Question on ESD for Football Championships in the US

Robbie,

How would you approach training and conditioning for GAA in the US? Training tends to begin in May with the season starting in June and North American Championships the first week of September. The main problem being developing a program that not only gets the players fit, but also teaches them the necessary skills since most are American born and new to the game. Compounded by the fact that we only has 2 practices a week and games on Sundays. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Sean.

Week 1-3:
Sean I am presuming you will have 6 weeks from the start of May to the middle of June.

If this was the case I would do a concurrent block of alactic power development with the ball integrated into the drills and finish the sessions with some tempo runs for aerobic development (oxidative work) for the first three weeks.

So a session may look like,

Dynmaic warm up,
Acceleration work - Ball drops
Agility work - work on deceleration, and some planned change of direction drills
Some plyos teach landing and eccentric control

All the above can be drills done at max intensity for 5-10secs, 4-6reps, with 60-120secs rest bewteen reps of the drills depending on how you divide up the groups. This can be done for up to 2-3 sets, and 1-3 series.

Then finish with tempo runs (100 yard run @ 75% with a walk across to the opposite sideline and repeat.

If you have 3 sessions a week for 3 weeks, thats 9 sessions

Every session add an additional 2 tempo runs

Session 1 = 10 runs
Session 2 = 12 runs
Session 3 = 14 runs
Session 4 = 16 runs
Session 5 = 18 runs
Session 6 = 20runs
Session 7 = 22runs
Session 8&9 = Maybe take a deload and only do 10-12runs

Week 4-6:
In Week 4, 5 and 6 now work on alactic capacity, and a lot more ball specific work.

Drills done for 8-15 secs with 45-90secs rest.

Dynmaic warm up,
Acceleration work - Partner chase
Agility work - Mirror Partner, tackling drills
Some plyos - with bounce or continuous, into a reactive drill.

Some ball skills, shooting drills, etc.

And finish with small-side games - 4v4, 5v5, 6v6.

So bewteen week 4,5&6 you should get in about 9 of these sessions.

Or, what you could do is,

Session 1&2: Alactic capacity (just like the session outlined above)
Session 3: Full on Match 15v15
Session 4&5: Alactic capacity
Session 6: Full on Match 15v15
Session 7&8 Alactic Capacity
Session 9: Full on Match 15v15

This should have ye right for your first round of games in June.

Hope this helps Sean?

Stay Strong,

RB