Cathal Cregg
By John Harrington
Roscommon footballer Cathal Cregg has no excuse for ever being in anything other than the optimal physical condition.
In his day job he’s Strength and Conditioning Officer for Connacht GAA and getting the most from the human body is the pursuit he has dedicated his life to. He has completed a BSc in Sports Science and an MSc in Exercise Physiology in DCU, and is currently undertaking a Phd in Exercise Physiology that focuses on the Physiological and Technical Demands of club level Gaelic Football.
In his current role he has developed a strength and conditioning level one course for football and hurling coaches in the province, works with the Academy squads from minor down in all of the province’s counties, and provides fitness testing, screening, and video analysis for clubs in the province.
He always knew he wanted to pursue a career in sport, and it was a stint working with the Connacht rugby team while still a student in DCU that steered him towards focusing on strength and conditioning.
“Yeah, that was originally where I started off doing strength and conditioning,” he says. “In my third year of Sports Science I had to get an Intra placement and I was with the Connacht Rugby senior team, shadowing them for nine months. That was in 2009.
“I would have shadowed their two strength and conditioning coaches, Greg Muller and Kevin Cradock. I was there for their pre-season and half a season which was great. There was no pay, but it was a full-time post and I suppose that's where my love of strength and conditioning started. I reckoned to myself that if I could get paid for doing this, then it would be great.
“After my degree I was lucky enough to get a full-time job in strength and conditioning with Connacht GAA. I'm there now three and a half years and it's great to have the job that I wanted in the sport I play and love. It's great to combine the two.”
Cregg is always looking to increase his depth of knowledge, and has travelled around the world to study the best practice in other sports to see how that could be applied to Gaelic Games.
“Yeah, I was in America for a couple of months in 2012 and I got to go around and see some of them Gyms around Boston like Mike Boyle's Gym which would be world known. Then I travelled to Australia for a while and got to work with Nicholas Walsh who was with the GWS (Great Western Sydney Giants) and I was in with Collingwood and a couple of different clubs like that too.
“It was great to see their professional set-ups and the way they run it and see what you can take from it. Obviously there's a difference between professional and amateur sports, but there are always elements that you can take from it.
“I've been over with a few Premiership teams in England too. At Arsenal, Des Ryan is over there (Ryan is Arsenal's Head of sports medicine & athletic development) and it's great to see what all the different codes are doing and see what you can take out of it.”
Cathal Cregg in Connacht Championship action against New York.
He has learned a lot along the way, and even though professional athletes will always have more resources and time to develop their physical gifts, he’s convinced amateur inter-county GAA players in the same ball-park.
“In terms of the way teams are prepared here, for an amateur sport, it's quite a high level to be fair. The amount of sessions lads do and the commitment they put into it is fascinating really, year after year after year. It's very similar but obviously the difference with the professional guys is that they have more time to recover after their training sessions and probably get more quality in their training and recovery because they just have their free time whereas amateurs here in Ireland have to go and work and look after families or whatever they have to do.”
To a certain extent he has used his own body as a guinea pig to discover what works best in unlocking an athlete’s true potential. He’s very interested in nutrition and biomechanics, and a stint working alongside Martin McIntyre at The Running School in Castlebar helped him diagnose some of the issues that were holding him back early in his playing career.
“I suppose I've always been quick but where I actually found it helpful was in terms of injury-prevention. I did the Running School first with Martin when Fergal O'Donnell was over us before. Martin used to work with Roscommon at the time in 2008 or 2009 and I had an awful lot of injury troubles.
“When I analysed my running I found that I was putting more force on the left-hand side of the body and it was actually causing a lot of injuries. So I got that corrected and since that, touch-wood, I've had very little injury trouble. Whereas before that, I missed the whole League in 2009 because of different injuries down the left side of my body.”
Cregg is now in his 11th season of inter-county football and knows that at the age of 29 his window of opportunity to win major silverware is starting to close. The current Roscommon team has huge potential, but he wants them to start turning that into cold, hard achievement now as they ready themselves for Sunday’s Connacht semi-final against Sligo.
“Yeah, definitely. I've probably only a couple of years left realistically. This is my eleventh season and I've only won one Connacht title which is a fairly poor return when you look at the amount of time that goes into it.
“The last two summers have been poor. We came close to Mayo in 2014 but we didn't beat them ultimately. Then last year we went out against Sligo, had a poor performance, and Sligo were good on the evening in fairness.
“We had a good performance against Cavan, and then lost after playing quite well against Fermanagh. We capitulated in the last five or ten minutes and ended up losing that game so it ended up being a disappointing year after getting promotion and winning Division Two. We need to start putting a couple of wins together in the summer. But, look it, we'll keep at it and hopefully it'll pay off."
