Pre Season Training

[Canalman]

From a personal viewpoint I felt that the lads in our club who did the weights programme all lost some speed as a result.

Any young lad who graduates from minor should imo play at least a year at a good junior level as an intro to adult football. In our club our ex minors are refusing to play junior and as a result are getting bounced around at Senior 2 level and getting imo too easily dispossessed. They predictably are being told to do gym work.

Nonsense. Learn your trade properly as an adult player and you will never need weights work.

[Zulu]

What worries me about the attitude of some lads to weight training is that they are dismissing the benefits of it completely and with little real evidence to back this up. Now don't get me wrong weight training is only really beneficial to lads who do it over a period of a year or more and following the right type of program. I wouldn't get hung up on weights at club level, especially below senior but it is an important aspect of producing the best athletes nevertheless. A serious Gaelic footballer needs to address aerobic, anaerobic fitness, agility, speed, flexibility, strength and power as well as all the skills of the game. It is almost impossible for any amateur athlete to develop all these facets of his game properly.
                 However it is wrong to dismiss the benefits of weight training because you don't properly understand its role in the training process. Some posters have said that push ups and sit ups can achieve the same goal as weight training but this is wrong. In addition, push ups etc. done during collective training is wasting time that could be spent on improving football skills or aerobic fitness. The beauty of weights for any coach is that it is done on the players own time, so they can come to collective training with their strength work already done. And one of the most important aspects of weight work that hasn't been addressed is the important role it plays in injury prevention, no amount of push ups will strengthen the knee and ankle joints which gym work does.