How can I improve my hurling

Clarehurler98

Hi I am currently playing u-15 hurling with my club. I play corner back u15 and u16 . I'm not the fastest lad around and am not on the county panel. I played 7 championship matches this year and only let my marker score two points combined . But only cleared like 2 balls a game . I stick to my man alot. should i leave him and go for the ball? What do I need to do to become a better hurler get on county panel and maybe play centre back to the club. I practice of the wall for 30 mins a day

angelfire9

Practice practice practice
Try and improve your speed if you can (easier said to done I know)
I play full back at the moment (camogie) I don't man (or woman) mark per se but I don't go beyond the 21 yard line either
Have had a few points scored off me but none from inside the 21 and no goals so happy out
I am on the club team at the moment but expecting to shift back into goals soon as I'm normally the goalie but our manager decided to mess things around for the league games
Dying to get back between the posts (I'm a lazy sod) :rolleyes:

FISMA

Clarehurler98 wrote: »

What do I need to do to become a better hurler get on county panel and maybe play centre back to the club. I practice of the wall for 30 mins a day

1) Watch the pros, the champions at that. You will learn a lot of technique from just watching the pros.

2) Play with people that are better than you. If you are the best on the field, how are you going to learn to get better?

ted2767

Practice, practice, practice there is no other way to become better at a sport any sport.
Please bear in mind that playing centre back is much much different than playing corner back.
For starters center back is more about marking space or covering an area than corner back where you stick very close to your man. Remember the first goal Clare got in the replay? A centre back should never allow a player run that far up the middle of the pitch.

More importantly as a centre back you'd need to be well able to hurl both sides, be handy in the air (don't let your man win clean ball) and have a good engine.

Ask you coach to try you out there in a challenge match perhaps.

Quixoticelixer

Sounds like you have mastered the corner back position. Try to get your coaches to play you at wing back or centre back in training games or in challenge matches, you are doing everything else you need to do, daily practise is good and you seem to have a good attitude/willingness to improve but the only way you can get used to playing elsewhere is to go out and do it.

I played at corner back for years at underage, then at 17 I was all of a sudden moved up to the forwards, shunted between corner and wing forward. I hated it as defending was all I knew, and I played a few awful games which was disheartening as I knew I'd have played well in the number 4 shirt, but looking back it did help improve my all round game.

Keano

You are not the fastest lad around? Then do something about that - look up drills for speed and start the hard word today

I think the day of the corner back waiting for the man to get the ball is over. You need to be first to it or if you cant then make damn sure you are not letting him passed you.

You only cleared 2 balls, how is your striking? Maybe take a break from the wall and find a field and start picking targets all over it and practice hitting balls at them.

Clarehurler98

What kind of drills could I do In the ball alley or off the wall. I'll start doing the target practice thing aswell .

VONSHIRACH

Clarehurler98 wrote: »

What kind of drills could I do In the ball alley or off the wall. I'll start doing the target practice thing aswell .

You are u15, so don't worry too much. Your body has a lot of growing to do still and you will be a different hurler by the time you reach 21.

I was useless as a kid, but later I was one of the better hurlers in my very small club after age 20. I got to play in the fitzgibbon and met a lot of guys at college who were a lot better than me etc but it was good experience. My playing career is almost over, but I would like to give it one more year.

I didn't have a ball alley or ball wall when I was young but I have started to use one this year. It is handy when by oneself. You can aim for targets and vary the intensity to very high if you want a gruelling workout, left and right in 5 or 10 minute bursts. Always do some stretching of your back and legs and arms before you do the wall. My weak side was very poor until I was about 25. One day in the field, I took time to analyse. I noticed that with my good right side I didn't have to think, it was just instinctive, throw the ball up and hit it every time. To get my left good, I examined where I was placing my feet and when/how I was throwing the ball to get the timing right. In a short time I was striking off my weak side as good as my right. Sort out this when you are younger than when I was.

Off the wall striking will give you very good stick control and you will get very fast hands from catching or controlling fast rebounds. You can vary it by hitting a ball in the very corner of the front wall so that the ball returns diagonally to you off the side wall.

I use a wall ball and old leather ones to whack off the wall. You can pull on the ground and learn how to do the drop-puck. Handpass the ball off the wall.

On grass, practise jab lifting and roll lifting. Practise soloing. You can jog and handpass the ball onto the ground and jab it up continuously. Practise bouncing ball on hurley a lot just to get the feel. Practise putting the hurl up to protect your hand when you catch. Practise with a friend if possible how to hook and block. Hooking is easy and as a back you will thwart a lot of forwards from scoring.

I didn't know what physical training was until we were all puking after the sprints at the end of college training sessions. You concentrate on the skills now and enjoy it. The occasional few laps of the pitch will keep you in shape. A ten minute run ie a good jog is very good and this is about 5 laps of a GAA pitch depending on how hard/easy you want to do it.

You played 7 games and conceded 2 points. Most important thing for a back is to keep immediate opponent scoreless and mostly do this by stopping him getting the ball and also block/hook him. Don't give away stupid frees either especially pulling jersey or stupid pushes or pure dirt. Thats good about only conceding 2 points, even though you only hit the ball a few times. I started out corner back and as I grew stronger and more mobile I played all over, forwards and backs, mainly down the centre and also midfield. As you get more skillful you will see more action outfield, certainly half-back. But if you keep up the hurling you don't know where at your age, where your best position will ultimately be.

If you are in the backs, a decent hurl, not too heavy also. You need a bit of weight for pulling and blocking admittedly. Make sure you drink enough water day before a match. I liked bananas pre training and games for energy.

Hopefully you will keep up the hurling. Its a great game and you will make lots of friends. Concentrate on the skills first anyway.

grazeaway

VONSHIRACH wrote: »

You are u15, so don't worry too much. Your body has a lot of growing to do still and you will be a different hurler by the time you reach 21.

I was useless as a kid, but later I was one of the better hurlers in my very small club after age 20. I got to play in the fitzgibbon and met a lot of guys at college who were a lot better than me etc but it was good experience. My playing career is almost over, but I would like to give it one more year.

I didn't have a ball alley or ball wall when I was young but I have started to use one this year. It is handy when by oneself. You can aim for targets and vary the intensity to very high if you want a gruelling workout, left and right in 5 or 10 minute bursts. Always do some stretching of your back and legs and arms before you do the wall. My weak side was very poor until I was about 25. One day in the field, I took time to analyse. I noticed that with my good right side I didn't have to think, it was just instinctive, throw the ball up and hit it every time. To get my left good, I examined where I was placing my feet and when/how I was throwing the ball to get the timing right. In a short time I was striking off my weak side as good as my right. Sort out this when you are younger than when I was.

Off the wall striking will give you very good stick control and you will get very fast hands from catching or controlling fast rebounds. You can vary it by hitting a ball in the very corner of the front wall so that the ball returns diagonally to you off the side wall.

I use a wall ball and old leather ones to whack off the wall. You can pull on the ground and learn how to do the drop-puck. Handpass the ball off the wall.

On grass, practise jab lifting and roll lifting. Practise soloing. You can jog and handpass the ball onto the ground and jab it up continuously. Practise bouncing ball on hurley a lot just to get the feel. Practise putting the hurl up to protect your hand when you catch. Practise with a friend if possible how to hook and block. Hooking is easy and as a back you will thwart a lot of forwards from scoring.

I didn't know what physical training was until we were all puking after the sprints at the end of college training sessions. You concentrate on the skills now and enjoy it. The occasional few laps of the pitch will keep you in shape. A ten minute run ie a good jog is very good and this is about 5 laps of a GAA pitch depending on how hard/easy you want to do it.

You played 7 games and conceded 2 points. Most important thing for a back is to keep immediate opponent scoreless and mostly do this by stopping him getting the ball and also block/hook him. Don't give away stupid frees either especially pulling jersey or stupid pushes or pure dirt. Thats good about only conceding 2 points, even though you only hit the ball a few times. I started out corner back and as I grew stronger and more mobile I played all over, forwards and backs, mainly down the centre and also midfield. As you get more skillful you will see more action outfield, certainly half-back. But if you keep up the hurling you don't know where at your age, where your best position will ultimately be.

If you are in the backs, a decent hurl, not too heavy also. You need a bit of weight for pulling and blocking admittedly. Make sure you drink enough water day before a match. I liked bananas pre training and games for energy.

Hopefully you will keep up the hurling. Its a great game and you will make lots of friends. Concentrate on the skills first anyway.

Yeah that's all good. Like the others say, practice practice practice. Your only 15 so you have plenty of time. It's good to have a goal but Don't get fixated on trying to make the county panel. Look at corks Seamus harnidy he never played minor or u21 for the county but was our best forward this year.

I used to practice my shot ting by looking to hit the esb pole in the field behind my parents house. I would start from about 10 m and then move further back. While I didn't take many frees for our 1st team as I didn't always play in gone forwards I was well capable of nailing them from anywhere around the middle of the field and took plenty of long range shots. But i practiced them all the time. I would recommend practicing catching a high ball it's a hugely important skill nowadays and sadly one that very lacking here in cork. It was probably my strongest skill as a hurler. I'm not the tallest guy around but I could take on beat most fellas in the air but you only have to look at Kilkenny and how much ball they win in the air.

If you want to improve your speed then there are drills u can do. You can do quick speed drills. But combine them with a hurly and ball don't just do sprints for the sake of sprints. No point learning to move fast if your hurling can be fast too. Also don't get into the idea of doing weights and being a gym monkey it's very important that you allow your body to develop naturally and to allow your muscles, ligaments and bones to develop at the same rate. I have seen way too many promising youngsters over do the physical side and pick up injuries and be burned by their early 20's. Just cos a young lad is big and strong at 17 doesn't mean his body can take the long term effects of playing with lads in thier 20's or 30's.

If your only giving up 2 points in a few games then your doing something right. Just look at Brian Murphy's games v tony Kelly in Limerick. Murphy only played the ball twice and I don't think he actually hit one shot with his hurly but Kelly wasn't in the game at all. If Murphy hadn't missed so much of the summer with a dislocated shoulder then the all Ireland may have been different.

Playing further up the field is a different ball game, apart from improving your touch and striking the key thing is reading the game. Very few players have it naturally but you improve with age but if you can study your opponents and watch how they move and who hits what where then you ll figure where the ball will end up. As a vertern (back then I thought 30 was old) teammate of mine said to me as a teenager "the shortest path from A to B is a straight line, the secret is not to start at A".

Clarehurler98

Does anyone now any speed drills and drills that would improve my turning ( make my faster at turning) thanks .

North Cork Star

Great advice there lads!

I'm pretty much on the same boat as Clarehurler98. I'm determined to improve my hurling and fitness for next season! This was my last year Minor and I was on and off my Junior team for the last two seasons but haven't made my breakthrough yet and hoping to change that next year! I suppose this year didn't go too smooth as I had the Leaving Cert and carrying a slight injury with that. I'm a full forward / corner forward and I want to improve my sharpness, my fitness and definitely my speed as I'm not the fastest out of the blocks but I do have strength which helps!

Advice in how to counteract these problems and spend the winter improving these aspects of my game would be much appreciated!

Keano

Check out box jumps. Supposed to help with with building speed

VONSHIRACH

I never played intercounty, but I did a fair amount of tough hurling and football training under various trainers. Some of it was a bit draconian to be honest. I think the speed you need is for the first 3 to 4 metres, what you need to beat your opponent to either win the ball and score or clear it away. It is a handy drill to do short sprints from the end line to the 13m line or the 20m line. If you are going to mess up the pitch, do it off the pitch somewhere. Vary it by facing backways first, lying face down, lying on back etc etc. These are good sprints for speed. Its important not to pull up in a sprint too quickly or you risk pulling a muscle and do a jog and stretches before and after. Be careful when doing quick turns not to overdo it or you will do your knee/cruciate in.

You can practise short bursts and your ballwork by jogging up and down the pitch, handpassing ball a few metres ahead, and sprint and get it up.

Always do a good warm up and a good warm down, even if you are boll**ed. You don't want a needless injury and won't be as sore afterwards. I was never one for running on the road either. I always cringe when I see GAA guys doing that re the risk of shinsplints etc. Watch the top guys play and its useful also to record games and get insight from that.

grazeaway

North Cork Star wrote: »

Great advice there lads!

I'm pretty much on the same boat as Clarehurler98. I'm determined to improve my hurling and fitness for next season! This was my last year Minor and I was on and off my Junior team for the last two seasons but haven't made my breakthrough yet and hoping to change that next year! I suppose this year didn't go too smooth as I had the Leaving Cert and carrying a slight injury with that. I'm a full forward / corner forward and I want to improve my sharpness, my fitness and definitely my speed as I'm not the fastest out of the blocks but I do have strength which helps!

Advice in how to counteract these problems and spend the winter improving these aspects of my game would be much appreciated!

Was in a similar both in my younger days. Picked up an injury in my late teens that set back fitness a lot. If you want to improve your fitness I would start this winter with my stamina. I detested jogging but starting by clocking up the miles on the road or if I could on a running track or field. What I started doing then was running with the ball on the hurly and knocking it ahead of me and picking and soloing, I swaped to bring a football in between to practice that too. Half an hour in the ball alley or on the gable of the house to keep the eye in. I kept the sped drill till the pitches dried out in spring.

North Cork Star

Thanks lads! Sounds good to me. I will take note of these points and hopefully I'll be back here to tell ye of my progress!!

PN14

Good advice all round here op. If you do half of this you'll see an improvement in ur game. It s good to see lads trying to improve their game at your age and believe at this age with a good work edict you can see huge improvements.

I ll add my twopence worth. I'll keep it as short as possible u could write an essay on this.

The most important thing is the quality of the work u do over the winter. Judging from actually opening this post ur determined to work on ur game however there is work and work. Whatever u do try and replicate match pace either in hurling skills or physical work. There is no point spending 2 hrs in the field/ball alley a couple of evenings a week working away in ur comfort zone tipping the ball jogging around the field etc. You have to do things as quick as possible really pushing urself and ur limits. Its only then u will see any real improvements. It might not seem so at first but believe me you will improve. 10minutes flat out at ball alley is better than 30minutes just pucking around. At 10 minutes u should be flat out sweating out of breath if done properly. Work on your weak side more than ur strong side the strong side will look after itself. On the physical side of things Short sprint work (the lads have posted drills above) with some longer medium stamina runs i.e. end line to end line and back within 60 second dropping to 50 secs as you improve or single laps of the field within 1min30 dropping to 1.20 will be better than a load of laps tipping around. The laps serve a purpose too but at ur age probably not needed.

An old coach of mine used to say the most important 6" in hurling is the 6" between ur two ears. One of the posters above mentioned going for point A to B this particular coach had a slight variation of this in that he said if you needed to get from Point A to Point C it was quicker to start at Point B and have a headstart. What he meant was to use ur head and antipiate the play and be gone to point C before the other guy knew what was happening. It is a mantra I have used all my career and has stood me to good stead. There are plenty of fine hurlers you aren't the quickest to cover the ground who survived and thrived using this mantra. Use ur head study the game study ur own players the oposition if possible try and anticipate what they are going to do in advance.

Best of luck with ur training hope if all goes well. I hope if u make the big time that ur pen profile on a program somewhere will mention the boards forum that helped u.:)

grazeaway

I should a mentioned stretching and flexibility. At your age I would not recommend doing lots of weights. Your body is still growing and as such the building of muscle must match the building of your bones, joints and ligaments. This becoming more of an issues especially in rugby where young lads are huge. I was reading that Damien cahalane has to go for surgery on birth his hips and he is only 22. Too much too young and playing too much above the age group.

You should concentrate on improving your skills and sharpness until they become second nature, then improving you cardio and fitness. Building on you physical condition is something that will come in time.

yohan the great

Clarehurler98 wrote: »

Hi I am currently playing u-15 hurling with my club. I play corner back u15 and u16 . I'm not the fastest lad around and am not on the county panel. I played 7 championship matches this year and only let my marker score two points combined . But only cleared like 2 balls a game . I stick to my man alot. should i leave him and go for the ball? What do I need to do to become a better hurler get on county panel and maybe play centre back to the club. I practice of the wall for 30 mins a day

I feel your pain. I also suffered from playing at corner back when I felt I was better than the lads playing wing back or full back. I presume ye would play games at the end if training, like backs and forwards etc.? If so try and get on as much ball as possible to impress your coaches.

.skid

grazeaway wrote: »

Was in a similar both in my younger days. Picked up an injury in my late teens that set back fitness a lot. If you want to improve your fitness I would start this winter with my stamina. I detested jogging but starting by clocking up the miles on the road or if I could on a running track or field. What I started doing then was running with the ball on the hurly and knocking it ahead of me and picking and soloing, I swaped to bring a football in between to practice that too. Half an hour in the ball alley or on the gable of the house to keep the eye in. I kept the sped drill till the pitches dried out in spring.

Did you find the jogging to be good for hurling fitness because I heard that it's pointless? We should just be trying to work on our recovery times after sprinting was what I was told.

.skid

A trainer told me a few years back that if you're not doing things to match intensity it's worthless. So keep that in mind when you're in the ball alley, always hit it as hard as you can and bust yourself in there,that's how you'll improve! Same goes for drills in training. Another thing is your touch. What I found best was drilling it off a wall from a good distance back and sprinting to meet the ball. Make sure you sprint. You'll miss a lot of touches but you'll improve fairly quickly if you keep trying. Do suicides to improve your speed and turn. Look em up on youtube if you don't know what they are. Also what grade are you playing at? A or B or C?

grazeaway

.skid wrote: »

Did you find the jogging to be good for hurling fitness because I heard that it's pointless? We should just be trying to work on our recovery times after sprinting was what I was told.

Improving your speed and touch won't be much use to you if you cant do it over and over. The winter jogging is to improve the cardio, and reinforing the basic skills and touch. No point making a great run out to ball and clearing it if you can't back into position.

grazeaway

.skid wrote: »

A trainer told me a few years back that if you're not doing things to match intensity it's worthless. So keep that in mind when you're in the ball alley, always hit it as hard as you can and bust yourself in there,that's how you'll improve! Same goes for drills in training. Another thing is your touch. What I found best was drilling it off a wall from a good distance back and sprinting to meet the ball. Make sure you sprint. You'll miss a lot of touches but you'll improve fairly quickly if you keep trying. Do suicides to improve your speed and turn. Look em up on youtube if you don't know what they are. Also what grade are you playing at? A or B or C?

Was asked to look after the u21's a few years ago as they had no manager coming up to the champ games. Didn't bother doing any running as most of them were training at minor or junior but did a seris of drills to match game situations.

What I did was do basic things like running out to catch, turn and score. Each player would do it 5 times on their own to get their eye in. I would then match them up and get them to do the same drill one on one. The competitive streak isn't long coming out after you lose that 1 st ball. Players need to be matched up fairly though.

cgc5483

grazeaway wrote: »

Improving your speed and touch won't be much use to you if you cant do it over and over. The winter jogging is to improve the cardio, and reinforing the basic skills and touch. No point making a great run out to ball and clearing it if you can't back into position.

Your point is true but I guess what the poster was trying to say is that there are better ways to improve fitness that using jogging. I always found that when doing pre-season training I could jog around for ages but it didn't do much for my fitness. Jogging I found is too one paced and what you need is short internal bursts of intensity followed by recovery. As you start to get fitter the period of recovery you need should be getting shorter. I guess everyone is different just got to find what works for you.

grazeaway

cgc5483 wrote: »

Your point is true but I guess what the poster was trying to say is that there are better ways to improve fitness that using jogging. I always found that when doing pre-season training I could jog around for ages but it didn't do much for my fitness. Jogging I found is too one paced and what you need is short internal bursts of intensity followed by recovery. As you start to get fitter the period of recovery you need should be getting shorter. I guess everyone is different just got to find what works for you.

Yeah, jogging is feckin boring alright. Have done cycling and swimming too to built up the fitness. yeah to get the speed you need the the short hard workouts with recovery. It's a mixture of different training and drills that are needed. You need the stamina to do the long runs but also the speed to make the 5m bursts and the ability to move sues to side too.

.skid

grazeaway wrote: »

Improving your speed and touch won't be much use to you if you cant do it over and over. The winter jogging is to improve the cardio, and reinforing the basic skills and touch. No point making a great run out to ball and clearing it if you can't back into position.

Exactly but what I was getting at is that it's a lot better to recover fast from sprints than being able to run laps. It's very seldom you would be running at a handy pace for a few minutes in a match like. A good example is one of the minor footballers used to have to do brutal training with them. Just pure fitness training running for ages. Came back Hurling anyway and was killed from a match just because of the different intensity. He could have out lasted any of us running laps but he found it fierce hard to get his recovery in in a match.

Clarehurler98

Ah I play A hurling . Heard a good drill was to jog length of d field and sprint width . I go gym a bit now but do mostly core eg plank and push ups . I need to work on my general fitness coz lik in a match I played at wing back I dominate for first 20 mins and then I'm wrecked and do nothing . I'm nearly 6,2 nd use a 33 shud I stick with this size for the new season or use a 34 or whatever size . Thanks to the lads who advised me on the speed drills coz I got fair bit faster . I changed my running technique . Thanks

.skid

Clarehurler98 wrote: »

Ah I play A hurling . Heard a good drill was to jog length of d field and sprint width . I go gym a bit now but do mostly core eg plank and push ups . I need to work on my general fitness coz lik in a match I played at wing back I dominate for first 20 mins and then I'm wrecked and do nothing . I'm nearly 6,2 nd use a 33 shud I stick with this size for the new season or use a 34 or whatever size . Thanks to the lads who advised me on the speed drills coz I got fair bit faster . I changed my running technique . Thanks

Start doin squats aswell and make sure your form is PERFECT. Don't go near weighted squats till you're older. You're gonna get a lot stronger in the next few years naturally anyway. And you'll fill out a good bit after as ya stop growin. a year or 2 will make a big difference to ya size wise. Ya more matches is really what ya need though. I used a 32 for a while when I was about 6'2. Doesn't make a huge difference but i'd say you'd be better off with a 34. You get a better strike out of it after shortening the grip than you do after shortening the grip of a 32,if that makes sense. I always went by holding the hurley in my hand down by my side and then seeing if it touched the ground. It's more important about the size and weight though. Borrow a 34 for a few pucks and see what ya make of it.:P