With Down out of the All-Ireland series, it leaves a clear run to the Club championship

ALL club teams around the country at the start of the year will look towards one thing, the club championship.

It is the pinnacle of every club footballer’s season and certainly the pinnacle for over 500 club footballers within my own county, Down.

The Down Club Championship is running from the last weekend in July for three consecutive weekends.

The format is quite simple – the eight first-round winners go through to one pot and play off against each other with the four winners progressing to the quarter final while the eight losing first-round teams play off against each other with the four losers exiting the competition and the four winners playing the four losing teams from the first round winners for a place in the quarter final.

No matter what path your club faces, it’s critically important you are where you want to be physically and mentally come the end of this month. Ideally you would like to get away for a training camp prior to the championship, where you have the ideal opportunity to bond as a squad. It’s a change of environment from the norm and you can get so much done tactically on that day away compared to your normal one hour squeezed in on a Monday or Wednesday night.

Unfortunately in Down clubs won’t have much of an opportunity for this because there are league games every weekend but that has its plus points too, being able to work consistently on a specific way of playing and the opportunity to blood some younger players into the side is perfect preparation.

The fact that the championship in Down is so condensed you will have an ideal opportunity to actually taper your sessions and build towards your club championship, other counties might not be as fortunate.

I can only imagine how difficult it must be to have to try and peak for a championship game in May, July and August for example. I think it’s much better to have the competition more condensed and later in the year like we do in our own county.

Think of this, there is simply no way a team can retain a championship pace or level to their training for the whole year it is physiologically impossible so therefore tapering your training to allow your team to peak at various times throughout the year is vitally important.

It’s certainly not easy sometimes to know how much you should train in the lead up to a championship match.

Do you train less? Train more? Train longer? Do you train at a higher or lower intensity? All these questions and more go streaming through the head of a good coach close to a big game.

Shortening your sessions before your championship games can actually boost performance, using the principle of tapering.

Tapering your training correctly has shown a boost in sporting performance by as much as 10%, rather than simply maintaining your normal training routine.

Planning the perfect taper for your team leading up to your opening championship game is probably more experience than science but there are some basic principles which should be set out:

• The taper should last roughly two weeks.
• 40-60% reduction in training volume (time you train for) in the final week.
• Frequency (how many sessions) and intensity (how hard you train) should remain the same for the final two weeks.
• Remember “Quality not Quantity” as that opening game gets closer.
• Emphasis in the session should be on sharp, explosive, dynamic movements.

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