advice on my training please!

Mos Eisley

Hi

This is my first post! Im a 5'5 10.5 stone 31 year old male with a fairly decent level of fitness. I did my first 5K this time last year and finshed the year with the Dublin marathon. I had been doing some long distance running prior to the 5k but mainly just soccer and gaa training. I finished the marathon in just under 3:30 which I was delighted with. I would like to thank everyone on boards for all their help in my training, everything I learned regarding training and race prep was from this site.

My last race was the fileds of athenry 10k which i finished in the top 20. Now that race season is fast approaching I would like some help with my training if possible. I am currently playing soccer & gaa on top of a small bit of running training and weights 2/3 times per week.

Heres a typical week for me

Mon: gym (core & upper body 50 -60 mins) and astroturf (1hr straight after)
Tue: Gaa training (1HR intensive session senior club level)
Wed: gym (core & upper body 1.5 hrs)
Thur: Run (can be anywhere between 6 - 15 miles)
Fri: Gaa training (1HR intensive session senior club level)
Sat: gym or gaa match
Sun: soccer match

Soccer will be finishing in 4 weeks approx so i hope to rearrange my training slightly to include more running. I also intend getting my bike repaired and doing some cycling.

What are your thoughts on my schedule above? I will continue playing gaa through the year and hope to do a few races aswell from 5ks to half marathons. Havent the time to train for a full! Some weeks I feel tired and ease off a bit but I generally do some sort of exercise everyday.

Hope to read your, as always, interesting replies!

Thanks

metamorphosis

What sticks out is lack of lower body training.

Soccer and running does not constitute lower body training for the legs. You should, imho, incorporate lower body weights such as squats or lunges etc. Doing these will help without arguement the chances of picking up injuries that could happen in everyday life or with soccer/running etc

Mos Eisley

Thanks UL Student

I had planned on doing some legwork but never got into the routine. Will try to addd it to my schedule. I really did need to work on my upper body strength plus I wanted to tone up! 4 months of gymwork done and have noticed some positive changes

Colm_OReilly

What is your gym routine?

What's more important - GAA or running?

Have you any concrete goals?

Mos Eisley

My gym routine is pretty basic concentrating on core,shoulders, arms and chest

I use core exercises as warm up or 10 minute easy run on treadmill

Core (3 sets of each)
30 crunches
30 elbows to knees
plank for 60 seconds

Plus
10 chinups per set

bench press
60kg * 10 reps
60kg * 8 reps
50kg * 10 reps
50kg * 8 reps

shoulder press (3 sets)
35kg * 12 reps

Bicep curls (3 sets)
35kg * 10 reps

tricep extensions (3 sets)
20kg * 12 reps

Lat pulldown (3 sets)
50kg * 12 reps

Tricep pushdown (3 sets)
90kg * 12 reps

My priority is GAA at the moment. I suppose the reason I posted is to see peoples views on my training schedule and if it can be improved (im 100% sure it can!). Am I doing too much/too little to gain the most from the work I'm doing.

I'm not part of a running club and the gym instructor is basically non existant so my training is done alone plus I dont have anyone to give me advice. Enter my saviour boards.ie!

I feel I still need to increase my upperbody strength so I will continue the gymwork. I just dont want to loose a lot of the fitness I built up while training for the marathon last year. I can still run 15 miles comfortably enough. Havent gone any further since last oct.

Thanks for your help

Colm_OReilly

Okay well for GAA I'd say (and this is without seeing you) that you could benefit from getting stronger overall, and concentrating on sprint workouts rather than long slow distance runs.

For overall strength, really nothing beats squatting. If you can, order a copy of Starting Strength and read that.

Add in deadlifts/shoulder presses/pull ups/dips and concentrate on 3 sets of 5 on the barbell movements.

Mos Eisley

Thanks Colm

I'll look into doing some squats, be nice to vary my routine a bit anyway. As for sprints, we do lots of them in gaa training so I might do a 10k run which will include sprints, best of both worlds!