What happens when an Olympic sprinter’s career ends in a single devastating moment? For most athletes, it’s the end of the story. For Clance, it became the beginning of something extraordinary.
In our latest Entertainment and Sports Spotlight podcast episode, we sat down with the man they call “The Pro Maker” – a former sprinter working toward being picked up on the Olympic team – turned elite performance coach who has trained NHL Norris Trophy winners, Olympians, and world champions. His journey from the track to becoming Director of Poliquin Performance Toronto is a masterclass in resilience, purpose, and turning pain into power.
The Injury That Changed Everything
Clance’s athletic journey began unconventionally. After his father brought home a photograph of a muscular bodybuilder, young Clance became obsessed with building strength. Without access to weights, he turned to pushups – eventually working his way up to an astounding 2,000 per day, inspired by football legend Herschel Walker’s training regimen.
His natural talent and incredible work ethic led him to competitive sprinting, where he quickly progressed toward his Olympic dreams. But in Indianapolis, during a 4×100 meter relay, disaster struck. Clance tore all the ligaments in his knee, ending his athletic career in an instant.
“That injury sent me into a tailspin,” Clance recalls. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I was in a dark space for a while.”
But from that darkness came clarity and purpose.
A New Mission: Building Unbreakable Athletes
Rather than letting his dreams die with his injury, Clance made a pivotal decision: if he couldn’t be an Olympian, he would produce them. He dove deep into studying anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, and neuromechanics, traveling the world to intern with elite coaches. His mentorship under Charles Poliquin, a world-renowned strength coach, proved transformative.
What emerged was a training philosophy built on a personal understanding of what breaks athletes – and more importantly, how to prevent it.
The Durability Problem Nobody Talks About
One of the most striking revelations from our conversation was Clance’s perspective on injury rates in professional sports. Despite more money, more data, more specialists, and more advanced technology than ever before, injury rates across major sports continue to climb year after year.
“Achilles tendon ruptures are criminal,” Clance states bluntly. “You have kids whose dreams are being ripped apart because they’re having injuries at young ages that never used to happen before.”
His solution? Build athletes with a solid foundation of durability from day one. But here’s the catch – athletes don’t care about injury prevention. They want to be faster, stronger, more powerful. They want to dominate their position.
So Clance doesn’t sell injury prevention. He simply builds it into every aspect of his training system, creating what he calls “ironman athletes” who can withstand the brutal demands of professional sports.
One of his athletes, BK Subban, became legendary for his durability, playing every single game and nearly breaking the NHL ironman record before a freak accident ended his streak.
The “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” Culture
Walk into Clance’s gym expecting a luxury fitness experience, and you’ll be sorely disappointed. This isn’t a place of comfort – it’s a forge for champions.
“If you’re happy to come to the gym every day, you ain’t training hard enough,” Clance explains. “If I see athletes coming in smiling and laughing and high-fiving every day, they’re not working hard enough.”
This philosophy might sound harsh, but it’s intentional. Clance believes training must be tougher than the competitive environment athletes will face. His gym is designed to be more demanding than training camp, more challenging than the regular season. The goal is to build mental toughness through consistent, demanding work.
Not every athlete survives this approach. Gifted athletes accustomed to praise and special treatment often struggle. But those who commit? They stay for over a decade, returning season after season because they understand something crucial: Clance makes them better.
A powerful moment came when NHL player Joe Ward, touring a potential 10,000 square foot luxury facility with saunas, showers, and every amenity imaginable, told Clance: “I’m a millionaire. I get treated like this all year. When I come back to you, I come to get a reset. I get that hunger back.”
That conversation led Clance to rip up a lucrative franchise contract. He realized his mission wasn’t about bells and whistles – it was about culture, discipline, and results.
The Three Training Principles Most Coaches Get Wrong
When we asked Clance about the biggest lies in the fitness industry, he didn’t hold back. The problem, he explains, is that too many coaches treat athletes like glass – training them with methods that make them fragile rather than resilient.
His approach is built on three foundational principles that most modern training programs violate:
1. Train Heavy with Proper Technique Athletes must train with heavy loads to activate motor units and prepare the body to withstand the forces of their sport. But – and this is critical – heavy training must be done with proper technique through a full range of motion. “Go heavy or go home” without technique is a recipe for injury.
2. Develop Explosive Power Athletes need to produce force quickly and explosively, but they also need to receive those forces at high speeds. Tendons, ligaments, and muscles must work together as a integrated unit to handle the demands of competition.
3. Full Range of Motion Training must take joints through their complete range of motion under load. Whether it’s ankles, hips, knees, or shoulders, every joint must be able to handle stress throughout its full movement capacity.
“If you follow these basic principles as a strength coach, you’re ahead of the game,” Clance emphasizes.
The Gimmicks That Are Destroying Young Athletes
Perhaps most passionate in our conversation was Clance’s frustration with the gimmicks plaguing youth sports. Ladder drills for “quick feet.” Sport-specific training that mimics game movements. Expensive summer camps that promise exposure to scouts.
“Complete nonsense,” he states flatly about ladder drills. “Your brain is smart – it’s just going to make your feet faster at going through that pattern. How does that apply on the field? You’re looking down at a ladder. It just doesn’t transfer.”
The principle of specificity, Clance argues, is being destroyed. A strength coach’s job isn’t to make someone a better soccer player, hockey player, or football player. The job is to make them more powerful, stronger, faster, and explosive. Athletes then take those enhanced physical qualities and apply them to their sport skills.
“If you have good skill, guess what? Your skill just increased because the rate, the power, the force, and the strength you’re applying to that skill just got better.”
Why Early Specialization Is Sabotaging Your Kid’s Future
For parents navigating youth sports, Clance offers clear, counterintuitive advice: stop specializing so early.
The athletes he’s trained who made it to professional levels shared a common trait – they didn’t attend summer sport-specific camps. Instead, they spent their summers in the gym getting stronger, faster, and more explosive while working on their skills independently.
“If you’re good, the scouts are going to find you,” Clance reminds us.
Before age 16, children should participate in multiple sports, building a broad athletic base. This develops better proprioception, coordination, timing, and body awareness. They become more well-rounded athletes with diverse motor patterns.
Clance particularly loves working with athletes who have gymnastics backgrounds because they bring amazing relative strength, body awareness, flexibility, and dexterity – all products of diverse athletic development.
After 16, specialization makes sense. All those developed motor patterns can then focus on a specific sport, making the athlete more complete and capable.
His own daughter exemplifies unconventional success – she became a Commonwealth Games champion and Canadian record holder in weightlifting despite starting late at 16 with no prior sport specialization. Though Clance notes this path isn’t typical, it demonstrates that there’s no single formula for athletic success.
The Mental Game: Building Toughness That Lasts
While some athletes are born with natural mental toughness, Clance finds he does significant mental work with most athletes. His gym culture itself becomes a tool for building mental fortitude.
“My gym is the type of gym where if you’re happy to come every day, you ain’t training hard enough,” he reiterates. This demanding environment forces athletes to confront discomfort, push through adversity, and develop the resilience they’ll need when competition gets tough.
The key is communication, tough love, and helping athletes understand why they must suffer. It’s not cruelty – it’s preparation for the reality that life is competitive. A younger, more talented player might take their position. They might not make the team. They could lose their contract.
Training must be tougher than any environment they’ll face in competition.
The Pro Maker Philosophy: Why It Works
Clance’s nickname isn’t accidental. He works best with young, hungry athletes – those with potential but not yet the mental fortitude to realize it. He builds them from the ground up with proper foundations.
Established pros, already set in their ways and accustomed to certain treatment, often clash with his demanding approach. But those who come to him young and commit to the process? They transform.
Some of his greatest satisfaction comes from unexpected places. Athletes who chose different career paths later tell him his training prepared them for grueling bar exams and professional challenges. Parents report their children becoming more respectful, accountable, and disciplined in all areas of life.
“Those are the things I’m actually most proud of,” Clance shares.
Giving Back: The Raise the Bar Foundation
Understanding firsthand how financial barriers can end athletic dreams, Clance founded the Raise the Bar Foundation to support underprivileged athletes who have talent and work ethic but lack resources.
“I qualified for championships in California, and I come from a single-parent home. My dad couldn’t afford it,” Clance remembers. “I was going nowhere, but guess who came up with the money? My coaches. Plane ticket, room and board. I never forget that.”
The foundation supports young athletes with the right character and work ethic, helping them pursue dreams that would otherwise remain out of reach. Several athletes he’s trained through the foundation have gone on to professional careers and now give back to the next generation.
But there’s a requirement: character matters. Clance doesn’t tolerate laziness or poor attitudes. The goal isn’t just to build great athletes – it’s to build great humans who will pay it forward.
Lessons from a Mentor: Pierre Roy
Throughout our conversation, Clance spoke reverently about Pierre Roy, his mentor and “second father.” At 75 years old, Roy remains passionate about coaching, constantly exploring new methods and strategies for optimizing athletic performance.
“He’s probably the best coach in the world that nobody talks about,” Clance says.
Their recent breakfast meeting in Montreal lasted hours, ending only when they were kicked out, still deep in discussion about training methodologies. Roy’s influence taught Clance not just technical knowledge, but how to demand excellence with kindness, how to coach with both toughness and love.
“I commend him and give him credit for the athletes I’ve built,” Clance acknowledges.
The Book: “Dominate”
Clance’s philosophy is captured in his book “Dominate,” which started as a guide for building dominant athletes but has found unexpected resonance with business executives and professionals.
The book cuts through fitness industry gimmicks and misinformation, providing a roadmap for what truly builds elite performers. But its principles transcend sports – discipline, consistency, never giving up, and believing in yourself apply to any field.
“It’s a crossover for anybody in life who wants to have a positive attitude, mental fortitude to dominate whatever they’re in,” Clance explains.
The Path Isn’t Straight, But It’s Worth It
One of the most powerful insights from our conversation challenges the common perception of success as a straight line upward. Clance has observed that truly successful people – whether athletes or executives – experience constant battles of ups and downs.
What separates those who succeed from those who don’t? They simply never give up. They maintain faith and belief that they’re going to win, no matter what obstacles appear.
“Success is actually a constant battle of ups and downs,” Clance observes. “The ones who are successful are the ones who never give up. They have this faith, this belief in their gut that they’re going to get it and win no matter what.”
Final Words: Follow Your Passion
As our conversation wound down, Clance left us with advice that extends far beyond athletics:
“If you are passionate about something, truly passionate, I thoroughly believe you should go for that passion. Hold onto it, attack it. Have faith that you will succeed regardless of what the noise and people are saying.”
He acknowledges this path is hard, especially when your passion isn’t mainstream or particularly lucrative. When he told his father he wanted to become a strength coach, the response was confusion: “What’s that? How are you going to make money? How are you going to raise a family?”
But passion changes everything. When you’re passionate about something, it doesn’t feel like work. You think about it constantly. Creative solutions flow naturally. You give it everything you have because you can’t help yourself.
“When you have that, you are going to win,” Clance declares with certainty.
His journey from devastating injury to training world champions proves his point. Sometimes the path we’re meant to take isn’t the one we originally planned. Sometimes our greatest calling emerges from our deepest pain.
For Clance, a torn knee didn’t end his Olympic dream – it expanded it. Now, instead of competing for one medal, he’s helping countless athletes reach the podium. Instead of one journey to try out for the Olympics, he’s made hundreds possible.
As his mother told him: “This is your blessing. This is your calling. This is what you were meant to do.”
Ready to take your training seriously? Learn more about Clance’s programs and the Raise the Bar Foundation. Pick up a copy of “Dominate” to dive deeper into his philosophy for building mentally and physically dominant performers.
Work with Clance: https://lpsathletic.com/
Listen to the full episode for more insights on athletic development, mental toughness, and what it really takes to perform at the highest level.
Malibash Sports & Entertainment 
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