Gaelic Players Association

The GAA season is a maze, like no other sport for the average player. Outspoken Australian conditioning expert WILL HEFFERNAN gives his controversial opinion on the peaks and troughs in training and argues that consistency is the key to successful preparation

IN coaching circles, one of the most highly debated topics is how to properly ‘peak’ an athlete and this conversation then extends to bringing teams to a peak.

There are several schools of thought on this, ranging from ‘mini-peaking’ athletes and teams throughout the season to ‘mega-peaking’ them for championships only.

Anyone who is even peripherally involved in coaching or in training would have heard the terminology . . . anatomical adaptation, hypertrophy, strength and power phases in the strength training area or preparation, foundation, build and competition phases in the conditioning area or, at the very least, variations on this theme.

Essentially, the training year is broken down into blocks where different attributes are worked on for weeks or months before moving onto subsequent phases. For example, you may have seen or heard of GAA coaches talking about building a ‘base’ then working on something like speed endurance before finally working on acceleration or maybe power.

Then there’s my own school of thought: when it comes to Gaelic games . . . don’t bother peaking or periodising at all. Why? Because it is all flawed right from the start and, more to the point, it’s largely irrelevant . . . and to see this you need look no further than Dublin football this season. I guarantee they had training plans right up to the All-Ireland Football final.

Now why would I say this . . . well, personally I’ve only got 17 years of coaching experience but at least I got to start at the top, destroying some great athletes right from the get go, and there’s no better learning experience. I’ve read all the books, I’ve been to all the seminars and sat through all the lectures.

Over the last 10 years I can say my ‘crash & burn’ frequency is down in the less than one per cent category and I have checkpoints in place to catch those mistakes early . . . early enough to ensure that no one else notices but me. Well, I suppose the one per cent of athletes that I broke notice, but when your success rate is 99 per cent you can just blame messing up on the one per cent of the athletes that you broke. Now, let’s get back to peaking and see what the deal is.

Think about it, how many athletes competed in the 100 metre sprint in this year’s Olympic Games? Okay, now how many of them set personal bests, much less set a new world record? It’s not like it’s a surprise, they know the damn Olympics comes along every four years, you’d think they could peak for it, but they don’t.

Periodisation just doesn’t work. If the best athletes in the world, with arguably the world’s best coaches, can’t peak once every four years, then what the hell are all these coaches thinking when they try to peak an entire team at once, every season?
Here are the facts from Beijing:
Men’s 100m – Final at the Olympics in 2008

1. Usain Bolt (JAM) 9.69s Personal Best & WR (PB &WR)
2. Richard Thompson (TRI) 9.89s Personal Best (PB)
3. Walter Dix (USA) 9.91s Personal Best (PB)
4. Churandy Martina (AHO) 9.93s Personal Best (PB)
6. Michael Frater (JAM) 9.97s Personal Best (PB)

So a pretty hot race and certainly a very memorable one with five PBs.

Lets look at all the other 80 guys who qualified for the 100m at the Olympics.

In the semi-finals, out of the 16 competitors, one managed a personal best and four managed season’s bests.

In round two, out of the 40 guys in the five heats, one got a national record and one ran a personal best - this is to get through to the semi-finals of the Olympics . . . you’d think if you ever wanted to deliver, than this would be a pretty good time.

In round one, from the 80 that took part in the 10 heats, six ran personal bests, two of those to come home in last place and three ran season’s bests, one of which was to come home last.

This isn’t a once off . . . take a look at the results from the previous Olympics and tell me if you can’t see a pattern!