LOI soccer player stopped using weights to "get around the park better"...

WHIP IT! wrote: »

An interesting story in one of the papers today about St Pat's midfielder James Chambers who is "slimmer" this year having stopped lifting weights - as he had done, I gather, fairly regularly last year - because it made him "blocky and bulky".

I'm just going to type out a quick excerpt from the article, I thought it might provoke some lively discussion about weight-lifting for field sports like soccer, GAA, rugby etc...

It might have been warranted. There is such a thing as non-functional hypertrophy but the way they went about it was possibly a bit questionable. Had he been training correctly in the first place, muscle growth could have been minimised and the neuromuscular enhancements associated with weight training could have been attained. Then the coach comes in and it gets reduced to nothing. That's the bit I don't agree with but then again, everyone has their preferred approach. He could have lost the bulk while weight training in an appropriate way and had the best of both worlds.....

WHIP IT! wrote: »

To be honest, my take on it is - neither player or manager really know much about weight-training for football, or possibly for anything!

I would hazard a guess the chap was a Chest-Day-Gun-Show Warrior in the gym and perhaps didn't have the world's most suitable diet... the old ill-thought-out adage that weight-training "slows you down and makes you bulky" from a chap as experienced as Buckley just proves how many years behind the man - and probably LOI soccer - is.

I'm guessing Chambers was a bit overweight, dropped a few pounds and hence is moving better - as anyone would.... a quick google of him doesn't show up any pictures - old or new - where he is bulky or musclebound.

His quote that "fat is easy to lose but muscle is hard to lose" is fairly staggering... if only 't'were true in fact...

I'd agree with that. Weight lifting has to be specific to each particular sport. Weights for a rugby player will be much different to weights for a soccer player. Was this Buckley fellow been given the proper program initially, it all sounds like a generalisation and the comment about finding it harder to lose muscle than fat is daft.

Squats, Deadlifts, Power Cleans, Explosive Jumps, Pull Ups, Kettlebell Swings, erg rowing, etc through correct full ranges of motion allied to lots and lots and lots of mobility work could only make a footballer a better athlete imo.

Lots of pressing, curls, isolation weight machines and crunches and planking with limited stretching work probably won't make much of a difference. If doing this repeatedly and adding lots of upper body mass it is likely to have a negative effect.

And at the end of the day, playing and practicing the sport concerned will always be the bedrock - and if a player is disimproving due to gym work over a long period and continuing with what they're doing inspite of that it seems very misguided to me.

If someone is telling me strengthened hips, hamstrings, glutes and quads are going to impair a footballer's performance; or that explosive jumping movements will make them slower then, well, I'll have to question that.

But what the **** do I know...

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Squats, Deadlifts, Power Cleans, Explosive Jumps, Pull Ups, Kettlebell Swings, erg rowing, etc through correct full ranges of motion allied to lots and lots and lots of mobility work could only make a footballer a better athlete imo.

The problem with soccer players is trying to get them to do those lifts is a challenge because the opinion of the Pat's player is fairly widespread in the game. You have to sneak it in with unweighted single leg squats, pushups, weighted hip thrusts etc. I think the initial approach was all wrong for the culture within soccer. It'll change, but slowly.

Chucky the tree wrote: »

It does impede them from performing to a decent standard for a pro-longed period of time though.

Based on what exactly?

I have a bit of experience training with league of Ireland teams. I can tell you that football in this country is way behind rugby and gaa when it comes to s&c.

I don't know anything about this case except I am aware of the player and he had bulked up a bit over the last year or so. I would put my mortgage on it been done in a pure hypertrophy, isolation, curls kind of training environment. Absolutely nothing wrong with that in general but obviously the lad should have been leaning towards the strength training side of things.
I'd be very suprised if he had a proper squat or deadlift programme either which is shocking really for a semi / professional footballer.

On the getting smaller argument I do believe it will benefit him. I'm not saying he should lose strength but he's a midfield player and was carrying weight he didn't need . He looked like he was all " guns and show " which is pretty useless when your job is to run 10k over 90 Minutes. Again, I totally agree that weight training is essential for today's football player but this lads training was just aimed at the wrong goal.

ECOLII wrote: »

I think this is a mindset also that needs bit of updating and I feel is one that the general go do laps approach during preseason. 10k during a match would imply aerobic endurance but with the start stop nature it is more like an endurance sprinter (300-350 x 20-30m sprints) then it changes the dynamic of the training, anaerobic capacity and lactate removal becomes alot more prevalent and suddenly that 10k runner endurance you were looking is replaced with the characteristics more associated with that of a 400/800m runner

To be fair, I don't think he was necessarily putting it in the context of a 10k 'steady state' run.

But I do think teams are moving away from the 'laps, laps and more laps' approach to fitness.

Unless it's a Junior football team that's managed by an oul lad that had a trial with the county minor team in '68.

Is this really a surprise? I mean I was a bit surprised that a professional or semi-professional soccer player was thinking this way but I'm far less surprise that it happened in Ireland than in say England. It's an age old attitude brought on by the GAA in my opinion, where just sheer punish is seen as the way to improve athletes physically which is probably what happened with this guy. He just went to the gym with no plan or idea why he was going, other than to be doing something, he probably overtrained or trained wrong, became fatigued and inflexible and wasn't able to use the fitness and strength he had as a result.

I see it all the time in the GAA from old men on the sideline claiming boxing made you quick as anything without lifting a weight to managers trying their players like an extreme social weight loss club or a poorly run athletics team. Relying on word of mouth or paying large sums uneducated personal trainers to train their team instead of just picking up a book and trying to learn a bit about exercise and nutrition themselves.

So like I said, I think it comes from the conservatism of the GAA which unfortunately has seeped into the rest of the country's domestic sports by the looks of it.

ECOLII wrote: »

I think this is a mindset also that needs bit of updating and I feel is one that the general go do laps approach during preseason. 10k during a match would imply aerobic endurance but with the start stop nature it is more like an endurance sprinter (300-350 x 20-30m sprints) then it changes the dynamic of the training, anaerobic capacity and lactate removal becomes alot more prevalent and suddenly that 10k runner endurance you were looking is replaced with the characteristics more associated with that of a 400/800m runner

Yes your right all I was saying was that for the position he plays there actually would be a lot of steady state running too over an hour and a half.

A player like Ronaldo relies a lot more on explosive bursts and doesn't have to worry about the slog of getting up and down the pitch for 90 mins. It's great to incorporate the anaerobic and Sprint training but pure aerobic base is very important in some positions in football especially.

A lot of lads look at Ronaldo and say " beast " but it's mainly due to his low bf % and him obviously being very well conditioned. But weight wise he'd only be a little more than 12 stone and he's over 6 foot , which is hardly stacked.

Yes, If you are very light or small some hypertrophy training for football may be needed but unlike gaa/rugby I think footballers should be encouraged to strength train and concentrate on explosive movements/jumps on top of their field sessions

ECOLII wrote: »

Apologies I was using your comment as a jump off point in relation to this as unfortunately alot of clubs are still viewing low medium intensity aerobic running as the solution to lack of fitness to last 90 minutes.

Jesus no, no need for apologies, what you were saying was right just wanted to explain what I meant

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

A large part of the problem, especially in the GAA, is a lack of resources. Ore where resources are invested in the wrong places.

And what you'll get then is a manager or trainer who still believes in the three Ls: Laps, Laps and Laps.

Maybe a few shuttle runs but only if there's enough time after the laps.

I remember as a teenager doing jaysus I dunno...100's upon 100's of training sessions playing GAA and I remember running lots of laps but genuinely can't remember ever doing a bunch of <20 yard sprints.

If we're talking about adult GAA or Soccer teams my opinion would be that the players should be assumed to be taking care of their conditioning outside of training. If I took over a team I'd NEVER do a single bit of 'fitness' in training. Technique / Tactics / practice games imo. Nothing you can do in an hour on a field is ever going to equate to what needs to be done anyway if fitness is a goal. Adults looking to pursue sport should be getting their long steady aerobic work in or their strength work. It shouldn't be left to laps around the field or endless pushups two times a week.

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

The bigger/better clubs tend to give players programmes to follow on their own time now. I can understand a couple of sessions of fitness work in preseason but from what I've seen, too much time is given to it in a lot of clubs.

Sure if it worked for Ger Loughnane...!

Does anyone remember a couple of years ago at a gaa awards show, rte showed a clip of Davy fitzGerald sitting in his car at 6 in the morning up in the hills, driving behind hurler Tony Kelly in the dark, shining his lights on him and beeping his horn to get him to keep going?

They went back to the studio and were talking about how great it was and what a great coach Davey was. That's what your still up against in some places. And that's only 2 years ago