Coming from a predominately GAA upbringing, I have seen a massive surge in interest and use in Strength and Conditioning or S&C training in the last 10 years in the sport. It has become an almost quintessential part of the training schedule from juvenile level right up to Senior club or Inter County level. Modern day players, particularly at the highest level are stronger, faster and more powerful than they have ever been in the history of the sport. The physical prowess of these elite gaelic footballers and hurlers has caused a massive desire in many adolescent and adult players of all levels to partake in regular S&C training to improve on-field performance.This isn’t some fad in the sport that will soon die out, it is a mode of training which has a continually growing scientific base of evidence showing that there is a wealth of benefits to be reaped from it, not only from a performance perspective, but from a health and fitness point of view.
When I first started out with the lads in A1, I was entering into the completely new domain of cycling and I was extremely surprised at how underused S&C training was in the sport despite its benefits. One topic constantly kept cropping up whenever I started talking about S&C with some of the lads in A1 or with any of our clients: “I don’t want to gain any size!” or “Will I be carrying extra weight on the bike?”. Yes, certain types of strength training can result in gains in muscle size also known as hypertrophy and muscle strength can be linked to the size of our muscles .And yes, this extra mass on the body can have a detrimental effect on endurance cycling performance. But, not all strength training results in hypertrophy and muscle strength and power is not only determined by the size of your muscle. Engaging in heavy strength training can increase the strength, speed, power and endurance of muscle with little to no muscle hypertrophy.
So, how can increasing strength, speed and power improve cycling performance? The answer is something called Cycling Economy or how well our muscles use energy to produce work. The concept of Cycling Economy is exactly the same as looking at the fuel efficiency of our car- how many kilometers can I get out of the tank per liter of petrol.
For the human body, we calculated this using oxygen instead of petrol. By engaging in heavy strength training, you can improve the force that your muscle can generate and decrease the energy demand to produce this force. This makes your muscles more efficient and increases the time for them to fatigue, particularly in endurance events. Studies on competitive road cyclists have shown that heavy strength training in the lower limbs can lead to a 5% improvement in cycling economy and cause a whopping increase of 17% in the time it takes to fatigue at max aerobic power. Table 1 shows more of the potential benefits that can be achieved through strength training and indicates that there is currently no evidence for the proposed negatives of strength training on endurance performance.
(Rønnestad and Mujika, 2014)
The evidence for doing heavy strength training continues to stack up, but some of you may be asking how do I bring this kind of training into my schedule when it’s already packed with long endurance training and other life events such as work, school etc.? Doing 2-3 strength sessions of heavy strength work a week on the lower body during the Winter period before the cycling season starts can be a great way of getting massive strength gains without putting a foot on a pedal. When the season starts, it can be harder to keep up this volume of training, but reducing the training to 1 session a week and focusing on more explosive, fast movements can maintain the strength gains you obtain in the Winter and increase your speed and power when you start up on the bike again. If you do this, you’re almost guaranteed to see improvements in your performance and get closer to those all important podium finishes.
Well, not bad for a GAA player, eh!!
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