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FEATURE 56 | WINTER 2020 | www.ladiesgaelic.ie PRE-SEASON TRAINING Tips for designing a successful pre season training schedule for referees & players O ften when we think of Pre- Season training we think of slogging it out in the muck, rain and wind. Yes there will always be "work" that needs to be done in Pre- Season but if designed correctly it can in fact be enjoyable. Here are some tips that will help in designing a successful Pre- Season for your players or for a referee. 1. Don't make it too long. Pre-Season training should last about 6-8 weeks. Going on longer than this you risk losing the engagement of players. 2. Start with what is manageable Regardless of how you are, if you haven't been running for a while your first few sessions back will take a bit to get used to. There is very little value in pushing people to the edge in these first few sessions. By allowing them a few sessions to ease back in to running you will set them up to work harder in subsequent sessions while also reducing the risk of injury. Also from a player retention and motivation perspective allow people time to build up a bit of confidence and trust in their body can only be a good thing. 3. Avoid major peaks and troughs in training intensity. There are loads of ways to organise a training week but from an injury reduction point of view we want to avoid major spikes in training load. What that means is you don't want to do a really hard session out of the blue then nothing again for ages. It is also not ideal to just keep pushing people to their max every session - either they get injured or they just hit a wall and stop improving. Ideally pre-season training would have some sort of pattern like this With gentle ups and downs of training intensity. Hard sessions should be planned in advance, built up to and recovered from. You can put two hard sessions back to back but less intense sessions should sit on either side of them. 4. Try not to expose people. If you have players on your team who struggle with fitness it will probably be very obvious in pre-season training. While it is perfectly fine to encourage players to improve fitness and give them strategies to improve and push themselves, a good coach will try not to expose people in a damaging way. If you know someone is going to be falling behind, try and design your session so this doesn't become as obvious or everyone isn't standing around watching them struggling to finish something. Think about player retention - we want to challenge people enough that they feel like they are achieving something and working hard but not to the point that it damages their sense of self and they opt out. 5. Build Up to Max Speed In order to reduce the risk of injury build up to running at full speed over 2-3 sessions. This will allow muscles, hamstrings especially, to prepare. 6. Build in High Speed Intermittent running - not just 5kms! For referees and players the running requirements for the sport is high intensity intermittent efforts. While going on 5km or 10kms runs will improve aerobic fitness and tolerance to running volume it will not prepare you for the high intensity efforts that are required on the pitch. While this steady state running might be of benefit to some players, just ensure that it is not the only type of running you are doing. 7. Size of your Training Area Try and design pitch activities that require players to move from small spaces to big. This achieves two things - players have to change their awareness and move from navigating a small area to big. From a physical point of view the small area will require more agility and decelerations while the bigger area will allow players to get up to high speed and open their stride up - both of which are important. 8. Change of Direction for Referees Most of a referees job is straight line running but they absolutely have to be able to change direction and react to the ball quickly. In order to reduce injury risk and prepare the joint and muscles for the demands of the pitch it is important to include some changes of direction into pre- season activities. This can be as simple as instead of running 100m straight run 50m out and 50m back instead.