The Off-Season Edge: How to Train Like a GAA Athlete (Not a Gym Tourist) ⚡ Why January Always Kicks Your Arse!   If you’ve lost a yard of pace since the summer, picked up a bit of a belly, and keep saying “I’ll sort it after Christmas” – this is your wake-up call. Because in ten weeks’ time, you’ll either be the one setting the pace at pre-season or the one gasping at the back wondering where it all went wrong.   Every year between October and Christmas, too many lads and ladies hit the gym but train like tourists. Random circuits. HYROX sessions. 5Ks that make them tired but not faster. And then January hits.One or two people turn up lean, sharp and powerful. Everyone else spends six weeks trying to catch up. Let’s make this year different.   🧠 My

Why Your €1,000 Mattress Won’t Fix Your Back Pain (Here’s What Will) A client of mine once spent a grand on a “perfect-alignment” mattress.Three weeks later he was still waking stiff and still couldn’t train properly – only now he was €1,000 lighter. He’d done what most people do: tried to buy recovery.But chronic back pain isn’t a mattress problem. It’s a sleep-quality problem – and the difference matters. The Real Sleep–Pain Cycle Pain makes it hard to sleep.Poor sleep raises inflammation, lowers recovery hormones, and makes your nervous system hypersensitive.That leads to more pain and poorer sleep — a self-fuelled loop.Add hunger hormones into the mix: less sleep = more ghrelin (hunger) + less leptin (fullness). Result: constant cravings, slower fat loss, and more morning stiffness. Studies in Pain and Sleep Medicine Reviews show that just one week of poor sleep ramps

Your Doctor’s “Rest” Advice is Accidentally Destroying Your Back (Here’s The Fix) Your doctor meant well. When she said “rest until it feels better,” she was trying to help. Using the same logic that works for sprained ankles and pulled muscles. But after 8 years coaching working parents in Carlingford, I’ve seen this mistake hundreds of times. Chronic back pain isn’t a sprained ankle. And that well-meaning advice just made you weaker.   The €10,000 Rest Experiment Nobody Talks About Here’s what happens when you follow rest advice for three weeks: Week 1: You avoid activities. Feel slightly better. Think you’re healing.Week 2: Try normal activity. Immediate flare-up. Return to rest. Confidence drops.Week 3: Now afraid of most movements. Weaker than you started. More sensitive to pain than before. Three weeks of your life. Hundreds on physio. Missed work. And you end up

The Biology of Individual Food Sensitivity Research in journals like Pain and The Lancet shows that people with chronic pain often have heightened inflammatory responses. When you’re dealing with ongoing back pain, your nervous system becomes hypersensitive – not just to movement and stress, but to foods that can trigger inflammatory pathways.   Studies from researchers like Dr Philip Calder demonstrate that dietary patterns can influence how your nervous system processes pain signals. But here’s the crucial part: this doesn’t mean one takeaway will wreck your back. It’s about consistent patterns, not perfection.   Think of it like this: if your nervous system is already on edge from chronic pain, certain foods can act like fuel thrown on a fire that’s already smouldering. Meanwhile, your friend with no pain history might handle the same foods without issue because their system