If you want to become a better athlete, dance.
That's what we've taken away from hearing multiple sport stars talk over the last few years. While it may have been yoga at one point in time, dancing appears to be the new way to add that 1% to your game. Vasyl Lomachenko was once forced to take four years out of boxing to work on his footwork through ballroom dancing, UFC Lightweight contender Kevin Lee recently spoke about picking up ballet to add strength and stability to his game, and now we have a GAA counterpart.
Former Kerry footballer Aidan O'Mahony joined OTB this evening to talk all things football, but the conversation would inevitably lead to dancing, with the five-time All-Ireland winner adding to his trophy cabinet in 2017 when he won first place in Dancing With the Stars.
O'Mahony talked about the benefits that the show had on him, referencing increased mobility and flexibility he acquired during the 12-week TV programme.
"When you go in at the start of the dancing, the judges talk about your hips and how there's no movement and how you need your hips to move. I couldn't see it as a GAA player. Your legs are toned, your hips are toned, you need to be toned for taking hits. Then come week 12, I was even looking at it there a few weeks ago, the hip is naturally moving".
O'Mahony said that he believes GAA players would benefit from some dancing training, or more focus on stretching and mobility, with less of an emphasis on weight training and putting on size, though noted that it's difficult to get that through to the players as they enjoy the gym workload.
"I think a lot of it comes down to the players as well, players love going to the gym. I did it myself, you go out and you get this great mental buzz from it, but the most important thing is the stretching, that five minutes or ten minutes you have before and after it. I didn't do it myself when I was playing".
O'Mahony continued to talk about the need for balance, as he believes there's a happy medium between gaining strength and keeping your mobility at a high level, and noted that he was too fond of the pursuit of gym gains at the cost of his flexibility, and mentioned one season he had a particularly strong focus on the weights.
Come November I was rounded. Someone said to me 'are you going running through walls or something?', and it took me about a year to get the mobility and flexibility back in me. They're learning curves".
"You don't need it for GAA. You need strength, but you need to have a balance, flexibility and power are big things that are coming into it".
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