Rob Tynan’s 4-minute workout will have you ready for the GAA season

Rob Tynan had the opportunity of meeting Barry Mitchell and showing him excellent workout regimes for both strength and power.



We all want to improve at our chosen sports, whether that is Tennis, a Sunday kick around or playing professional sports, getting better is part of the journey. Most sports require short sharp bursts of speed and spontaneous changes in direction; if you can improve on these attributes you will no doubt improve your over all game.

This workout is designed to help you do just that.

Here is a list of the workouts seen in the video above:


Reverse Spinning (01:00)

The reason for doing this exercise is to ignite the hamstrings and create a natural balance within the movement of the leg muscles. This helps stabilize the knee by strengthening the muscles around it. This is very important for sports especially those sports which require spontaneous bursts of speed in different directions.

The Why behind training in bare feet 

Reason for doing this is something called tactile proprioception in simple terms the nerves in your feet send messages to your spine and brain to adjust to pressure from beneath. With trainers this pathway can be blocked or blunted.

Frequently training in bare feet will make you a more effective and efficient mover activating more muscles from the bottom of your feet to the top of your cranium

Reverse lunges with band (01:34)

This exercise helps ignite hamstrings and pulls the knee capsule forward putting the pressure more precisely on the actual muscles creating a balance and strength needed for explosive training.

This assists in firing the hamstrings and the muscles being used in unison and forcing the leg to recruit those assister muscles helping to prevent poor form which can place adverse pressure on the knee joint. This, of course, adds to a more even workload across the muscles increasing endurance, speed and strength.

Lateral Duck Walk or Lateral Side step with band (2:00)

Simply put This exercise is great for the bum. It ignites the underlying muscle of the butt or the gluteus medius which basically lies is under the glute Maximus and attaches at the top of the hip.

Squatting deep and taking big steps really forces these large muscles groups of the butt to work hard and in sync.

Firing these muscles in unison can really improve explosive speed and power ideal for stop-start sports like Gaelic footy, Hurling, Rugby or Soccer.

Burpee Box Jump and Sprawl (02:22)

After pre-exhausting these muscles with the routine above its time to make them all work in together in an explosive manner.

This is ideal to improve core strength, power, speed and explosiveness, all the factors needed for an aspiring superstar.

Great for fast twitch muscle fibre recruitment, it is also excellent for improving spatial awareness, especially with the added exercise of the immediate sprawl backwards.

Hip Raises (02:41)

Flipping over onto your back then weighted hip raises double and single leg once again gluteus activation hamstring, core strength and mobilizing and strengthening those oh so important supportive spinal muscles.

I recommend doing these two exercises in sequences of 10 reps each that 10 burpee jumps and sprawls then into 10 double leg and 10 single legs hip raises.

Tire Pull (03:09)

A super exercise utilizing all the core stabilization muscles and the posterior chain muscles together this exercise is an excellent exercise to finish this circuit with.

It really brings all the muscles of the back into action and indeed all the stabilizing muscles of the body.

Remember this is an explosive circuit and should be treated as such; once the warm-up is completed teams should be sprinting to the finish for 20 or 30 yards and repeating 4 or 5 times.

For teams, I strongly recommend this exercise is done on a strength and conditioning day and should not be paired with a lot of kicking exercises after as players may be more susceptible to hamstring injuries after such a workout.

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