cole has trained NHL and WHA Pro team champions, Olympic hockey team members, professional football players, amateur national boxing champions, professional boxers, and rugby players, as well as martial artists. He was a regular consultant to the late great USA hockey coach Herb Brooks.

Cole was a liaison with the Soviet State Physical Culture and Olympic Committee to exchange ideas on the training and development of coaches and athletes.

He organized and played with the first ever North American rugby team to tour East Europe, the Czechoslovakia Goodwill Rugby Tour in 1986. With the Winnipeg Wasps Rugby Club, he toured Scotland, Hawaii, Czechoslovakia, and Holland up until 2001.

Over the years, Cole has trained thousands of regular folks of all ages and backgrounds. He is known as a seminar leader and public speaker on the topics of street safety for women. For 27 years, he has been the Strength Coach at Garden City Collegiate, "Hardstyle High," in Winnipeg, Canada."