GAA-Fitness- Weight Training-Nutrition

duffman08

Ok lads, this has probably been answered before but i'm trying to get all the answers in the one thread.
I'm 5"10 75kgs 14% Body Fat.
Fitness-What type of fitness training- Cardio work is reccommended for Gaelic Football players? ie Interval training, Continious Training, Composite Training??
Weight Training- What areas should a person work on the most?
Will building Muscle in your upper and lower legs slow you down?
will doing too much cardio work along with weights make you loose muscle mass and Strenght?
Nutrition- What kinda foods should one concentrate on and avoid.
How much protein should you take if your doing weight training?
is too much protein bad for you ie Kidneys and Heart Disease?

Remmy

Regards fitness and this is with my experience of gaa players.Do any other fitness{weights or cardio}aswell as attending training most nights,take it easy on the drink coming up to game days,eat a balanced enough diet that doesn't involve the chipper 5 days a week and you should be 70% ahead of the game.This is based at club level.

celestial

GAA is stop-start and hard on the body and requires strength. I'd be going for a mix of sprint work, intervals, and some weight/resistance training. I'd also throw some pilates or yoga into the mix too actually.

Mate of mine is doing spinning and pilates as part of training each week with his GAA team.

Conditioned

Fitness-What type of fitness training- Cardio work is reccommended for Gaelic Football players? ie Interval training, Continious Training, Composite Training??

Interval Training - If your training with a team already I'd be suprised if the core of there training at the minute didn't consist of interval training.

Weight Training- What areas should a person work on the most?
Will building Muscle in your upper and lower legs slow you down?
will doing too much cardio work along with weights make you loose muscle mass and Strenght?

Compound lifts are what you should be working on most. Back Squats, Deadlift, standing Shoulder Press would be the most important. Assistance exercises would be Dips, pull ups, chin ups, front squat, walking lunge, romanian or stiff legged deadlift. If you can get your hands on a glute ham raise you'll find them brilliant.

Building muscle in your upper and lower legs won't slow you down but make sure your getting a full range of movement in the exercise your doing. full squats are what are required in particular, if your doing full ATG squats the flexibility will look after itself. When you say lower legs I presume you mean calves, I wouldn't bother training them for what you'd achieve from training them your time could be better spent on other exercises. I wouldn't particulary waste time training your "core". That will get enough training from the compound lifts and theres a chance you may be doing that at football training anyway.

Any exercise will make you lse muscle mass if your not eating enough. If its your aim to add muscle you'd have to increase your calories even if you were not doing cardio. I have found that if you follow the general rule of getting 1gram of protien per pound of bodyweight into you then you'll also find your geting enough carbohydrates and fats into you as these are consumed with less thought anyway.

Nutrition- What kinda foods should one concentrate on and avoid.
How much protein should you take if your doing weight training?
is too much protein bad for you ie Kidneys and Heart Disease?

Foods to concentrate on - as above, lots of protein. Eat as healthy as you can keep it simple you'll have a fair idea yourself if its healthy or not. After training for football I'd bring a pint of milk and a piece of fruit and get it into me straight away if your team does not have food after training or matches.

Is too much protien bad for you - I don't believe so.

Remmy

duffman08 wrote: »

is too much protein bad for you ie Kidneys and Heart Disease?

Too much of anything is bad for you.In this context you wouldn't be able to eat sufficient amounts of it for it too be bad for you.Most people's idea of 'alot' is usually meagre to what is deemed necessary.

gabgab

www.crossfit.ie, brilliant

Where are you based?

I would suggest crossfit sessions, it is explosive power, lung burning cardio and no matter how good a condition you are in it still ruins you,

Last night was this,

4 Rounds of 5 minute “Cindy” intervals:
5 Pull Up
10 Push Ups
15 Air Squats

Rest 2 minutes between each 5 minute interval. Start each interval with 5 pull ups,

I reckon from a GAA point of view this sort of work would be very beneficial as it creates strength even when your bolloxed,

eg:tussling with another player for a ball after a sprint back after losing posession

Roper

gabgab wrote: »

I reckon from a GAA point of view this sort of work would be very beneficial as it creates strength even when your bolloxed,

eg:tussling with another player for a ball after a sprint back after losing posession

You'd reckon so, but you'd be wrong

I'd agree more or less with what conditioned said except for the bit about the core. I don't think the deep lying core muscles get enough work through the compound lifts as the athlete will always favour the stronger abdominals to do the work.

Like him I'd be very surprised if intervals didn't form the bulk of your training already. That's not to say it's the right way of doing things.

Arctic89

Slightly off-topic but what sort of food would you want to be eating before training and also before a match, including what size portions, how long before the session?

Also, how much water/fluids should be consumed before a game/training session? As above, how long before the session?

maxxie

Arctic89 wrote: »

Slightly off-topic but what sort of food would you want to be eating before training and also before a match, including what size portions, how long before the session?

Also, how much water/fluids should be consumed before a game/training session? As above, how long before the session?

white bread and bananas sambos!! white bread will give a boost in early stage of first half, banana will then provide you with slow releasing energy for the rest of the match! how long before i couldnt say, everyone is different, trial and error!

Conditioned

Roper wrote: »

You'd reckon so, but you'd be wrong

I'd agree more or less with what conditioned said except for the bit about the core. I don't think the deep lying core muscles get enough work through the compound lifts as the athlete will always favour the stronger abdominals to do the work.

Like him I'd be very surprised if intervals didn't form the bulk of your training already. That's not to say it's the right way of doing things.

Hi Roper,

As a matter of interest what sort of core work would you bring into training if you were training a gaelic football team and do you think there's a better way to train at this stage of the season other then intervals.

On a side note I'll be bringing some of the stuff I saw on your blog at some stage into training this year. Namely the bear walks etc and some of the stretching. I'm particulary looking forward to the reaction from the bear walks and stuff

Roper

Conditioned wrote: »

Hi Roper,

As a matter of interest what sort of core work would you bring into training if you were training a gaelic football team and do you think there's a better way to train at this stage of the season other then intervals.

On a side note I'll be bringing some of the stuff I saw on your blog at some stage into training this year. Namely the bear walks etc and some of the stretching. I'm particulary looking forward to the reaction from the bear walks and stuff

LOL yeah you'll have a few funny looks but when they do them they'll be wrecked and won't laugh anymore!

For the core question. It depends on where you are I suppose. A lot of core work is difficult on a pitch and while you're not confined to the hall with it, it is a lot easier to teach drawing in and activation when you're indoors. Thing is most lads can do the exercises on the swiss balls and stuff quite easily when they don't draw in and use their abs, psoas and lumbar region to hold the positions instead. But I've found that a lot of the work we do with the core is really helped by getting guys to understand the need for the work, and then teaching them the proper methods to draw in and activate the deep lying abs. Then the exercises become more difficult and the interest goes up. Other wise you just get guys doing, say, the swiss ball bridge and they can practically swing their feet around because they're stabilising with their legs. I have all of my lads on board and they all pretty much understand the importance of the work and if they don't understand they do what they're told

In answer to your second question, I don't think there's any reason not to continue trying to bring strength up in season, as long as it doesn't effect games. For general cardio I did some work with a squad pre-08 season where we used the pitch widths and lengths. A simple version is jog the length, sprint the width, and repeat for a given time period, short at first like 5 minutes and then we built to 6, 7 and by the time their first game came around they were doing 10 minutes and keeping the speed up in the sprints.

We also did a small pitch drill (with a mini pitch squared off) and played hand pass keep ball with two teams of just 2 defenders and 3 attackers. These would be fast and intense (you really need to watch them in case the pace slips!) with the emphasis being on real savagery to get the ball back and constant movement from the guys with the ball in hand. The 2 defenders should be constantly chasing. You've probably done something similar before for skills but I just used it as a fitness drill and it meant the lads had the ball too so they weren't moaning at me as much. Once we got that done we had them hopping on the guy if he still had the ball in his hand although I had to watch that too as all the old rivalries were coming out!

They were just a couple of things I did with that team. I'm not involved with them this year as they can't afford it (building a new clubhouse) but hopefully I'll be back next year with them.

Conditioned

alot of that stuff would be similar to what I'd be doing.

Your right about the core work, I could do with bringing more of it in and being more specific like you stated. The only thing is its hard enough to get lads out in the muck this time of year never mind get them to lie down in it. I'd try to keep as much of the core work I do at this stage of the season to the near the end of the session. I've also had them do stuff in the club house depending on the weather.

Roper

maxxie wrote: »

white bread and bananas sambos!! white bread will give a boost in early stage of first half, banana will then provide you with slow releasing energy for the rest of the match! how long before i couldnt say, everyone is different, trial and error!

LOL! At least, I hope so!

Roper

Conditioned wrote: »

alot of that stuff would be similar to what I'd be doing.

Your right about the core work, I could do with bringing more of it in and being more specific like you stated. The only thing is its hard enough to get lads out in the muck this time of year never mind get them to lie down in it. I'd try to keep as much of the core work I do at this stage of the season to the near the end of the session. I've also had them do stuff in the club house depending on the weather.

Yeah the muck is a pain I don't have that worry most of the time! There's a wrestling drill we do that's a good upper body game for players of any contact sport I reckon. It's partly on a video in my blog but if you want I'll get a decent vid of it next Tuesday with instruction and put it up?

Conditioned

Thanks Roper that'd be great.

The more variety I can add the better. I always reckons adults are no different than kids and any adult playing sport is really just a big kid. The best way to keep them interested is by having something new as often as possible. I find that if players know whats coming they can sometimes pace themselves to the detriment of what your trying to achieve but with something new they've given everything before they've realised just how tough the drill is.

gabgab

Roper wrote: »

You'd reckon so, but you'd be wrong

I'd agree more or less with what conditioned said except for the bit about the core. I don't think the deep lying core muscles get enough work through the compound lifts as the athlete will always favour the stronger abdominals to do the work.

Like him I'd be very surprised if intervals didn't form the bulk of your training already. That's not to say it's the right way of doing things.

Hey Roper,

Do you not think the crossfit style training would add benefit? I would of thought that deadlifts, presses, cleans etc would of been of great benefit,

Are compounds like starting strength programes better as they are doing enough cardio,

eroo

Roper wrote: »

Yeah the muck is a pain I don't have that worry most of the time! There's a wrestling drill we do that's a good upper body game for players of any contact sport I reckon. It's partly on a video in my blog but if you want I'll get a decent vid of it next Tuesday with instruction and put it up?

I wouldn't mind having a look at that too!:)

itsallaboutheL

gabgab wrote: »

Hey Roper,

Do you not think the crossfit style training would add benefit? I would of thought that deadlifts, presses, cleans etc would of been of great benefit,

Are compounds like starting strength programes better as they are doing enough cardio,

Can i just be a prick and point out that contrary to some crossfitters misconceptions Deadlifts, presses and cleans were not in fact invented by crossfit!:D

gabgab

Can I be a cock and point out that I mentioned starting strength also :P

Roper

gabgab wrote: »

Hey Roper,

Do you not think the crossfit style training would add benefit? I would of thought that deadlifts, presses, cleans etc would of been of great benefit,

Are compounds like starting strength programes better as they are doing enough cardio,

No problem. I'll qualify first off by saying I think Crossfit is good! Just in case you think I'm one of those naysayers.

I think people confuse high intensity sort of... is the best word I can use random?... okay, random exercise programmes with "sport specific". So, in other words the assumption is as long as I'm trying to replicate the demands of the sport in training, I'm okay. Hence your example above of a guy getting up and sprinting 100 yards. Yes he has to do that but does that mean all of his training should be based around replicating that exact thing? Sports specific is more like sports general (robbed that from Mike Boyle! But I had thought of it before I read it so in a way, HE plagiarised ME... in my mind) so while the demands of a gaelic footballer are different from a sprinter, they both need the same strength balance, The difference comes when the sprinter needs much more explosive power and the footballer needs enough speed to make it to the next ball, but not so much as he'll be wrecked for the one after that.

That's far from clear but it's late! I like some things about Crossfit but I don't like it's take on sport's training.

Conditioned

gabgab wrote: »

Hey Roper,

Do you not think the crossfit style training would add benefit? I would of thought that deadlifts, presses, cleans etc would of been of great benefit,

Are compounds like starting strength programes better as they are doing enough cardio,

The question was directed at roper but I'll give my two cents.

I don't think crossfit would be of benefit, not but it is a useful fitness tool I just don't believe it would benfit most GAA players.

Your cardio and sport specific fitness should generally be covered in team training sessions.

Most players undertake weights for one of three reasons, strength and power, size or vanity!

Obviously vaniety isn't relevant to the sport so your left with the other two. Crossfit does not give you enough bang for your buck when you want strength and power or mass. Starting strength covers both and its also the most basic strength principle that any athlete can follow, linear progression.

Roper

Okay, he said it better than me ^

gabgab

Sounds good to me lads, I was convinced that was going to turn into a boring and long winded one is better than the other waffle fests, gladly it didnt.

I see exactly what you mean, thats what I kind of reckoned in the previous post, most of the cardio etc was covered in the team training, and the starting strength etc will hopefully give them the edge

I did it, and the improvements are great I must admit, and mine was a pretty half assed attempt with not a great diet or milk as suggested,