Gaelic games like all sports has made immeasurable advancements in recent years as management teams and players exhaust every opportunity to find that one thing that will set them apart from their rivals. Al Pacino referred to this as the ‘extra inch’ in the film “Any Given Sunday”. Perhaps the most observable progress is seen in players’ physical stamina, strength and power. Coaches and players have turned to other sports, mainly the professional sports, to observe their training methods at different times of the sporting calendar and to modify them to make fitness programmes and ball drills specific for football or hurling. Players are now focussing on championship football in the coming 6 weeks. Strength training tapers off and its time to hone in on the power drills to complement ball skills development and team tactics.With a significant strength training background teams can progress into medium to high intensity power exercises. Plyometric exercises continue to form the basis of good power drills. The effectiveness of a plyometric training session depends on a good warm up, sufficient rest periods, maximal effort and a high speed of movement for each repetition. Incorporating a ball drill introduces game specificity and player motivation. Some coaches weigh up the advantages of performing this type of exercise on pitches (rather than in gyms) versus high intensity games. Our thoughts on this are simple; the more one gets used to working on the surface in which they play the better conditioned their body will be to playing on it. Furthermore, players who have developed improved power are better able to break through tackles, to jump high to fetch a ball, to be explosive in their running over the critical first 10 metres and will have lengthened their kicking distance, all essential elements of our game.
In summary there are many physical components to making oneself a better candidate to playing our games. The role of power is becoming an increasingly more prominent physical attribute. Its application is not confined to the gym and with a little creativity it can become a part of our training without even knowing it!
