No more mucking around

WINNING managers swear by it. Teams shocked in the league by lowly neighbours use it as an excuse. And recently retired players shudder at the thought of it.

Winter training equals heavy training equals those back-breaking runs up those hills. Last year, Mickey Harte became the latest in a long list of All-Ireland managers to say the hard work was done in the deepest darkest months of the year.

It always is. Winter sorts the men from the boys and the sinew from the excesses of the few days a county player gets off a year. It was in the depths of winter, so the story goes, that Loughnane and Mike Mac started the Clare revolution on a hill-side in Shannon, driving vomit from the body of their players.

Times are changing, however. More and more county teams are travelling to 'state-of-the-art' training facilities. These dark months are about as much science as sweat. "The type of training done in winter has changed a lot in the past 30 years," Laois manager Mick O'Dwyer agrees.

"And you have to adapt with it. Back with Kerry, it was much more physical and while you still have to concentrate on the endurance element at this time of year, there are other elements to it."

O'Dwyer won't say what those other elements are but spurred on by the success of Armagh and Tyrone, more managers are discovering more boxes to think outside of.

The National Coaching & Training Centre in Limerick is a busy place at the moment with plenty of Olympic hopefuls fine-tuning their Athens ambitions. But, the next few weeks will also see a number of county GAA teams in Limerick, as managers try to gauge and maximise the potential of their charges.

"A lot of teams come down here for physiological assessments and managers have us looking at the base-line fitness levels of each player," Giles Warrington of the NCTC says. "We look at their hydration levels, how much work they need to do to become fitter. We assess and advise. I think managers are thinking of the balance between stamina training and other forms at this time of the year."

While January is usually a time for sweat-shedding among county stars, there are other things managers have to look at. Humphrey Kelleher has just begun the task of attempting to lift Dublin hurling, but already January has taught him some valuable lessons.

"For teams around Dublin's standards, this is perhaps an even more important time of the year than for other teams," Kelleher believes. "We have to do extraordinary things to catch up with some of the other teams. We have to look at ways to make ourselves fit enough to compete and look at other areas that need to be built up at this time, like our upper-body strength.

"We need to look at ways to hold our own ground and hold off our opponent. That is the sort of work which begins in January. I think the big difference between the top teams and teams like ourselves was illustrated in the All-Ireland final last year, when Diarmuid O'Sullivan came out with the sliotar, crashed into DJ Carey and John Hoyne. Neither Kilkenny forward fell backwards that is the sort of bodily strength we need to be aiming for in Dublin and it is the sort of thing that we have to start developing in January."

Like many other managers, Kelleher is also using this month to customise training patterns. It is something which Warrington has noticed more and more within GAA teams.

"Teams are starting to stream-line their training into what meets the needs of each individual player," Warrington says. "That might be a very arduous process, but it will pay off in the long run. It can become the key to many of the training methods decided upon by coaches, how you can individualise the thing to address any imbalance."

It is a theory Kelleher is trying to put into practice. "We are starting to analyse players and trying to customise training for each of them. So, training would be customised for each player, so if a guy needed to work on his leg strength or his upper body strength or his hand speed, we would act accordingly.

"The whole thing has become more sophisticated and you have to grow with it. This type of personalised training is highly intensive and takes up a lot of work and time. But, it can bear fruit."

This winter, Kelleher has brought Dublin hurling on the SAQ principles, devised by Jim Kilty, and used to great success by Nicky English in Tipperary in 2001. The regime is based around speed, agility and quickness, all of which Kelleher wants to develop as early as possible, to let "the potential in Dublin flourish."

Warrington believes winter is the time when managers have to think about getting the most from their training. "In Gaelic sports, you obviously need a high endurance level because you cover much more ground in these games than in any other field games. As the games have developed, there has been more emphasis on pace and power and there has been more emphasis on high-intensity aerobic work. This sort of work means a player can sustain repeated sprints and minimise fatigue. But, we have to build the cornerstone of endurance first and foremost.

"Gaelic players are at a disadvantage with other athletes because they don't have the rest and recovery period. Even with the much more professional approach taken by teams, they still don't get time to recover like other professional athletes because they have to go back to their work. In that sense, they have to maximise the return of their training."

As Mick O'Dwyer points out though, early-season training isn't all about objectives later in the summer. While teams like Armagh and Laois might just be concentrating on endurance, other counties are training for their only tangible hope of success in the season.

"It can depend on what you are training for, or what you want to go for," O'Dwyer says. "Some teams will be looking towards the O'Byrne Cup or the McGrath Cup as a way of getting a trophy. So, their training is going to be different from the team looking at the championship.

"Of course, every team is looking at the championship. When you prepare in training to do well in the league, I think it is preparation for the championship. "

There is a lot more to the GAA in January than those hard slogs up the hill. It is only noticed by the managers who miss it.

Last year, Donegal missed the bulk of their winter schedule because of being of manager-less, and yet came within two scores of an All-Ireland final. Brian McEniff admits his team actually benefited from the freshness in their limbs late last summer, but it won't be an experiment he will be repeating.

"Well, it was a terrible loss to us last year. We went out in the McKenna Cup and then Cavan beat us in Ballyshannon. We lost Division One football because of it. Early-season training is a vital part of where a team wants to go for the year, and I suppose Armagh and Tyrone have shown that over the past few years.

"I think Armagh raised the bar for everyone in their physical preparation over the last few years. And the great stamina they developed stood to them. Other teams have learnt from that, but you can over-do it during the winter too. Because of the brand of football we play, there is no point in Donegal having a huge physical programme," McEniff says.

Training at this time of the year is tailored to suit the needs of each team and each individual. And while some of the contenders may currently be sunning themselves in South Africa or Dubai, their training programmes have already been devised.

"For Gaelic sports, the focus has changed for early-season training, there is no doubt about that," Warrington says. "The thing has moved on from a blanket physical approach to a more scientific approach. As they are bringing their preparations forward, they are setting goals and targets."

Goals germinating in the mud of January, flourish in the heat of summer.