GAA Speed Training: The Complete Guide to Getting Faster for Football, Hurling, and Camogie

GAA Speed Training: Why Most Clubs Get It Wrong

Speed in GAA is not built by running laps. It’s not built by shuttles. And it’s definitely not built by flogging players through figure-of-8s until they’re sick.

GAA speed training is a skill, and most clubs treat it like punishment.

I programme speed development for GAA players at club and county level, and the pattern I see everywhere is the same: teams do plenty of running, but almost no actual speed work. There’s a massive difference. Running 200m repeats with 30 seconds rest is conditioning. Sprinting 30m at 100% effort with 3 minutes rest is speed training. One makes you fit. The other makes you fast. You need both, but most clubs only do the first one.

Worse, when clubs overdo the conditioning and neglect speed work entirely, they’re actively making players slower. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s physiology. And it’s one of the biggest mistakes in GAA right now.

This guide covers how to actually develop speed for GAA. Not generic sprint advice. Specific programming for the demands of football, hurling, and camogie, built on the research and on years of programming for GAA players.

What the Numbers Tell Us About Speed in GAA

Before you programme speed work, you need to understand what a match actually demands.

In men’s intercounty football, GPS data shows (Malone et al., 2017):

• Total distance: 8,160m per match
• High-speed running (above 17 km/h): 1,731m
• Sprint distance (above 22 km/h): 445m across 44 sprint efforts
• Accelerations: 184 per match, roughly 2.6 per minute
• Peak velocity: 30.3 km/h

In intercounty hurling:

• Sprint actions: 22 per match on average
• Short sprints (under 20m): 14 per match
• Long sprints (over 20m): 8 per match
• Championship demands are significantly higher than League across all metrics

In intercounty camogie:

• Total distance: 6,040m per match
• Sprint distance: 214m across 14 sprint actions
• Maximum speed: 25 km/h

Two things stand out from this data.

First, GAA is an acceleration sport. With 184 accelerations per match in football, most “speed” in a game is about the first 5-15m, not top-end velocity. You rarely get the space to hit full speed. What matters is how fast you get moving from standing, jogging, or turning.

Second, there’s a significant second-half decline. Sprint distance and high-speed running drop in the second half across all positions, with half-backs and half-forwards hit hardest. Your speed training must account for this. Getting fast isn’t enough. Staying fast matters more.

Men’s football demands double the sprint actions of hurling and triple that of camogie. But the nature of those sprints differs: hurling sprints are shorter and more frequent relative to match duration, often with stick skills involved.

The Three Types of Speed That Matter in GAA

1. Acceleration (0-15m)

This is the most important speed quality for GAA. Breaking past a defender. Closing down a forward. Getting to a breaking ball first.

Acceleration is about horizontal force production. The body is in a forward lean, ground contact time is longer, and the legs push backward aggressively. You’re overcoming inertia, and the shin angle at ground contact determines how much horizontal force you can apply.

For GAA players, the first 5-10m is mostly about overcoming inertia with powerful hip extension. Glute strength and hamstring strength are the engine here.

How to train it:

• Heavy sled sprints. Load at 50%+ of body mass. Research shows this dramatically improves acceleration with no negative effect on maximal velocity. The heavy sled forces longer ground contact time, which teaches force application in the horizontal plane.
• Hill sprints. A natural form of resisted sprinting. The incline forces a forward lean and low shin angle automatically. Lower hamstring strain risk than flat sprinting at maximal velocity.
• 10-20m sprints from various starts. Standing, three-point stance, rolling, reactive (on a whistle or visual cue). GAA players rarely accelerate from a set position. Train the starts that match the game.

2. Maximal Velocity (15-40m)

You won’t hit true top speed often in a match. But you do need to run fast over 20-40m when chasing a ball, tracking a runner, or breaking clear.

At maximal velocity, the mechanics change. The body is more upright, ground contact time drops below 0.1 seconds in elite sprinters, and what matters is frontside mechanics, keeping the action in front of the body rather than behind it.

The foot should contact the ground as close to beneath the centre of mass as possible. Excessive backside mechanics (foot going too far behind) create braking forces and waste energy.

How to train it:

• Flying sprints. Build in over 15-20m, then sprint at 95-100% for 20-30m. These are the gold standard for top-end speed development. They expose the hamstrings to near-maximal eccentric demands, which builds robustness.
• Mini-hurdle sprinting. Set 4-6 low hurdles (15-30cm) in the 15-25m zone of a sprint. This forces athletes to maintain hip height and frontside mechanics at speed. Adjust spacing based on the athlete’s stride length.
• Wicket runs. Similar to mini-hurdles but with flexible markers. Improve stride length and rhythm without the risk of tripping.

3. Repeated Sprint Ability

This is where GAA speed training differs most from track sprinting. A 100m sprinter needs to be fast once. A GAA player needs to be fast 44 times in a match.

Repeated sprint ability (RSA) is the capacity to maintain sprint quality across multiple efforts with incomplete recovery. It depends on both your maximal speed (the higher your ceiling, the less relatively demanding each sprint is) and your aerobic fitness (which determines how quickly you recover between efforts).

How to train it:

• Sprint sets with short recovery. 6x30m sprints with 20-30 seconds rest. This replicates match demands where you sprint, jog back, and go again.
• Small-sided games with sprint zones. Mark zones where players must hit near-maximal speed during competitive games. Combines decision-making with speed demands.
• Tempo runs. 6-10 x 100m at 65-75% effort with 30-60 second recovery. This is Charlie Francis’s classic aerobic development tool. Low neural cost, builds blood supply to muscles, and develops the aerobic base that supports RSA. This is a low-day tool, not a speed day tool.

The High-Low Model: How to Organise Your Training Week

This is the concept that ties everything together for GAA speed training, and most clubs have never heard of it.

The high-low model comes from Charlie Francis’s sprint training system. The idea is simple: separate your training days into high CNS days and low CNS days. Never mix them.

High CNS days are days with intense nervous system demand: maximal sprinting, heavy lifting, plyometrics. These activities require neural freshness. The nervous system needs 48-72 hours to recover from high-intensity work.

Low CNS days are days with lower nervous system demand: tempo runs, aerobic work, light technical skill sessions, mobility, easy gym circuits. These promote recovery without adding neural fatigue.

What This Looks Like for a GAA Club

Most clubs train Tuesday and Thursday evenings with games Saturday. Here’s how the high-low model fits:

Day	Type	Training Content
Monday	HIGH	Gym: heavy strength + power. Speed work if no pitch session.
Tuesday	HIGH	Pitch: speed work first (4-6 sprints), then tactical/team work.
Wednesday	LOW	Recovery or light gym (maintenance sets). Tempo runs if fit enough.
Thursday	LOW-MODERATE	Pitch: technical work, set plays, skills. No max sprinting.
Friday	OFF	Rest. Pre-match prep.
Saturday	HIGH	Match.
Sunday	LOW	Recovery. Walk, pool, light stretching.

The critical rule: don’t put heavy gym work, maximal sprinting, and match intensity on consecutive days. The nervous system can’t recover fast enough, and all three sessions end up being mediocre instead of one being excellent.

This is why most GAA players plateau. They train at a moderate intensity every day because the CNS is never fresh enough for truly high-quality work, and never rested enough to actually recover. Everything sits in the middle. They’re never fast, and they’re never recovered. Just perpetually tired.

Why This Matters for Speed

Speed is the most neurally demanding quality to train. It requires a fresh nervous system. If you sprint after a hard session, or the day after heavy squats, you’re not training speed. You’re training slow running at maximal effort. The output drops, the technique degrades, and the stimulus for getting faster disappears.

The high-low model ensures that on your speed days, you’re actually fast. And on your recovery days, you’re actually recovering. No middle ground.

The Fibre Type Problem: How Conditioning Kills Speed

This is the elephant in the room for GAA speed training.

Fast-twitch muscle fibres are what produce explosive force. They’re the fibres responsible for sprinting, jumping, and rapid changes of direction. Slow-twitch fibres are for sustained, lower-intensity work.

Here’s the problem: excessive conditioning without speed and power training converts fast-twitch fibres to slow-twitch. This is a documented physiological response, not a theory. It’s one of the biggest training errors in field sports.

GAA is the worst offender. Think about the typical pre-season: weeks of laps, shuttles, 200m repeats, figure-of-8s. No sprinting. No lifting. Just grinding volume. By the time championship comes around, the players might be “fit” in the aerobic sense, but they’ve lost the explosive capacity they started with.

You’re literally making players slower by over-conditioning them.

The fix isn’t to stop conditioning entirely. Players need aerobic fitness for a 70-minute match. But the conditioning must coexist with speed and power work. If you’re going to run, also sprint. If you’re going to do circuits, also lift heavy. The speed and power work signals the body to maintain its fast-twitch capacity. Without it, the conditioning erodes it.

Practical rule: speed and power training should be present in every phase of the year, including pre-season. Even if it’s just 4 sprints after the warm-up before the long runs, it protects the fast-twitch fibres. Remove it entirely and you’re trading speed for fitness. That’s a bad trade.

Speed Training by Position

Different positions have different speed demands. Your programming should reflect this.

Position	Primary Speed Quality	Key Drills	Why
Full Back	Short acceleration, reactive speed	5-10m reactive sprints, T-drills, backpedal-to-sprint	Short burst efforts. Must react to forwards. Strength-dominant with explosive starts.
Half Back	Acceleration + speed endurance	10-30m sprints, RSA sets, flying sprints	Highest sprint demands. Worst second-half decline. Must sustain speed over 70 minutes.
Midfield	Max velocity + speed endurance	Flying 30m sprints, tempo runs, sled sprints	Cover the most ground. Need top-end speed for transitions and speed endurance for the full match.
Half Forward	Explosive acceleration	5-15m sprints, reactive starts, COD drills	Short, sharp bursts to create space. Acceleration is more important than top speed.
Full Forward	Acceleration + agility	10m sprints, resisted accelerations, 1v1 games	Create scoring chances with explosive movement. Under new rules, performing more high-intensity running.

The Speed Session: How to Structure It

Speed work must happen when players are fresh. Not at the end of training. Not after a conditioned game. Fresh.

Neural freshness is the priority. The nervous system drives speed, and it fatigues differently from muscles. If the CNS is tired, your players will be slow no matter how hard they try.

Every speed session has one primary focus. Not two. Not three. One. You cannot train acceleration, maximal velocity, and repeated sprint ability at max intensity in one session. Pick what matters most today, do it well, and call it done.

A Simple Speed Session Template

Warm-up (10-12 minutes)

• Light jog and dynamic mobility: 4-5 minutes
• Sprint drills: A-skips, high knees, butt kicks (easy, not exhausting): 3-4 minutes
• Build-up sprints: 3 x 40-50m at 70%, 80%, 90%: 3 minutes

Speed Block (12-15 minutes)

Pick ONE focus per session:

Acceleration focus:

• 4-6 x 10-20m sprints at 95-100% from varied starts
• Full recovery: 1 minute per 10m sprinted (minimum)
• Total sprint volume: 80-120m

Max velocity focus:

• 3-4 x 20-30m flying sprints (15m build-in, 20-30m at max)
• Full recovery: 2-3 minutes between reps
• Total sprint volume: 60-120m

RSA focus:

• 3 sets of 4 x 20m sprints, 20 seconds between reps, 3 minutes between sets
• Total sprint volume: 240m

Cool-down (5 minutes)

• Easy jog, static stretching, hamstring and hip flexor focus

Players should leave speed sessions feeling sharp, not wrecked. If they’re bending over gasping after the speed block, you’ve done too much or rested too little. The goal is neural activation, not metabolic fatigue.

Volume Guidelines: Less Than You Think

This is where most coaches go wrong: too much volume. Speed work is high quality, low volume.

Non-responders to speed training are almost always getting too much volume. If your players aren’t getting faster, cut the volume before adding more. This is counter-intuitive, but it’s one of the most important principles in speed development.

Phase	Sprint Volume Per Session	Sessions Per Week	Focus
Off-Season	80-150m	2-3	Build acceleration, introduce flying sprints
Pre-Season	100-200m	2	Max velocity, RSA, game-specific scenarios
In-Season	60-120m	1-2	Maintain speed, manage fatigue

Look at those numbers. 80-150m per session in the off-season. That’s 4-6 sprints of 20-30m. That’s it. Most coaches see that and think it can’t possibly be enough. It is. Quality of the stimulus matters more than quantity. Every rep should be at true maximum effort with full recovery. The moment you add so much volume that effort drops below 95%, you’ve crossed from speed training into conditioning.

Rest intervals matter. For maximal speed work (100% effort), I programme 1 minute of rest per 10 metres run, minimum. That means a 30m sprint gets 3 minutes rest. Cutting this short turns speed work into conditioning, and you lose the speed stimulus entirely.

Leave Them Wanting More

This is a coaching principle that applies to individual sessions and to the whole season: always leave athletes wanting more.

In a session, this means stopping the speed block before quality drops. If you programmed 6 sprints but rep 4 was the fastest and rep 5 looked flat, stop at 5. The goal isn’t to complete the programme on paper. The goal is to accumulate quality reps.

Across the season, this means keeping your most intense and specific training means in reserve for competition. Don’t peak in January. Don’t use your hardest sprint sessions during the League. Build capacity gradually so that when championship arrives, you have somewhere to go. Players who’ve been trained maximally since November have nothing left to give in June.

Off-season is for building the base. Pre-season is for sharpening. Championship is for peaking. If your athletes are at their fastest in January, your programming is backwards.

Speed and Strength in the Gym

You can’t train speed only on the field. The gym builds the engine that sprinting applies.

Here’s what matters for speed development in the weight room:

Trap bar deadlift. This has the highest correlation to maximal running velocity compared to all other lifts. Get strong here first. But remember: past 1.5-2x bodyweight, further strength gains have diminishing returns for speed. Get strong enough, then maintain.

Hip thrusts. Horizontal force vector for acceleration. Twice the glute activation of squats. Single-leg variations are more sprint-specific.

Nordic hamstring curls. Eccentric hamstring strength for the late swing phase of sprinting. Builds fascicle length. Reduces hamstring injury risk by 51%. Non-negotiable.

Hip flexor work. Hip flexion is the most under-trained quality in speed development. Cable hip flexor drives, standing hip flexion holds. Faster hip flexion means faster leg recovery, which means faster stride frequency.

Pogo hops and single-leg hops. The gateway to all plyometrics for speed. Builds foot and ankle stiffness, which determines how efficiently you transfer force into the ground.

The gym builds potential. Sprint training realises it. A stronger athlete who doesn’t sprint won’t be faster. A strong athlete who sprints with intent will be.

Keep the gym work simple. The same 4-5 exercises, done consistently, progressing in load over months. Don’t rotate exercises every four weeks because you’re bored. A trap bar deadlift done well for 12 weeks will produce more speed gains than cycling through six different lower body exercises.

Common Mistakes I See in GAA Speed Training

Mistake 1: Calling conditioning “speed work.” If there’s less than 2 minutes rest between reps and the distance is over 40m, it’s conditioning. Speed work is short distances, maximal effort, full recovery.

Mistake 2: Only training speed in pre-season. Speed is a quality that needs year-round maintenance. Dropping it entirely during the season and expecting players to stay fast is like stopping gym work and expecting them to stay strong. A small dose of speed work in-season (3-5 quality sprints after the warm-up, once per week) maintains the gains.

Mistake 3: Running players into the ground and killing fast-twitch fibres. This is the big one. Excessive conditioning work without speed and power training converts fast-twitch muscle fibres to slow-twitch. You’re literally making your players slower by overdoing the long runs. Every pre-season session should include some speed or power work, even if it’s just 4 sprints after the warm-up. Protect the fast-twitch fibres.

Mistake 4: Ignoring acceleration mechanics. Most GAA players have never been coached to sprint. They don’t know what a proper shin angle looks like, they don’t understand forward lean in acceleration, and they’ve never done a resisted sprint. Even basic coaching cues (“stay low,” “push the ground away,” “drive your arms”) make a noticeable difference within a session.

Mistake 5: Sprinting fatigued. Doing sprint reps at the end of a hard session is worse than not doing them at all. You’re teaching the nervous system to be slow, and you’re putting tired muscles under maximal stress. Speed first, always. This is non-negotiable.

Mistake 6: Doing too much. More sprint reps is not better. More exercises is not better. More sessions is not better. If players aren’t getting faster, the answer is almost always to reduce volume and improve quality, not to pile on more work. Four perfect sprints beat ten mediocre ones every time.

What To Do This Week

If you’re a player reading this and you don’t currently do any speed work, here’s your starting point:

After your warm-up, before the main training session, do this:

1. 3 build-up sprints over 40m (70%, 80%, 90%)
2. 4 x 20m sprints at 95% effort, 2 minutes rest between each
3. Total time: 10 minutes. Total sprint distance: about 200m.

Do that twice a week for 4 weeks. You’ll feel sharper on the pitch. Your first step will be quicker. And your hamstrings will be better prepared for match demands.

If you want a structured speed development programme with progressions, position-specific work, and gym exercises built in, the GAA Speed and Agility Programme covers this in a 6-week block. For individualised programming built around your season, the Custom Coaching is designed for exactly this.

Nearly half of all sprint actions in a GAA match happen in the first 10 metres. Acceleration is the speed quality that matters most. Train it first, train it often.