Most recovery “methods” are a nonsense. If you overload you can just fix it with an ice bath. Your body has to find balance (homeostasis) with sleep, food and movement and then go again. However if you are not fresh on Thursday for a game on Saturday then what??? The maths don’t work for the majority of what’s sports teams do now. It’s one major reason injuries continue to grow, and in severity. Credit: @PJF_Performance

If you see this nonsense run a mile. This is just one online scam, however these are everywhere now. 6 year olds are not athletes. There is some great classes and programs out there in Ireland now that allow them play and have fun in gymnastic clubs, Athletics Club and some other team sports clubs. I’m not talking about those. They are just providing an organised setting for children to play and learn. I’m talking about this notion of preparing your child to be an athlete. It’s a disgrace and a stain on my profession and adjacent professions those who sell this rubbish. It’s the early adultification and commodification of children. Professional Football academies (or even amateur ones at it now), S&C for 7 year olds, early intensification in Tennis and gymnast and similar - they are all the same. They are all causing damage to children in the hope of finding the very rare star. More than anything else children should play. Get them out on play dates, playing in their estate, to camps and classes with loads of other kids of various ages. They should sample as much organised sport as humanly possible before puberty. They will naturally draw to what suits them physically and socially in time. 80% of them will be nothing more than average. 15+% “might” be “handy” and an even smaller % will be exceptional. The biggest reason they will be exceptional is because of genetics. And you can’t change that, so stop trying! And anyone talking about your child as an athlete or a future athlete, is stealing from you, and your child

Inter County Hurling is goosed because of coaching, or lack of. There is a serious lack of depth to the coaching of the game. Limerick have a principled based strategic approach. We would call this the 80:20 idea. 80% of what you do is principle based and always stick to it. It’s not X’s and O’s. It’s heuristics, ideas, metaphors to help you quieten chaos. 20% of what you would do (or even less ideally) is game to game or maybe influenced by who you are playing next. Match ups, lines you hold, will we attack over, through or around? That kind of thing. An experienced and well oiled team may even be as close as 95:5 in the strategy:tactical approach. Kilkenny have a culture. Hard to know if they are strategic or tactical. But their culture demands a certain element of in-built principle based approach. They may say it’s keeping it simple, and it probably feels like that. But they actually have a very rich imbedded strategic and tactical philosophy. Like Kerry in football. Everyone else in hurling is tactically based. Changing on the fly all the time. Changing based on opposition more than makes sense or allows learning or a team identity to emerge. That’s the problem. Limerick are brilliant. Excellent bunch of players, well managed and well coached. But they are laughing themselves to a 5/6/7 in a row unless others change their mindset. My mother would have won 1 All Ireland with this Limerick group, they are that good.. But the management/coaching is helping the consistency and the multiple titles. It’s very similar to Dublin Footballers. The structure and support helps consistency. Hurling has drifted completely to the individual. I’ve spoke endlessly about the “why” (over technical, wall hurling, isolated practice obsession etc). But it is a team sport. And a principle based approach works so much better with teams. Numbers continue to drop and it’s sad. It is a great game. But now the highest level is boring and predictable. In many ways it can’t get out of its own way as it’s such an emotionally driven and followed sport. It is unique and it is brilliant. But it’s not so special or exceptional that it can ignore the realities of modern life or subjects like skill acquisition or motor learning..for instance.