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Cillian O'Connor - Strength and Conditioning

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5 Workouts to Supercharge Your Conditioning

Conditioning is important, and what's also important is doing it right. Now there are lots of ways to perform conditioning, but if gaining strength and muscle is a priority for you, then you need to ensure you do it correctly. Properly programmed cardio should enhance your lifting, not take away from it. Here are 5 workouts you can do that will take your fitness to new levels. 1. Cardio Complex Full disclosure, I did not create this workout. I found it on the 'Wodwell' sit

30 Days of Pull-Ups: What I Learned

30 Days of Pull-Ups: What I Learned

For those of you who haven't been following along on social media, for the past 30 days I've been performing pull-ups every day. This was a mini experiment on myself to see if purely increasing the frequency of an exercise would lead to greater strength gains. On week 1 I started with 4 pull-ups a day, then added a rep each week until I was at 7 reps per day on week 4 - which is the equivalent of the 50 total reps I would usually do over two days. Well, the results are in,

5 Reasons to do Cardio

It doesn't take a genius to see that I'm not exactly the 'cardio guy'. It's true, strength is my passion, and if I could only train one athletic quality, strength would be it. However, it doesn't have to be a choice between one or the other. There is tremendous benefit to including cardio/conditioning to supplement your resistance training regimen. 1. Health Cardiovascular fitness is one of the most important things you can do to safeguard your health, both physical and men

Thoughts on Foam Rolling

Foam rolling. Mainstream fitness media would have you believe that foam rolling is an essential part of warming up. Have you ever wondered what's the reasoning behind this? Foam rolling is a method of 'myofascial release'. What does this mean? Fascia is a thin connective tissue that surrounds our muscles. The basic premise is that you have 'knots', 'scar tissue', or other bad things in your fascia that need to be 'released'. The problem is that there's pretty poor evidence of

BCAAs - Worth Your Money?

A supplement that's become highly popular in recent times is BCAAs. But is this something worth taking? What are BCAAs? BCAAs stands for Branched Chain Amino Acids. Amino acids are what make up proteins, and they are critical for building muscle. Some amino acids are more important for muscle growth than others - like leucine. BCAAs contains leucine, along with valine and isoleucine. Therefore the idea is that we should take BCAAs to aid in muscle growth/recovery. What does s

5 Tips to Improve Your Sleep Tonight

In case you weren't aware, sleep (along with food) is the biggest thing you can do to improve your training results. That goes for strength/muscle gain AND fat loss. Modern society has messed up our sleep big time though, and people are paying the price for it, whether they know it or not. So instead of blowing your money on another stupid supplement, why not make a change to your sleep? It's 100% free and I promise you it will have a much bigger impact than even a scienti

Finding the Right Coach for YOU

Finding the Right Coach for YOU

Earlier this year I began the arduous task of passing the hardest test any Irish person will ever have to take: the Irish Driving Test (okay it's at least on par with the Leaving Cert). As a coach, my job is mostly a teaching profession. I teach people how to move their bodies, as well as provide some tips on how to make the rest of their lives conducive to their goals. I pride myself on constantly trying to up-skill my teaching and communication abilities to help the peop

Keeping Things in Perspective [important]

Keeping Things in Perspective [important]

Child worker at a Turkish Coal mine (1908) Although many of you may think of me as the personal trainer guy, I actually spend a significant chunk of each week working as a strength and conditioning coach at my old school, St. Andrew's College. While a lot has changed in that weight room since I began training there nearly 10 years ago, a lot has remained the same too. On the wall above the rowing machines, there is a black and white picture of a man with both legs amputated

Getting Pain? Do THIS

Getting Pain? Do THIS

If you haven't experienced some kind of an injury by now, then you're either very lucky or just haven't been training long/hard enough. Injury is something that everyone will encounter eventually, regardless of whether they train or not. And the number one reason for getting hurt is being weak, so you're a lot safer overall by hitting the gym. The hardest thing about injury is being unable to do the things you could before. Pain-free movement is easily taken for granted until

How to Avoid Getting Sick

Hi all, If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen me post an update yesterday about my prep for my upcoming powerlifting meet. The update was that I woke up on Saturday morning with a raw throat and runny nose. More on why this matters at the end of this post. You Shouldn't Be Getting Sick When it comes to immunity, it’s my belief that if you are treating your body right, you really shouldn’t get sick more than once or twice per year (and by sick I mean something that