RELATIVE STRENGTH

What it is, why it matters, and what it means for your game

Gaz Gaelic Guide

What Is Relative Strength?

Right lads, let me explain something that I think a lot of GAA players either don't know about or completely miss when they're putting their gym sessions together. It's one of the concepts that changed how I think about training, and it's something I wish someone had sat me down and explained years ago.

We all know what strength is. You can lift a weight, or you can't. Simple enough. But there are actually two ways to look at strength, and for us as GAA players, one of them matters a lot more than the other.

Absolute strength is just the total amount of weight you can move. If you can deadlift 200kg, that's your absolute strength in the deadlift. Grand. But here's the thing. A lad who weighs 110kg deadlifting 200kg and a lad who weighs 75kg deadlifting 200kg are not equally strong in any way that's going to help them on the pitch.

Relative strength is your strength in relation to your own bodyweight. It's the ratio. How strong are you compared to how heavy you are. That's the number that actually matters for most of what we do on a pitch. Sprinting, jumping, breaking tackles, contesting a high ball. All of that comes down to how much force you can produce relative to the weight you're carrying around.

Why Should a GAA Player Care About This?

Let me give you a real example. Two lads are going for the same corner forward position. Same age, same skillset, roughly the same fitness levels. One lad has been going to the gym and chasing big numbers. He's put on a fair bit of size, hitting big weights, fair play to him. The other lad has been focused on training smart, keeping lean, building strength relative to his bodyweight. He might not be shifting the same load on the bar. But on the pitch, he's quicker off the mark, he wins his own ball, he's harder to hold and he can repeat those efforts all game.

That's relative strength in action. The stronger you are relative to your bodyweight, the more force you put into the ground with every stride. The higher you can jump. The harder you are to move when someone runs into you. And the easier it is to move them when you're the one doing the running.

There's actually research specifically on GAA that backs this up. A study on elite under-20 Gaelic football players found that lower limb relative strength and countermovement jump height together predicted 20m sprint velocity. Not absolute strength. Relative strength. The lads who were stronger for their size were faster. That's not a coincidence.

Think about it from the pitch perspective. As a corner forward or full forward, most of what I'm trying to do is create separation in tight spaces, hold my position on the ball, win a breaking ball before my marker gets to it, and hit top speed inside 10 to 20 metres. None of that requires me to be the heaviest lad on the pitch. It requires me to be powerful relative to my size.

Absolute vs Relative Strength for GAA: A Quick Breakdown

Relative Strength Benchmarks: Where Do You Stand?

These aren't numbers pulled out of nowhere. They're general standards used across strength and conditioning, and while they're not GAA-specific targets, they give you a solid reference point for where you should be aiming as an athlete. Everyone is different, and heavy is relative, as I always say. But this gives you a ballpark.

The Mistake a Lot of GAA Lads Make

The most common thing I see is lads going into the gym and just chasing bigger numbers on the bar without thinking about what their bodyweight is doing at the same time. They're adding muscle, fair enough, but they're adding bodyweight alongside it, and if the strength gains aren't keeping pace with the extra size, their relative strength actually goes down.

You end up with a lad who's bigger but not actually more powerful on the pitch. He's slower off the mark because he's carrying more weight and his engine hasn't caught up. His relative strength hasn't improved. He just looks bigger.

And look, size has its place. If you're an underdeveloped young player, if you're getting bullied off the ball because you genuinely don't have the mass to compete, putting on some muscle is the right call. But it should be done with the awareness that your strength needs to scale with that bodyweight increase, or you're potentially going backwards in terms of athletic performance.

I went through a fat loss phase last season working with Dylan Nolan, dropped some body fat while maintaining as much strength as I could, and I hit 9 metres per second top speed afterward. That's not a coincidence either. Leaner, relatively stronger, faster on the pitch.

How to Improve Your Relative Strength

Option 1: Get Stronger Without Adding Bodyweight

The most straightforward way to improve your relative strength is to just get stronger while staying at the same weight. This is what a good pre-season gym block is built around. Progressive overload on your main compound movements, your squat, deadlift, hip hinge, and upper body push and pull, while keeping your nutrition in check so you're not putting on excess body fat or unnecessary mass.

Option 2: Lose Body Fat While Maintaining Strength

If you're carrying excess body fat, getting lean can be one of the fastest ways to improve your relative strength without having to chase a PR in the gym. Your strength stays the same, your bodyweight drops, and your strength-to-weight ratio goes up. Simples.

This is something I'm very familiar with. When you get into your off-season and you're looking at body composition, even a 2 to 3kg drop in body fat while maintaining your squat and deadlift numbers will improve your relative strength meaningfully.

Option 3: Focus on the Right Exercises

Pull-ups are probably the single best test and trainer of relative strength. If you can't do pull-ups, or you can only knock out a couple, that tells you something. Getting your pull-up numbers up is a direct marker of improving relative strength. Same goes for single-leg work, Bulgarian split squats, single-leg RDLs. These force you to move your own bodyweight in ways that carry over to the pitch.

What This Means for In-Season Training

In-season, the goal isn't to build a load of new muscle or add 10kg to your squat. That window has passed. The goal is to maintain the relative strength you built in the off-season and pre-season, so you're still that same powerful athlete come championship.

That's why in my in-season plan I keep the big compound lifts in, keep the intensity around RPE 7, three reps in the tank, and make sure I'm not going so hard that the gym is interfering with my pitch sessions or recovery. Two to three full body sessions a week, staying away from failure on the leg work especially, and keeping that strength base ticking over.

The lads who drop the gym entirely in-season are the ones who start the season firing and end up getting picked off and pushed off the ball come September. That relative strength advantage they built quietly disappears if you're not maintaining it.

Quick Summary

Right, to wrap it up in plain English:

• Relative strength is how strong you are compared to your bodyweight

• It's the type of strength that actually matters for GAA performance

• Research backs this up, lower limb relative strength directly predicts acceleration speed in Gaelic football

• You can improve it by getting stronger, by leaning out, or both

• Chasing big absolute numbers without tracking your bodyweight can actually hurt your performance

• In-season, the goal is to maintain it, not build it

If you're serious about getting the most out of your gym sessions for your football, relative strength is the lens you should be looking through. Not what's on the bar in isolation. What's on the bar relative to what you weigh.

If you want a gym plan built specifically around developing this for GAA, my Complete In-Season Gym Plan and training programmes are available at gazgaelicguide.com. 

References

O'Driscoll, M., Mooney, T. and Sweeney, L. (2024). The Relationship Between Maximum Lower Limb Strength and Power, and GPS Acceleration Speed in Elite U20 Gaelic Football Athletes. International Journal of Strength and Conditioning, 4(1).

Hunt Fitness (2024). Absolute Strength vs. Relative Strength. kylehuntfitness.com

SimpliFaster (2025). Understanding and Applying Relative Strength Standards. simplifaster.com

Malone, S., Solan, B. and Collins, K. (2017). The Running Performance Profile of Elite Gaelic Football Match-Play. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 31(1): 30-36.