Sligo Grammar Get Gymnastic

The IRFU Fitness Department has joined forces with Irish Gymnastics to complete an interesting fitness project. The IRFU Fitness Department and Sligo Grammar School have invited Aimi Baker from Irish Gymnastics to complete a six-week project aimed at improving fundamental movement skills in young players.

Aimi Baker has a keen interest in this area and completed her first session recently. The young players found it very enjoyable and challenging.

Aimi took the young players through many different exercises aimed at developing fundamental movement skills (Jump, Land, Roll, Balance, etc.) which will in turn be beneficial to many sports including rugby.

This project is part of an ongoing programme of development that places emphasis on the Fundamental Movement Skills.

In this particular project we are looking at fun and novel ways of improving young players ‘gound mobility’ through gymnastics.

The aim being to evaluate this six-week programme on its effects on falling, moving on the ground, getting up and being at all times mobile ‘off the feet’.

The project was made possible through the help of Tommy Cradock, PE teacher at Sligo Grammar School, (pictured here with Des Ryan, IRFU Fitness Education Manager, and Aimi Baker, Irish Gymnastics Development Officer) who organised the young players, facilities and class time.

The project will run for six weeks with Aimi visiting the school once a week and while she is not at the school the players will be completing movement skills homework.

The young players’ fundamental movement skills were assessed at the start of the project using video analysis and they will be assessed at the end of the project.

This will hopefully result in an improvement in balance, co-ordination and movement skills in the young players which will turn help the player perform better on the rugby pitch and during other sports.

It is well appreciated that gymnastics is a close relation to all sports and helps develop movement skills. This project is part of the IRFU’s continued investigation into the best methods to develop all players in the Long Term Development Pathway (LTPD)

The IRFU Fitness Department would like to thank Sligo Grammar School and Aimi for their help with this project.