By John Harrington

Joe O’Connor believes the fourth and final #MoveMoreAtHome video he has produced in association with the GAA and Sure should be viewed as ‘the icing on the cake’ for GAA players who are trying to get themselves in the best shape possible for a return to collective training and playing.

It focuses on improving your ability to change direction and decelerate, but there is little point doing these exercises if you haven’t already worked on the fundamentals of balance and coordination, strength, and power and acceleration, he has covered in the three previous videos.

If you do have the correct athletic foundation in place, though, there are significant gains to be made from working on your ability to change direction and decelerate.

O’Connor’s core mission in putting together this series of videos is to help GAA players avoid injury when they return to playing matches and the fourth video continues in that vein.

There is very little straight-line running in Gaelic football and Hurling. Instead, they are sports that require you to constantly twist and turn, accelerate and decelerate.

This puts a lot of strain on your ligaments, tendons, muscles, and joints, so it makes sense that you’d be better able to cope with those demands if you have actively replicated them in your training programme.

“Without this multi-directional work, I don't think players are prepared to go back into multi-directional movement,” O’Connor told GAA.ie

“It should always come back to the basics. Can you run, jump, and stop yourself? Can you sprint and change direction when you need to?

“If you look at the series of videos, the icing on the cake is the ability to change direction and decelerate. But that only becomes relevant if you also do all of the precursors. 

“If you don’t already have the big foundational rocks in place, namely balance and coordination, strength and power, don't be worrying too much yet about all of this change of direction stuff.”

If you’re still actively playing gaelic football or hurling at any level, then the sight of discarded strapping on a dressing-room floor will be a common one to you.

Many players feel obliged to literally strap their body together to prevent it from buckling under the strain of playing.

O’Connor believes it makes far more sense to significantly reduce the odds of historic injuries recurring by taking the time to strengthen the parts of your body that need it most.

“100 per cent,” he says. “That's why this Covid can be a God-send. A lot of footballers and hurlers simply accept they have bad ankles because they don't have time between games to properly recover and rehabilitate. They're always putting fires out.

“That's why I think the series of videos could be a great opportunity for people to go through the four phases and really look at how you could make yourself more robust.

“I was only talking to a runner recently who was saying their career is definitely going to be extended because of Covid.

“Not because of the lack of competition, because they have a genuine opportunity to spend four or five months preparing their body to be as robust and as fresh as possible for a return to competition.

“For the same reasons footballers and hurlers will prolong their career.

“It's not so much playing the games that's a problem, it's the work that they're missing by playing games that's the problem when it comes to injury-prevention and freshness.”

Improving your ability to change direction and decelerate is worth doing because it buys you the two of the most important commodities in any field sport – time and space.

O’Connor has worked as a fitness coach with the Limerick, Clare, Waterford, and Kerry hurlers as well as the Kerry footballers, and has seen at first hand how sleight of foot can be a game-changer.

“The first five to ten yards are the most important,” he says. “I'm not really interested in how fast you are beyond 15 metres, it doesn't bother me, because at that stage you're trying to play catch-up anyway because most likely the opposition player has the ball.

“The ability to accelerate and decelerate over short distances is key in Gaelic Games. The player I worked with who really impressed that upon me in Gaelic Football was Colm Cooper.

“He had the ability to stop suddenly, the defender wouldn't be able to stop as quickly, Colm would take a step inside him, and pop it over the bar while making the defender look foolish.

“Conor McGrath in Clare was another who was exceptional at that, as was Aaron Gillane in Limerick. That ability to stop, change direction, and buy themselves so much time.”

Time is an asset that all players now have at their disposal and O’Connor believes they can make significant gains in the coming weeks if they work on the basics of balance and coordination, strength, power and acceleration, and changing direction and deceleration in the coming weeks.

“You can't just turn around and say, right, I'm going to do two weeks of weights and I'm going to be a beast,” he says.

“It's going to take at least six weeks for it to take effect and that's the strength side and then you're going to need another four to six seeks of integrating power work and all of that.

“If I was over a team now I'd be starting to do the fundamental weights programmes and getting all my balance and coordination done and making sure that I'm beginning to keep that micro-dosing of speed up and beginning to do all the jumps and hops and basics of deceleration.

“As a fitness coach you're always six to eight weeks ahead of game-day. So, what you do six weeks out probably affects the game more than what you do a week out from the game.

“Now is the time to be starting with this series of videos, whether you're a club or county player.

“Every player in my book is a club player. Some of them are good enough to play county, but every player is a club player.”