Halifax Gaelic Performance Camp
64 children aged between 13-16 yrs old turned up to UCD (University College Dublin) to improve themselves at Gaelic Games. Each kid experienced top quality coaching in: strength and conditioning, nutrition, football skills, hurling skills, speed testing and best of all speed training!
From the start I quickly realised that the young enthusiasts had not received much in the way of quality speed and technical coaching, but thankfully they were keen to learn. The first group were all girls, and with a busy 1 hour ahead I quickly introduced a dynamic warm up. Teaching the players to squat, lunge, and stretch all the important players helped improve strength, range, co-ordination and also reduced the risk of injury.
Technique was the main focus of the camp, this is the area were I can make a big difference quickly. By working through a set of 3 drills I was able to get all players to improve posture, arm action, hip and knee action, foot placement and foot contact time. The girls adapted to these drills almost immediately, some of the boys had bad habits reinforced over a longer time period and took a little more effort but did show massive improvements after only a few attempts.
Agility is crucial in any field game, and football and hurling are no exceptions. When agility drills are performed correctly with players not under undue fatigue, the skills and techniques can be transferred onto the pitch with great effect. After a couple of agility drills with my feedback, the players showed improve speed via better body positioning whilst accelerating, decelerating and changing direction.
I also worked on acceleration drills, top speed running, change of pace running, plyometrics and skips to improve jumping for the ball.
The speed testers noticed the improvements in technique and speed in the groups that I had worked with for an hour before performing the speed tests. This showed that improvements can actually be made after only a 1 hour session. These young talented, enthusiastic children deserve high quality athletic coaching which will help make them better players, and i was delighted to offer it over the 2 day camp,
Thanks to all that participated
Paul