He is known to have coached numerous athletes who have won medals in top international middle- and long-distance competitions, and who have set world records.

[4][6] During this time, he worked with Luciano Gigliotti, who was responsible for the male middle and long distance athletes.

[4] In 1996, in addition to coaching Italian runners, Canova also began training Kenyan athletes in Italy.

[11] Due to disagreements with the association, he gave up this activity in 2011,[12] which the year after the 2010 Asian Games, when he resigned and returned to Italy.

[citation needed] In September 2013, an agreement was reached with the Chinese Athletics Association, where Canova was appointed as the national head coach for middle- and long-distances.

[19] His fundamental period begins with high volume and low-intensity running along with uphill sprints and technical exercises.

During the special period, training sessions move toward speeds that are closer to the athlete's goal race pace but still relatively far away.

Because of this, Canova has very rarely used weekly or bi-weekly training cycles in favor of adapting to the effect of each individual session.

[1] He attributes the fact that the Europeans and Americans fall in level compared to the East African runners to the different approaches to training.