GAA Preseason Strength & Conditioning
If it is early in the GAA off-season and you are a club player that is looking to take preparation to the next level you’ve come to the right place. I recently moved home to Ireland to open Motiv8 Fitness after spending five years working with some high performance strength and conditioning programmes in America. Since that timeframe it is obvious that strength and conditioning practices and training programmes have improved immensely but there is still a lot of progress to be made.
GAA PreGAA Preseason Training Mistakes
Most of the GAA weight training programmes I have come across make four errors;
- Too high in training volume [total repetitions per session, week or month]
- Too little single leg or stability exercises
- Not enough shoulder prehab or shoulder stability exercises
- Strength programmes do not complement the running/conditioning programmes put in place
How do I prepare for GAA training?
In this article we provide 4 simple fixes that will help in preparing for preseason.
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Taking into account the four errors seen in most programmes, my recommendations for your GAA programme include:
- Setting an upper limit on training volume
- My recommendation is 1,400 total repetitions per month maximum
- Prioritise single leg training and single leg power development
- Single leg exercises should account for 12 to 15% of total volume
- Find ways to challenge and increase shoulder stability
- Heavy leg training or 100% focused “Leg Days” should be avoided