Quality rather than quantity

You’re 25, you’ve been fighting for your place on the local club team for the last five years but year after year you’re told “sorry Jack but you’re just lacking that bit of pace.”

You’ve heard all this talk that some people are just born with those fast-twitch muscles that make them naturally fast while others – well, you know you can run all day, always at the front of the group doing laps.

Don’t despair, says Pat Flanagan, a man who, as trainer of the three All-Ireland-winning Kerry teams, as lecturer in Tralee IT in High Performance Training and Exercise Physiology and as co-founder of Peak Fitness, knows a thing or two about making people faster.

“There are a couple of ways in which it can be done. First there’s the actual muscles themselves; yes there are fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibres but there are others that suffer from an identity crisis — they don’t know what they are. They make up about 20% of your muscle, they’re neither fast-twitch nor slow-twitch but can adapt to either one. Those muscles can be converted to fast-twitch if you do speed power training, And that can be done at any age, those fibres are always there. I use the Ronseal analogy, it does exactly what it says on the tin — if you do more explosive, more speed-based training, you’ll convert those muscle fibres towards fast-twitch, which will make you faster; likewise if you do slower runs, you’ll become a better slower runner – you get very good at running slow. Your body starts to think: ‘How can I manage all this training?’ and it will adapt to the slower part of it, the endurance element, so it can better manage the heavy volume.”

So, laps are out? Too many laps might even be Jack’s problem? “Exactly. The maximum distance you should do in football training (or hurling) is about 150m, anything over that at any one time is too long, too slow. I was talking to someone who is involved with the Munster rugby development squad and the aggregate distance they did during one of their speed sessions was 212m – that was the TOTAL distance! Physiology then is one way in which you can improve your speed.”

Okay, that’s logical. If you train as you mean to play then there isn’t much point in running up and down mountains, is there?

Not unless hurling is going to go back to the 19th Century and is played across fields and bogs from parish centre to parish centre. What’s the other means of improving speed?

“The actual mechanics of running. You can get people who are naturally fast but they’re mechanics are poor, their running pattern isn’t good, inhibits them. If you work on that, on their body position, their foot position, their movement, how they cover the ground, you can make them faster. There are different positions you work on too, like when you’re running with possession or chasing down an opponent your position tends to be more upright, where if you’re making a short burst to pick up the ball it’s different.”

Again, all very logical, the efficient transfer of power. Even if this is kind of a Eureka moment for most of us however, there will not be an instant increase in speed. “It does take time, it won’t happen suddenly. If you’ve run a certain way for 15 or 20 years you’re not going to change that overnight, it takes months, maybe even a year depending on how much time you put into it, but it can be done. You won’t become Usain Bolt but you don’t need to be, you just want to get to the ball faster.”

So there it is then, when it comes to GAA training – or rugby or soccer for that matter — less really is more. “Yes, quality rather than quantity. Another thing too, you can’t lose sight of the skills of the game; if we spent as much time analysing how we train, all the strength and conditioning programmes, and spent more time on the skills, we’d be better off, club teams especially.

“Inter-county is a more demanding level obviously, physically, but club teams would be better off investing more time in skills training, in tactics. At club level it’s a 60-minute game, you might have three sessions a week – you need to spend that time wisely.

“Most fellas are way fitter now than they need to be to play this game, what they need is to be faster, more skilful, rather than focusing on the physical. Three sessions a week should be more than enough for any club team.”