Ahead of the big kick-off against Shamrock Rovers at Dalymount Park on February 16, Bohemians midfielder Oscar Brennan takes bohemianfc.com behind the scenes as the team and management prepare for the 2018 season.
This is the second instalment of Oscar’s pre-season diary.
We need to reach a level of fitness that we can maintain over the course of the year.
We train on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Saturday mornings, you’re in the gym at 6.45 for a 7am start, so there’s no messing – you’re up and early.
Most of the lads like that, because you have your weekend then.
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Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday we’re out on the pitch at 6pm. You can’t make anyone do anything, but it’s standards, it’s expected that you go to the gym, that you eat well and look after yourself.
It’s a 24/7 thing, it’s not just the contact-hours, especially the responsibility is with us as players.
If you’re in England the gym is on sight, the canteen is just there, you’re not going to work or rushing in and out – there’s people there constantly to help.
We do have people constantly helping us at Bohs, Cian McCaffrey our strength and conditioning coach, if you ask him for anything he’d help you with it.
He gives lads use of his gym. he’d go through 1-1 sessions with lads if you get out at the right time but the responsibility does lie with us.
It’s good, it forces us to take ownership of the team, we’re the players. It’s the fans’ club, but it’s us on the pitch and we have to take responsibility for that.
There’s a good mix to the work we do in the gym and it’s not a case of us doing the same work all season.
We had a seven week off-season programme with four different gym sessions across two blocs, meaning he split the off-season into two groups.
Bloc 1, we were doing the first and second bits of the programme on Mondays and Fridays and then, after four weeks, you did gym sessions three and four.
You’re alternating all the time.
You just go in and it’s very general, you do a warm-up which is mainly body-weight stuff like walk-out press-ups, then you go into the weighted stuff – its not all weights, there are chin-ups and press-ups and the resistance bands – pushing and pulling with them and then we finish with cardio.
If it’s the Saturday morning after a match, it’s usually just the lads who didn’t play who do extra. We’ll use the battle-ropes or boxing against the pads, 20 seconds on and then 20 seconds off.
It’s nearly harder for the pad-man, because he’s doing 20 seconds of burpees when you’re resting and he still has to take the punches which is hard as well!!
We use the prowler as well, which is heavy and you’re pushing at 100%.
It’s mixed, he’ll do something different the next time.
The exercises kind of change, but the structure stays the same.
We do a lot of injury prevention stuff, which is massive these days.
It’s about maintaining the body, especially this year when there’s so many mid-week games – we’ll be playing Friday – Monday – Friday a lot of the time. That’s just the league.
Once the League Cup fixtures are announced, we’ve the Leinster Senior Cup to fit in, it’s all about maintenance during the season.
You’re getting your gains in the off-season and pre-season.
