Coaches Corner

Three athletes from three different counties claimed the medals in the women’s Irish u20 indoor 400m championships in Athlone last weekend. Ciara Deely from KCH AC in Kilkenny and coached by Nicola Barron, Miriam Daly from Carrick-on-Suir AC in Tipperary and coached by Paul O' Gorman and Deirdre Murray from Na Fianna in Meath and coached by Aideen Sinnott. They raced on the Sunday all securing PBs, similar to Phil Healy from Bandon AC in Vienna 24 hours previously in a then World Lead and still European Lead time. Four athletes from four counties with four different coaches but all connected through Club TLG. Deely and Daly have been joining Healy for Thursday Night sessions all winter while Murray has travelled to Wexford several times to train with Healy over the winter. Maybe it is a coincidence that the juniors all stepped up this season running PBs and sweeping the medals in their national age group championship or maybe it is the fact they and their coaches have coll...

Brendan Glynn is a sprints coach with both NUIG and Galway City Harriers. Here are his thoughts on his week last week. Think all coaches will relate to this. Originally posted here. They say programs are only written in pencil.. I say this myself but know I’m stealing it from some coach somewhere. I’m sure they’re talking about adapting to how athletes are progressing, how people are feeling, lifestyles, injury, illness etc. A big one for us here on our little Island is the weather! Given the nature of our sport, recovery is key and often to achieve the desired effect, quite a long recovery is needed compared to our longer distance cousins! This can lead to times when you have to make a decision - do the planned work you meticulously put into your program to have athletes ready and peaked for their major target and risk injury due to inclement conditions or change the sessions to suit your environment? I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here but it’s something that plagu...

Phil Healy got the 2018 sprint and hurdle season off to a flyer with a IAAF World Indoor standard in Athlone last weekend. 53.15 is bang on the standard, is an outright PB (indoors and outdoors), is #2 on the Irish indoor All-Time list and #7 on the outright (indoor and outdoor) list. It's also just a start. Still justified in celebrating somewhat as we may not have too many other Irish athletes claim qualifying standards for Birmingham in March. As always, getting to this stage is complex with many ups and downs, tweaks, loops on thought process and trial and error. Coach Shane McCormack had organised a Cold Weather Training Camp in Curracloe back in November with a resilience session from a group of Irish Army Rangers in the Basecamp East group part of the weekend. After an exhausting day on the dunes and in the sea, the groups assembled in the nearby forest to get warm, light fires and cook fish. The fire lighting wasn't too successful but after several false starts...