Lukasz Kirszenstein has a hurley that Joe Canning gave him years ago – not as a token or an ornament, but as an instrument to be learned. In the intercounty dressing rooms that had become his workplace and his playground, Kirszenstein noticed players picking up other players’ hurleys and judging them, like they were swishing a mouthful of wine.
He wondered for a long time what they were doing until one day he found himself doing it too. He had joined the band.
In conversation he will say things like “the way hurling used to be”, unconsciously but in context. Beyond his short experience, how many reference points did he have? He understands, though, that he has been part of the most convulsive decade the game has known. In hurling’s age of Citius, Altius, Fortius, hurlers needed someone like him.
Last month, Kirszenstein was the strength and conditioning (S&C) coach for the All-Ireland hurling champions for the third time in eight years: Tipperary in 2016, Galway a year later and now Clare. Intercounty teams have had various species of physical trainers for decades, but nobody had ever achieved such a feat with three different counties.
This year Clare were stretched, sometimes on a rack. No other team played more competitive minutes. Between league and championship, Clare had 15 matches, one more than Kilkenny, two more than Cork, three more than Limerick. After more than 100 minutes in the All-Ireland final they were the last team wobbling.
The hurling championship used to have long stretches of flat calm, where tapering and peaking was a different kind of challenge; now it is a series of white-water rapids.
“We got to the league final and I was like, ‘Oh no, in two weeks’ time we’re playing Limerick. What’s the best way we can do this?’ So we planned for that. And then the next game, and the next game. It doesn’t leave you too much space to do anything crazy – which is good sometimes.”
The two teams who would reach the All-Ireland final met at a cliff’s edge before the end of April. Clare had cocked up against Limerick and had seven days to restore their bodies and minds. Shortly after half-time Cork led by seven points. The Munster championship is full of pop-up crises.
“The catalyst was the midweek session we did after the loss [to Limerick]. It was really good and it instilled the confidence back in. Players at that level are very resilient. That group never panics. The session was short, but it was hard. We’re talking intensity, not volume. The old thing in the GAA would have been, in the match week, wrap yourself in bubble wrap and wait for the game. At that level it doesn’t work like that.”
It’s nearly 20 years since Kirszenstein arrived in Ireland. He had quickly grown tired of London, but he was just 24 and had no desire to return home to Poland. His brother was working in a hotel in Adare and there was work there also for Kirszenstein.
His qualifications, though, were in sport. He had a degree in physical education and a masters in anthropometry – the science of human measurement. In the hotel, he served his time in the restaurant while his eyes were on the gym.
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“Believe it or not it was hard for me to break into strength and conditioning. Someone told me once, pretty abruptly, ‘You’re never going to get into strength and conditioning because your qualification is not recognised here.’ It was from a top university in Poland. I said, like, ‘We will see.’”
Rugby was his point of entry. Garryowen gave him a chance and from there some work materialised in the Munster Academy. The next turn had no signpost. One of the coaches in the academy was asked to train the Tipperary hurlers and he brought Kirszenstein as his assistant. But just a couple of months later, the IRFU cracked down on its full-time academy coaches moonlighting with other teams. Before the start of the 2013 National League, the Tipperary job fell into his lap.
“It didn’t go really well. A steep learning curve. It was a funny year as well. There were a few other things wrong but, yeah, that was a big lesson for me.
From one team sport to another, he reckons about 75 per cent of strength and conditioning occupies common ground. The last quarter is full of variables. So he needed to learn about hurlers.
“Hurling is one sport that exposes a bit of fatigue because it’s such a fine skill. If you’re that small bit off, straight away you’re dropping balls, the basics let you down, you’re shooting wides. It’s very visible if you get it wrong. And it happens.
“It’s very easy to mess it up. I believe I’ve mastered things to get it right, but still – probably eight times out of 10 you get it right but 15 to 20 per cent of the time you get it wrong.”
He recalls that in 2015, Tipperary had a five-week gap between the Munster final and the All-Ireland semi-final. “We didn’t manage that right. I was probably too inexperienced to call it. Now, I’d do it completely different.”
At the end of 2013, Kirszenstein took a chance. He quit his job in the hotel and trusted in his ability to attract clients. At the beginning of 2014, Tipp were the only team on his books; by the end of the year, he had added the Ireland women’s rugby team. They were amateurs too, doing blocks of training in regional pods.
“The Dublin-based girls used to train at 6am in UCD. I had to be up at 3.30 in the morning and drive from Limerick. It wasn’t pretty. There was a Galway group, Cork, London, Belfast and some other exiles. I was managing that – the whole lot, and a couple of coaches.” In that season Ireland won the Six Nations.
His reputation grew quickly, and after Tipperary won the All-Ireland in 2016, Galway approached him. They had been coming up short and were searching for meaningful inches. “It was a big decision [to leave Tipperary] after winning and people say, ‘Why would you not stay?’ But at the same time I was four years there.
“We have a shelf life in S&C. In professional sport it’s a little bit different. In amateur sport, I think there is a best-before date.”
Galway were already the most physical team in the championship and Kirszenstein had no desire to make them bigger. With the Tribesmen, the emphasis in his training was speed. Less than 12 months after he started, they won the All-Ireland. What difference had he made? In the absence of declared data, acclaim was the best testimony available.
In 2023, at the end of Henry Shefflin’s second year, he stepped away. By then he had worked under three different Galway managers. “It was the seventh year. I was like, ‘Hold on a second, I’m not sticking to my principles here.’ Maybe I just stayed a bit long. When Shane O’Neill was gone [at the end of 2021], I had a think about it and that’s when I should have called it, really – but I didn’t.”
But regardless of where he has ventured, the key to the success of Kirszenstein’s method has been a focus on the science, not the fad.
“In conditioning work, one of the rules is to progressively overload, but not all the time. If you’re doing it all the time, it’s probably overkill.
“The biggest problem in amateur sport is the recovery part. Being able to switch off and have outside stresses really dimmed. The body doesn’t distinguish between physical stress or mental stress or environmental stress. So, you have a certain capacity in your body to tolerate that. When you come to the pitch, and you’re running on empty, you’re digging a hole for yourself.”
With a business partner, Kirszenstein devised a wellness app called Actimet. The Clare players used it this year, as did the Galway players before them. Every morning, players are asked to rate their wellbeing on a scale of 1 to 10 under various categories in a process that takes less than 20 seconds.
“I wouldn’t be jumping the gun if I saw something out of sorts, but it’s a conversation starter. It’s not a real science because it’s a subjective marker – you don’t have data for it, you just have a number that the player came up with. But it does help. That’s one of those layers that gives you that extra bit of, ‘Right, where are we at?’”
Under Brian Lohan, Clare had used four different S&C coaches in four years; Kirszenstein was number five. What it also meant was that he wasn’t starting from scratch.
“With S&C you need time, especially if you want to build something. In Clare, it was easier. You have to give credit to the previous S&Cs. These players have been on the road a few years, so they were obviously in good shape already. I changed a few things all right – without going into specifics. I think the feedback was good.
“But we will be sitting down and reviewing it because obviously there are certain things that you do well and certain things that need improvement. And we will find improvement.”
If nobody retires, Clare and Limerick will have the greatest number of thirtysomethings in next year’s championship. Everyone believes there’s another kick in Limerick. And Clare? They will have the legs.
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