Tipp kings fit for dual purpose

AIB MUNSTER CLUB SFC SEMI-FINAL:

Hurling, football, hurling, football, hurling, football and now football again.

It’s a taxing schedule but Loughmore’s players are in the capable hands of Alan O’Connor, who graduated from Setanta College with a Bachelor of Arts in Strength and Conditioning last Thursday.

Cahir native O’Connor reveals that base fitness work was conducted during the early months of 2013. His philosophy was to train the players physically for the rigours of football, and then tailor training sessions to hurling when small ball sessions appeared over the horizon.

O’Connor, who worked with the 2011 Tipperary All-Ireland minor winning footballers, explains: “At the start of pre-season, we touched on speed endurance training, with a recovery rate of one to one. So, if you did the effort for a minute and a half, you got a minute and a half recovery. That improves the aerobic system. That was back in February and two weeks into March, knowing that we had a hurling match in April against Thurles Sarsfields, we went into multi-sprint stamina work. That requires shorter efforts and a one to three recovery rate. So if you go for 40 seconds, you get 120 seconds recovery time. You’re now taxing the anaerobic system.

“So originally, I used football training to get them fit for hurling and football. The important thing is that I didn’t use stamina hurling training to get them ready for football. That doesn’t work.

“Coming near a hurling game, it was back to more stamina based hurling training, multi-sprint stamina, over a shorter distance.”

O’Connor is also a keen advocate of integrated conditioning, where players mix between small-sided conditioned games and stamina work.

“So if you have a group of 24 training,” O’Connor says. “12 of them could be with Declan, playing a 6 v 6, for example. That could be possession based stuff, a minute on and a minute off. The other guys with me then are doing the stamina training. They get the required rest for ten minutes and then Declan’s group are with me for ten minutes, and my group goes to Declan for ten. The beauty here is that you can use integrated conditioning for hurling and football.

“You’re getting them conditioned in the small sided games using the ball and they’re setting their base with the running.”

Loughmore played seven hurling matches en route to Tipperary glory and today, against Dr Crokes in Killarney, they’ll play their 12th football match of the season.

“The last few weeks has been about pure speed repeatability training,” O’Connor reveals.

“Anything from zero to ten seconds of effort in large groups. Through speed repeatability, you’re taxing the anaerobic system and touching on the ATP-PC (Phosphogen) system, which is another energy system in the body.”

O’Connor, who coached Cahir to the 2003 county SFC title, is no stranger to working with dual players, from his time alongside David Power with the Tipperary minors.

“I had a great relationship with Keith Hennessy, who was with the hurlers and who has linked up with Derek McGrath in Waterford,” O’Connor says.

“Myself, David Power, William Maher and Keith drew up a plan to deal with these young fellas.”

And O’Connor firmly believes in the ‘less is more’ approach at this time of year.

Crucial to former cross-country athlete O’Connor’s success in the field of strength and conditioning are his strong working relationships with local physios Stephanie Tarrant, Karen Coughlan and Cathy Doran.

Tarrant was another member of Power’s minor football set-up in 2011 and at her physiotherapy clinic and gym in Bansha, O’Connor rehabs and trains injured players.

A fiercely driven individual, O’Connor derives inspiration from an injury that ended his athletics career in 2001, and a family bereavement in 2006.

Personal loss visited O’Connor again this year when his mother Mary passed away. And, at times like that, it’s to his father Eamonn and the woman he describes as his “rock” that O’Connor turns.

“(Wife) Christine listens to me when we lose, and when I’m giving out even when we win,” he smiles.