Obsession with gym work is not a healthy option
I KNOW I am only out of the game a wet week, but there are times when I feel I belonged to another age.
I was looking at the body shape of a couple of Kerry’s younger players recently and I was amazed to see how quickly they go from slips of boys to strapping giants of men.
I made that journey myself, but a bit slower. When I started out with Kerry, I was 11 stone and while the gym was coming into vogue then, it was strictly a winter practice.
We had to change our ways – the memory of being cast aside like a rag doll by Diarmuid Marsden in the 2002 All-Ireland final ensured I needed little convincing – and when I played in the 2014 final I weighed in at 13 stone
I was the better for it too, held my ground better, was far stronger in the tackle and in possession, but it came at a price.
The gym has turned what was a three evening inter-county week into a six-night one, and as a result has bled a lot of the joy out of it.
There is no going back, though, but I do believe we are fast approaching the ceiling in terms of gym-based physical conditioning.
I appreciate that you have to find that level of conditioning, but in my experience it was too generalised and while I benefited from a lot of the work, I don’t think it had the same impact on some of my team-mates who were naturally stronger and would have benefited from a more tailored approach to overall fitness.
There is no one size that fits all and if players are going to sacrifice a large chunk of their lives to the gym, it has to be to their benefit.
From my experience, I don’t believe that the benefits are universal which is why, before we send players into the gym, we should know what we want from each individual coming back out.
And if we take that approach, we might find that less is more sometimes.