DM Performance

That time of year!

Upgrades to my software has opened up JUST 5 spaces for gym programming/remote PT

Programming is completely individual to what you're looking for:

✅️ Sports Performance
✅️ Injury Rehabilitation
✅️ Lifestyle

You can do this, from ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD - currently working with clients as far away as Canada!

Near or far, get in touch to take your performance to the next level, and make this year your best!

Just a few people who a feeling a lot better then yesterday.

Get in touch to become part of it - in person or remote.

Are you crying out for your team to start going to the gym?

Being out matched by teams physically?

Feeling like you have the skill but missing the edge?

Losing sprint races, not feeling quick off the ground?

Time to change that

Next intake of athletes for GAA
Pre - Season Programming is Open Now

Get in touch and make this year your best🔥

Progression doesn't always have to mean weight

✅️ Load

✅️ Volume

✅️ Bar Speed

✅️ Rest Times

Are all extremely valid means of progressing your resistance training.

The progression of plyometric work is also crucially important, these can be progressed by adding volume, complexity, eccentric force, moving from linear to multidirectional, load (2 leg progressed to 1 leg), intent, more complex rhytms, movement speed.... pretty much there's a hell of a lot of ways to progress your plyometric work😰

With limited time it's key you progress these properly to put yourself in the best position possible to lead into next season to make it your best.✅️

Get in touch to take the confusion out of it for you, and make the most of your time 🔥

Rhythm & flow are really commonly forgotten about aspects of plyometric training.

When performing plyometric exercises, extensive or intensive, one really solid way to know if you have the capacity to perform a particular movement is to take a look at how you move through a few consecutive reps.

If your movements are all different from each other or appear jerky or uncoordinated, you probably overshot your mark a little bit.

If you're doing 20 Single Leg Pogo Hops for example, they should all look pretty similar, if not (different contact times, knees buckling, bouncing all over the place etc) you're probably after jumping the gun on the single leg pogos 🤷‍♂️
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Building up the capacity to consistently perform complex movement patterns, with a solid rhythm, will vastly improve your ability to perform these movements on the pitch through helping to providing a greater kinesthetic awareness and proprioceptive ability (essentially knowing where your body is in space without having to see it), which helps in learning running and jumping mechanics.

A smooth rhythm and nice flow will allow efficient, consistent energy transfer, think changing direction, jumping etc.

All about that rhythm & flow🔥

Do you want to

✅ Get Faster? 💨
✅ Get Strong & Powerful?💪
✅ Improve Body Composition?🔥
✅ Get back to normal life after an injury? 🤕

Lots of PT slots have opened up beginning today!

If you want to take your performance to the next level, return to normality after an injury, put on that bit of muscle or lose a bit of stubborn weight

You know where to find me 😉

Very proud to have spent the last 7 months working with this bunch towards competing at the National Championships, were an absolute pleasure to work with and wish them all the best in the future.

You ask most people what the definition of agility is and you will hear something along the lines of "being quick on your feet" or "being able to change direction quickly"

It's a bit more complicated then that unfortunately

Your ability to change direction of course feeds into your agility, but the key difference between being agile, and being good at changing direction, is that agility is used is response to an external stimulus, whereas you can change direction whenever you want, not whenever is required

With that, you can break agility down into two sections, physical (i.e. how fast you can change direction) and cognitive (for example, how fast you can decide which direction to go, and how to get there)

Traditionally, athletes would be trained to become more agile using things like agility ladders, now I'm not saying agility ladders are useless, but they will aid in developing your plyometric/CoD ability, not in your ability to make decisions and generally, it tends to be the cognitive side that sets the greats apart from the good

It's easy to get good at changing direction, it's a hell of a lot more difficult to learn what direction to go

So how do we develop agility as a skill? 🤔

Research has shown that top players read an opponents body language in order go develop an appropriate response before the opponent ever moves

Therefore, one of the best ways to get more agile is through the recreation of game like scenarios such as through small sided games, these small, fast paced, games will challenge you to develop the skill of reading your opponent and making the correct decisions for the desired outcome

It's not that good to be able to quickly change direction, but to go the wrong direction. What's sets the elite apart is the ability to use their CoD ability effectively to produce the desired outcome 🔥

So to become more agile:

1. Get really good at changing directions ✅

And possibly even more important...

2. Get really good at deciding what direction to go ✅

Tendon Rehab - Going to look at the knee here because it's what I have the most experience with.

So, during the rehabilitation process for tendinitis, such as the patellar tendon in the picture or the quad tendon (just above the patella) there is generally 4 clear stages (this is more of a continuum but will make it 4 defined stages for the sake of simplicity)

1. Isometrics
2. Resistance Training
3. Plyometrics
4. Return to Play

In order to effectively rehab from a tendon issue, we can't just focus on pain management, that is only going to push the problem further down the road, we need to look at both pain management and seek adaptation for increased tendon function to avoid the pain coming back.

In the isometric phase, for a knee issue I most often go back to the split squat, this allows the sufficient loading of the tendon across a range of different joint angles, how deep the split squat is tends to be dependent on pain, however in order to encourage tendon adaptation, load needs to be greater then about 70% of maximum voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC). Paper referenced in comments. This leads to positive changes in terms of tendon stiffness & thickness and allows you to move onto the resistance training phase.

The same principle applies for resistance training in that the tendon needs to be exposed a load of greater then 70% of MVIC. However the body is a bit like a chain, and a kink in one part will likely cause issues in other parts. With patellar/quad tendinitis, the natural reaction is to avoid flexion of the knee to avoid pain, this means that by this stage there is most likely going to be a mobility restriction at the ankle that won't allow a proper squat to expose that tendon to the required force. This can be sorted by adapting your squat to remove ankle mobility as a limiting factor through something like I put up a couple days ago; squatting on an inclined plate, or even just a heels elevated squat should work. Once full, heavy resistance training can be consistently performed pain-free, time to move on.

Once intensive, chaotic plyometrics can be performed pain-free, it's time to return to sport or full activity!

I don't like generalised blanket statements

But

Pretty much every athlete in a sport where running & jumping are a big part should be doing this daily regardless of goals.

This is front foot elevated split squat isometric (I'm aware, bit of a mouthful). The box here is probably a bit high so go for something slightly lower if ye can, or just do a regular split squat with a hold at the bottom.

2 big reasons for this.

1. Keeping tendons healthy. Anatomically, tendons have a fairly p**s poor blood supply when compared to something like a muscle, holding this position for a 30 second hold forces blood through the tendon and all the good stuff that comes with that, allowing proper regeneration & adaptation of the tendon.

2. This also lends itself to developing tendon stiffness (post about this like 2 days ago) allowing for a greater & more efficient transfer of force

Even a 30s Hold daily on each leg and you should see pretty decent benefits. Couple of ways to load this: trap bar, dumbbells, safety squat bar etc

Keep an eye on my stories the next couple days, going to be doing this myself, getting some knee pain from the increased sn**ch volume.

Men's Strength & Conditioning Class is Returning!

Beginning February 3rd

Limited spaces; drop a message to either account to get booked in or else give a call to

Darragh: 0871261226
The Arena: 069 78465