FITNESS:Prehab is the new buzzword in sports therapy as training becomes ever more technical for Ireland's elite athletes, writes IAN O'RIORDAN
‘ACCORDING TO the latest scientific research, success in sport is all about choosing the right parents. Talent, in other words, is largely inherited, and that may be true. But those in the know will tell you there is still no substitute for hard work and by that they mean really hard core work.
It’s Wednesday lunchtime and in one of the grand, four-storey buildings on Kildare Street in Dublin, directly across from the Dáil, the first sound that greets you is of heavy medicine balls being flung against the thick walls. Thump. Urgh.
There are people lying face up, face down, or else hanging upside down, against a noisy backdrop of groans and moans of apparent agony. Phew. Argh. It feels like some sort of privately run mental asylum and it might well be, although some would say the real lunatics are being housed across the street.
In one of the rooms I find Derval O’Rourke, the two-time European Championship silver medallist over the 100 metres hurdles. She’s strapped into what appears to be some sort of human torture chamber, pulling at the ropes and cables as if trying desperately to escape.
“That’s the Vertimax,” Mark McCabe tells me, with deadpan seriousness. In the sports therapy business, the Vertimax is the latest weapon of mass destruction – as in destroying practically every muscle in the body, in order to prove just how weak those muscles actually are. But it doesn’t matter whether you’re an Olympic athlete or an absolute beginner: the Vertimax will ultimately help you be the best you can. And it purposely ignores talent. After all, we’re all built of the same muscles and bones.
This is all part of the ethos of Sports Med Ireland, one of the new, privately-run sports therapy facilities in the country. It caters not just for elite athletes but also the so-called weekend warriors – or those of us who might still dream of competing in the Olympics, but know we never actually will. Not all us can be professional athletes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t train and be treated like one.
McCabe started up Sports Med Ireland in 2006. He was, and still is, participating in triathlons at an elite competitive level, but having qualified in both physiotherapy and sports medicine, he began to preach what he practised, or indeed the other way around. “The same principals of strength and conditioning apply no matter what level of sport,” he explains. “And what makes the elite athlete better at their chosen sport can also transfer down to the part-time or recreational athlete. It’s really a combination of prehab and rehab.”
Prehab, to the uninitiated, is about preventing sports-related injuries before they happen. Rehab is about treating those injuries to ensure they don’t happen again. Naturally, there is some spill over, and that’s where places such as Sports Med Ireland come into play.
McCabe now employs a team of 11, a mixture of physios, personal trainers and massage therapists. Among the team is Derek Ryan, the former Irish squash champion; former rugby international Gareth Rossi; and Irish international athlete Garrett Coughlan. As well as athletes such as Derval O’Rourke, McCabe’s clients range from Olympic sailor Peter O’Leary to the illusionist Keith Barry, plus anyone else who fancies training like a professional athlete, even if it is just for one day.
In fact only 30 per cent of the clients here would be elite athletes, and 70 per cent recreational athletes but they all get exactly the same attention. McCabe built his reputation by helping other well-known sporting names reach peak physical condition, especially after injury, including Brian O’Driscoll – two of his rugby jerseys are framed on Sports Med’s walls.
One thing McCabe doesn’t tolerate is complacency, particularly among his staff, so every Tuesday and Friday, they must show up at 6am for a 45-minute circuit training and core exercise routine which would send your typical office worker straight back to bed, most likely for the rest of the day.
“We need to know what goes on with the athlete’s head as much as their body,” says McCabe. In other words every one of his staff must practise what they preach. And they do.
“That’s a big part of Mark’s ethos,” Garrett Coughlan tells me. “To properly educate and train someone you need to understand exactly what they’re going through. So yeah, we go through all the same routines ourselves at least twice a week.”
Prehab is definitely one of the buzzwords in sports therapy. “There is a much greater emphasis now on preventing injuries before they happen, by identifying weakness in certain movements or muscles. And that’s why much of our treatment is exercise-based, rather than, say, table-based.”
Indeed, much of this sort of treatment focuses on the core muscles – not just the old-fashioned six-pack, but the abductor muscles, the lower back muscles, and even those mysterious muscles around the groin.
In the past, for most people, a visit to a sports therapist meant lying on the treatment table, while someone rubbed ultra-sound over the sore area, then told you to stick a bag of ice on it for the rest of the day. Every client that visits Sports Med is first put through functional movement screening, which consists of seven exercises, marked out of three, for an overall score out of 21. These are designed to quickly identify the body’s strengths, and more importantly the weaknesses. It works – Coughlan put me through the tests, scoring me 13/21, and as I write this, 24 hours later, I feel as if a herd of stampeding elephants has run over my entire body.
“I have a love-hate relationship with Mark,” says Derval O’Rourke, dressed in black, tight-fighting gym gear, ready for her third strength-training session of the week. “Actually, when I started in here, it was all hate. I just thought some of the stuff Mark was doing was ridiculous. I even brought my coach in to show him, and he said ‘no, this is great’. Now this is my third season working with Mark, and he’s made a big difference. You can’t stay the same, you have to keep looking for new things. I was strong before, of course, but not functionally strong. I mean the racing season is easy compared to this.
“I like the location, too, coming into the city centre, rather than another day at the running track. It’s like coming to work, same as everyone else. Only it’s not the real world.”
O’Rourke brings along her own playlist on her iPod. Eminem kicks things off. “I like it hard core,” she says, no pun intended, dropping two 20lb barbells to the floor. “I can’t listen to nice music while I’m doing this. So it’s gangster rap, stuff like that.”
Later, as O’Rourke moves on to the Vertimax, it’s clear her sessions in Sports Med are every bit as important as the sprints and hurdles drills she does on the running track.
“I’ve always said I have no talent. Everything I’ve achieved has been through hard work. But I also think talent is over-rated. Because if I’ve put in all the hard work here, and put myself through everything I possibly can on the track, then when it comes to the major athletics championships I feel bulletproof.”
DERVAL O'ROURKE
A TRAINING WEEK IN THE LIFE
In the aftermath of her silver medal performance at the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona last August, Derval O'Rourke credited her success to "Team Cahill". By that she meant her husband-and-wife coaching team of Sean and Terri Cahill, and also her strength and conditioning coach, Mark McCabe. Together they ensure every possible aspect of her training is maximised, physically and mentally, particularly as she builds towards the London Olympics in 2012.
"Talent, really, is only one small dimension of success in sport," says O'Rourke. "Also, you can't control how talented you are. But you can control how hard you work. So when I'm lining up for a race, I'm not thinking 'God, please let me be talented enough'. I'm thinking, 'I'm ready to run like hell'.
"Right now I do eight training sessions a week, spread over six days. I take Saturday off, and I like it that way. It's a day off, same as my friends, and by Friday evening I really feel like I've come to the end of a hard week. So on Saturday I walk the dog, make a nice dinner. Sometimes I'd like to do another session, but you can't. You have to give the body time to recover.
"Nutrition has always been important, and my philosophy is to eat more. Of course I can always eat more chocolate and crisps. But that's not allowed. It's about eating more protein, like chicken. I also take a protein supplement and a multi-vitamin. Not very exciting stuff. I've been to nutritionists over the years and it's about functional food, ticking all the boxes. I make my own muesli and would add a few super-foods, such as walnuts or pecans.
"I've been sent to a few psychologists as well. But I think it really depends on the personality. I just know that if I don't believe myself, that I need to run for my life, no one else can convince me. But I think a lot of the work we do in training is psychological, in its own way. By going through all the hard work I'm convincing myself I can run just as quickly as anyone else on the track."
GER HARTMANN
What do the likes of Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, Paula Radcliffe, Haile Gebrselassie and Larry Mullen Jr have in common? They’re all dedicated followers of the core exercise regime specifically designed for them by Limerick-based sports injury therapist, Ger Hartmann.
Prevention is better than cure, as they like to tell you in expensive medical schools – although Hartmann has always known that. For almost 20 years now, after a training accident in 1991 ended his career as an elite triathlete, Hartmann has been treating some of best-known athletes in the world at his clinic in Limerick. More recently he has found his expertise in increasing demand outside of the sporting world.
Hartmann’s methods go well beyond the treatment of injuries. He not only identifies the source of the problem, he instils the positive mindset to ensure full and proper recovery. “It doesn’t matter if you’re an elite athlete or an actor or a musician,” he says. “If you’re performing any physical work, and are serious about longevity in your career, you have to do some prehab work, even just some stretching or strength work. Otherwise you’ll be on a Zimmer frame before you’re 60.
“Strength and conditioning has become more important in that regard, and it applies to every facet of life, even people sitting down at a computer all day. Part of the issue here is the lifestyle changes. Our fathers and grandfathers and even our grandmothers were doing more physical work, whether on a farm, or even riding a big black bicycle to work. They were conditioning themselves, naturally.
“There is almost no conditioning in daily life now, especially among children. It’s practically gone from PE classes as well. That’s why core work and proper conditioning is ever-more prevalent, and has so much more of a need as well, whether it’s the elite athlete or not.”
Hartmann’s reputation for ensuring physical wellbeing, and the mental wellbeing that comes with that, has gradually attracted a range of clients from outside the sporting world, such as, for example, the U2 drummer.
“Many people do not realise the fitness and conditioning needed to perform at the top level in drumming,” Hartmann explains. “It is very physical and very good conditioning is required to enable the drummer to perform both on stage and in rehearsal day in day out, year in year out.
“Larry’s longevity and indeed U2’s is testimony not only to the great music they perform but their attention to keeping themselves fit and in top condition for the rigours of constant travel and concerts, especially as each member reaches 50 years of age. So a lot of this is about longevity of their career, whether it’s Paula Radcliffe, trying to run her fifth Olympics in 2012 at age 39, or whoever. Larry is on the road 33 years. And he puts his body through tremendous stress when he’s on tour, simply because drumming is very, very physical. There’s rotation and repetition and it’s all full-on. So Larry puts himself through a very good conditioning programme, not just cardiovascular, but all the prehab work, so his skeletal system is strong enough to be able to perform on stage night after night.”
