When will your club start collective training sessions for the 2014 season ?

[CD]

From personal experience - I would always have been a quick player - then I trained for and ran 3 marathons between 2002 and 2005 and became much more one paced. Thankfully my first 5 metres were in my head!!
I'd say it did result in me getting a wee bit slower. No matter about the experts and the science involved, I am the living proof of that! In fairness, I aged 3 years and did an ACL in that period so there may have been other factors at work!

I'll tell you a really interesting thing that I've noticed from reading this thread, and something I noticed quite a bit watching club games last year - players can be flying fit, pumping weights, bursting outta their shirts and able to run up and down the pitch all day and still be clean useless. For all this obsession about training and fitness programmes and diet and what have ye, there is absolutely no substitute for playing football and practising and developing your skills.

[Bingo]

I'm not advocating it, all I'm saying is doing some 3-8k runs (on the road, pitches, a running track, treadmill etc.) is a legitimate form of fitness development and won't cause muscle fibre alterations or a decrease in speed as claimed here. You should also be doing weight training, flexibility work in your pre-season but focusing on cardio development is a sensible way to start your pre-season. Doing strength and cardio work together is detrimental to your strength work so using training blocks to focus on particular aspects of fitness is a sensible way of structuring your program.

All the things you mention have their place but they must be prioritised at different parts of the season and cardio endurance usually comes first.

.

Long distance running at a steady train for a couple of months uninterrupted by interval training will reduce your speed.

All it gives you is an aerobic base to combat fatigue. Its of no benefit when a ball is placed 20 metres away.

I don't think anyone has suggested this but you keep reading it that way. Fair play.

[Zulu]

Who's talking about long distance running for a few months? 3-8k is not long distance running and doing this type of training for 8 weeks will not, absolutely not, impact upon your speed. You can't credibly claim to know what you're talking about while peddling this nonsense. No training program should consist of only one type of training but certain types of training must be prioritised at certain stages of your season and early pre-season can, and probably should include runs of 3-8k. You don't have to but if you do you are as justified as doing any other type of training.

[Zulu]

From personal experience - I would always have been a quick player - then I trained for and ran 3 marathons between 2002 and 2005 and became much more one paced. Thankfully my first 5 metres were in my head!!
I'd say it did result in me getting a wee bit slower. No matter about the experts and the science involved, I am the living proof of that! In fairness, I aged 3 years and did an ACL in that period so there may have been other factors at work!

I'll tell you a really interesting thing that I've noticed from reading this thread, and something I noticed quite a bit watching club games last year - players can be flying fit, pumping weights, bursting outta their shirts and able to run up and down the pitch all day and still be clean useless. For all this obsession about training and fitness programmes and diet and what have ye, there is absolutely no substitute for playing football and practising and developing your skills.

But that's 3 years of marathon training, an ACL injury and 3 years older. That's a world away from saying 2-3 months of short to mid distance runs will slow you down. I do agree that football should be at the heart of the vast majority your training.

[CD]

From personal experience - I would always have been a quick player - then I trained for and ran 3 marathons between 2002 and 2005 and became much more one paced. Thankfully my first 5 metres were in my head!!
I'd say it did result in me getting a wee bit slower. No matter about the experts and the science involved, I am the living proof of that! In fairness, I aged 3 years and did an ACL in that period so there may have been other factors at work!

I'll tell you a really interesting thing that I've noticed from reading this thread, and something I noticed quite a bit watching club games last year - players can be flying fit, pumping weights, bursting outta their shirts and able to run up and down the pitch all day and still be clean useless. For all this obsession about training and fitness programmes and diet and what have ye, there is absolutely no substitute for playing football and practising and developing your skills.

But that's 3 years of marathon training, an ACL injury and 3 years older. That's a world away from saying 2-3 months of short to mid distance runs will slow you down. I do agree that football should be at the heart of the vast majority your training.

And it was exclusively long distance training - I still went to football training once or twice a week and played a game when the fixtures knobends actually managed to get one organised but that was all football. It was inevitable that I'd get slower. I'd say 2/3 months of it with good tempo running and stretching built into it would be of great benefit to lads at this time of year and wouldn't have any impact on speed - you work on that when you get on the pitch in February.

[outinfront]

Well this went downhill quick. Pm it out lads if needs be. As said some amount of longer distance runs say 5k will help with your general base fitness for the preseason period. It won't do any harm and won't slow u down.

That's in the same vein as 'heavy squats make u slow'. They don't.

Gaelic football needs the athelete to have speed, power, agility, endurance.....

It's getting a balance. Speed work should be done when appropriate. As should conditioning, as should skills, as should endurance. Going running pre preseason is nothing bad. Now quit arguing haha

[Mikhailov]

Difficult one this to gauge regarding the amount of running done in pre season. Stories abounds this year that Ballinderry changed their whole training philosophy from previous years and really emptied the tank from Feb-April this year even resulting in some players throwing the dummy out of the pram! Heard that they were doing 800m x 10 and 600m x 12  up to 3 times a week then reduced it to 200m x 24 closer to championship time. Not sure if it is correct but maybe someone from within or in the know could enlighten us. I seen them a few times this year in Derry and in Ulster and their fitness showed in a few games when it was needed - late on against Scotstown and the first and last 20 against Kilcoo they were really on fire - sprinting all over the field at great pace and supporting off the shoulder at will.

This would be regarded as speed endurance training I suspect but not comparable with the long slow runs of yesteryear whereby you could have done laps after laps but all one paced.

Maybe a shamrock could give us an insight without revealing too much

[CD]

And it all counts for diddly squat if you still can't kick snow of a rope!

[Jinxy]

In Aussie Rules they talk about the need for midfielders to have a 'tank' which basically translates as a significant aerobic capacity.
Around this time of their pre-season they are doing their 3km time trials.
The top midfielders would be doing it in 9.5 - 10 minutes.
That said, aussie rules is more demanding in that respect due to the larger playing area and longer playing duration.

It's worth noting the aboriginal players, who tend to be among the quickest runners, never feature that much in the 3km time trials (although I'm sure there are exceptions).
If you score well in beep tests and 3km time trials, you're more suited to a midfield, half-back position.
However, vertical leap, 20m sprint, agility runs etc. are more important for certain deeper offensive/defensive positions.
If you have a player who does well in ALL of these then he will be very flexible in terms of where he plays.

But believe me, the fast players don't lose speed because they also work on their endurance.
It's not an either/or scenario and often it's a convenient excuse which is used to disguise other problems and explain away poor performance.

[general_lee]

Surely a bit of road running is useful in building a bit of stamina before and leading into presason?

[neilthemac]

Surely a bit of road running is useful in building a bit of stamina before and leading into presason?

As I stated before - road running is great for causing stress on the body causing injuries or leading to them down the line.
Run in a field, much better for you.

But sure what would I know?
Lots of other experts around here.

[Zulu]

Are you going to have a bit of a huff because we haven't accepted your view as gospel? You and indy have tried to apply what can happen with excessive running to all running and that is simply wrong. Squats are great exercises for GAA players but squating heavy all year would be madness, squating huge loads at anytime would be detrimental but that doesn't make squats a bad exercise, it's how you use them that matters and it's the same with running.

[Ciarrai_thuaidh]

Road running may not be all that bad for you once done at a moderate pace, but there are too many Gaelic players out there with weak knees, weak ankles, weak hip flexors or other defects for it to be a good training method in general in my view.

It might sound too simple to be true, but if the longest run a Gaelic player will make is say 120m, then using 3km runs etc makes zero sense and there are many highly qualified conditioning experts who are starting to say just that. Sprints of 200m or less, staggered sprints (e.g: 50%, 75%, 100%, 50%, 75%, 100%..) over 200-400m, fartleks and that sort of stuff would seem to be far more practical and far more relevant than anything longer. I know of one Inter-county trainer who has got excellent fitness results from various teams and 70%-75% of the sprints he does at 100% effort are less than 30m...It probably ties into the average top speed sprint during games I would guess.

Of course all this is putting the cart before the horse if a trainer doesn't know the difference between speed-agility (reactive speed) and speed-endurance...and as someone mentioned already, speed-agility training MUST be done at the start of a session or it is virtually useless. This old habit of ending training with 10 sprints has no practical benefit speed-wise.

I also liked the line someone else posted which is very true.."All this is useless if they can't kick snow off a rope"!!!

[Milltown Row2]

 I know of one Inter-county trainer who has got excellent fitness results from various teams and 70%-75% of the sprints he does at 100% effort are less than 30m...It probably ties into the average top speed sprint during games I would guess.


What happens when he loses the ball and has to sprint 30m back? He'd be fcuked doing 60m

[Bingo]

One thing that annoys me is the "running on roads will only cause injuries, wear and tear etc etc". As if no-one has ever got injured from just running/playing/training on grass or from playing matches. By all accounts run and train on the surface you will be playing on.

Regardless of surfaces injuries are caused by incorrect form or running technique. Alot of people don't run as the body naturally intended, actually the vast majority don't, some bodies will adjust, others won't.

Read somewhere in an article about the damage running can do and he quoted someone who ran long distances and he had to get a knee replacement in later years. A doctor was asked about that and he said that on the same day it was likely that a dozen knee replacements where done and that he was likely the only one who had done long distance running. What had the other 11 people done to cause theres?