The GAA Rat Race

[blewuporstuffed]

Exactly it's the volume of training, I'd also love to know the training v game ratio both for club and intercounty.

As for the build of a player, Paul Flynn would probably be as close to the ideal build of a GAA player, lean, strong and mobile.

i think i remember seeing somewhere is something like 11 hrs of training per 1 hour of game time on average for a club player

[manfromdelmonte]

Most movement in Gaelic is walking or jogging. Something like over 70%

[Jinxy]

Most movement in American football is drinking gatorade and sitting on the bench.
I'm not sure what your point is.

[orangeman]

Changes to the minor season being proposed. Not out of time.

http://www.gaa.ie/content/documents/Report%20of%20the%20GAA%20Minor%20Review%20Workgroup.pdf

[manfromdelmonte]

Most movement in American football is drinking gatorade and sitting on the bench.
I'm not sure what your point is.

You train for the demands of the game.
You don't need speed over long distances in Gaelic football.
Speed within the first 10m is the most important - acceleration, deceleration, turning off both sides, landing

[Jinxy]

Yo0u still need a high level of aerobic fitness though.

[Zulu]

Yo0u still need a high level of aerobic fitness though.

Exactly. Not all your training should be game specific. There should be a general fitness block in any training program that won't necessarily be game or position specific but is designed to allow you train more individually later on in the training program. Yes, you may never run 400m at high speed in a game or run 50m in an entirely straight line but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be part of every players training program at some point in the season.

Want to improve cardio? Do something that gets the heart rate up.

Want to get stronger? Lift something that weighs a bit.

Want to get more powerful? See getting stronger, just do it faster.

The key is to do it in such a way that it helps the athlete not hinders them. Your training should be structured so that it reflects the demands of your sport and it should do this more and more as you get towards serious competition, at the start though it will probably be very general. Most ball playing field sports will require a mixture of cardio, strength and power fitness but developing them all logically isn't that easy.

[manfromdelmonte]

you can't shoot a cannon from a canoe (I stole that from someone else)

a decent level of strength has be put in place first.
aerobic and anaerobic conditioning can be built up in ways other than running

[muppet]

Most movement in American football is drinking gatorade and sitting on the bench.
I'm not sure what your point is.

Classic. 

[INDIANA]

my two cents on this

you will have lads in a club that will be into the S&C training and enjoy it.
other lads who might come around if they see the benefits for playing
and then the lads who will knock it no matter what

I think it is better to spend money on a S&C trainer who will at least put lads through a decent program, rather than investing in a load of equipment that will not be used much. Some medicine balls, a chin up/horizontal row rack, some dumbbells is more than adequate for most teams

There is definitely a huge need for more educational material coming from the GAA about S&C training.
If only to dispell some of the myths that are out there eg
Weights = bulky
Muscle = slow
Do S&C for preseason then no need to continue it.
S&C causes injuries (it should actually reduce them)

But there is far too much emphasis on it in detriment to ball skills. We seem to have forgotten at times what the game is about. A lot of this S&C training is overdone by players.

[manfromdelmonte]

my two cents on this

you will have lads in a club that will be into the S&C training and enjoy it.
other lads who might come around if they see the benefits for playing
and then the lads who will knock it no matter what

I think it is better to spend money on a S&C trainer who will at least put lads through a decent program, rather than investing in a load of equipment that will not be used much. Some medicine balls, a chin up/horizontal row rack, some dumbbells is more than adequate for most teams

There is definitely a huge need for more educational material coming from the GAA about S&C training.
If only to dispell some of the myths that are out there eg
Weights = bulky
Muscle = slow
Do S&C for preseason then no need to continue it.
S&C causes injuries (it should actually reduce them)

But there is far too much emphasis on it in detriment to ball skills. We seem to have forgotten at times what the game is about. A lot of this S&C training is overdone by players.

I was replying to the S&C question

balls skills is a totally different question
teams usually lose game as they are not able to pass accurately or kick the ball over the bar

[Syferus]

Young Cathal's take:

Training Smart: An Interview with Cathal Cregg
Friday, January 09, 2015

By Brian Murphy

You might know Cathal Cregg as a Roscommon footballer, Connacht Championship winner and All Star nominee, but by day he's also Connacht GAA's Strength and Conditioning Officer, based at their Centre of Excellence in Bekan, Mayo.

Cregg graduated with a Sports Science degree from DCU - part of his studies included a nine-month placement with Connacht Rugby - before going on to do a Research Masters in Exercise Physiology focusing on comparing interval training and endurance training in GAA players.

In 2013, he was appointed to the pioneering new role by Connacht GAA and now spends much of his time working with underage inter-county development squads, who come to Bekan to avail of the superb facilities and expertise available.

At the Liberty Insurance GAA Games Development Conference in Croke Park on Saturday, Cregg will make a presentation entitled 'Physical Fitness Development/Monitoring at Youth Level: Evidence from the Smartabase System'.

Liberty Insurance Games Development Conference 2015 Programme

Cregg has been using the Smartabase system, which is being used by the GAA to gather online data from youth development squads to build up a record of players' training programmes, injury history and rehabilitation, for the last 18 months.

Primarily used by professional sports organisations, Smartabase has a hugely impressive client list including eight AFL clubs, the Australian Institute of Sport and Liverpool FC, but Cregg feels the innovative system is equally suited to Gaelic Games, particularly in the area of monitoring the development of underage players and guiding them through to adult level.

"Managers and players will have login details and basically what it does is it cuts out a paper trail so you can have attendance lists, fitness test data, injury records and training load details all in the one place which is easy to access," explains Cregg.

"You have a full record of a player from when they start with the academy squad right through minor, U21 and senior if they are lucky enough to get that far. It should help coaches in the long-term development of players."

In use by the GAA for the last 18 months, the data being gathered on underage academy players at the moment will be used when those players start to graduate to U21 and senior level.
"What we aim to get is more accurate fitness testing norms for the different components of fitness such as aerobic fitness, speed, power and body fat for the different age groups so we can give them accurate feedback and design individual age appropriate programmes around that.

"It's also very important for monitoring training so that players aren't being trained too hard and picking up injuries as a result."

The monitoring aspect is one that should prove especially beneficial in an era when young GAA players are frequently involved in multiple teams and are therefore working with a number of different coaches at the same time.

The Minor Review Workgroup report released in Croke Park on Wednesday made for grim reading in this regard, with examples of young players representing 10 different teams and training 12 times in a nine-day period recorded in their case studies.

Under the heading 'Player Welfare and Coach Education', the report highlights the insufficient education of players and coaches on the importance of rest and recovery.

One of the proposed solutions, in the form of a policy proposal recommended to Ard Chomhairle, is the use of Smartabase as a monitoring system to track activity and parameters associated with risk of over-training/burnout.

"One of the things we introduced last year with a number of the academy teams and a few senior teams in Connacht is the monitoring aspect of it where the players fill in a short daily questionnaire through an app on their phone. From that we can track exactly how much activity the players are doing," says Cregg.

"We can then advise the coaches to tailor their training depending on what we are seeing, as too much training or games can have negative effects on the players' performance and overall health.
"I'll go into that in more detail in the presentation, but basically a player fills out a quick questionnaire every evening and it feeds back to the coach to tell them what training they have been doing outside their own training programme.

"For example, players who are involved with schools, third level, U21 and senior, and where it's not just one coach working with them, this system will allow the coaches to have a full understanding of all the training sessions they are doing and games they are playing."

Working on the ground with young players on a daily basis, Cregg is fully aware of how big an issue overtraining is at the moment.

"There is probably a mentality in the GAA that more is better all the time and recovery isn't taken into account," he says. "It's OK to train hard for certain periods of time, but you have to allow for rest and recovery and if you don't you will see increased injury rates, which we have also seen from the injury database in Croke Park.

"We have seen a high percentage of muscle type injuries which shouldn't be occurring if training methods and training loads and volumes are appropriate.

"The main thing around that is the education of coaches in the area. In Connacht we have developed an online and practical conditioning course which we are in the middle of running and we hope to be finished it by the end of March.

"We would hope that it would give coaches a basic knowledge of the area and let them know what the dos and don'ts are in the area of strength and conditioning."

Strength and conditioning – or S & C as it is often referred to – is the catch-all phrase that encompasses any activity designed to enhance performance and it has become something of an obsession in the preparation of GAA teams in recent years.

The level of conditioning of top inter-county players these days is obvious, but the culture has now filtered down to club players and even to underage players, who are coming under increasing pressure to start S & C programmes.

"Even though it's the area I work in and is an important area in a player's development, I feel coaches focus on it too much and that it may be to the detriment of other sides of the game such as skill development and team play," Cregg argues.

"As a starting point I think coaches and managers need to get their teams tested and screened to get a good, accurate picture of where their players are at from a physical fitness point of view and compare them to accurate norms and then design their design programmes around that.

"If you don't take this route, I feel you are only guessing what training they should be doing and maybe training them for the sake of training them."

***
Cathal Cregg will be speaking at the 2015 Liberty Insurance Games Development Conference in Croke Park on Saturday, January 10. Click here for a full programme of events and a list of guest speakers. Going to the Liberty Insurance Games Development Conference? We want to hear from you! Tweet your views to @officialgaa or #GamesConference2015

http://www.gaa.ie/gaa-news-and-videos/daily-news/2/0901151457-training-smart-an-interview-with-cathal-cregg/

[Rossfan]

Young Cathal will be 28 this year 

[Ohtoohtobe]

It seems to me that Jason Ryan is right here... what do the fitness experts make of it? Madness on UCD's part, or bad luck, or both?
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/tommy-moolick-s-suspected-cruciate-injury-angers-kildare-boss-jason-ryan-1.2062122

[manfromdelmonte]

It seems to me that Jason Ryan is right here... what do the fitness experts make of it? Madness on UCD's part, or bad luck, or both?
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/tommy-moolick-s-suspected-cruciate-injury-angers-kildare-boss-jason-ryan-1.2062122

third level colleges should not be in these competitions.
but if they weren't, they'd be playing challenge games or training.
time to limit players to ONE panel only at a time. No crossover allowed between county and third level until the Sigerson is finished (which is badly scheduled imho as it is a big distraction for the students involved).