Sailing Performance Screen & Program Dublin
A 90-minute class-specific physical assessment and personalised strength and conditioning program for competitive sailors who want to know exactly where their body is limiting their sailing and get a programme to fix it. No injury required.
Book Sailing Performance Screen & ProgramIs Your Fitness Actually Built for What Sailing Demands?
You train. You stay fit. You do the work. But something does not quite add up when you are racing, you fade later in regattas than you should, or your technique breaks down in heavy breeze when the sailors around you are still holding it together, or you are cooked by day two of a three-day event and you cannot quite explain why.
The most common reason is not fitness. It is that your fitness is not sailing-specific. General gym strength and general cardiovascular fitness do not automatically translate to the sustained, position-specific, class-specific demands of competitive sailing. A dinghy sailor needs a very different physical profile to a trapeze sailor, which is different again to a keelboat sailor. If your training has not been built around those specific demands, there will be gaps, and those gaps show up on the water, not in the gym.
The Sailing Performance Screen and Program is designed to find those gaps, measure them objectively, and give you a programme built directly from your results.
What Does the Sailing Performance Screen Involve?
The Sailing Performance Screen and Program is a 90-minute class-specific assessment at RAPID Physio Dublin 12. It covers your sailing history, a class-specific test battery matched to the physical demands of your boat, a program build from your results, and a full written report emailed to you within 24 hours.
Here is how the 90 minutes is structured:
Sailing History | 15 min
Your class, your training load, your injury history, your upcoming regattas, and what you want to get out of the session. This is what makes every score meaningful - context matters.
Test Battery | 35 min
A class-specific series of tests performed in order, matched to the physical demands of your boat. Not a one-size-fits-all assessment. A dinghy sailor is tested differently to a trapeze sailor, because the demands of those boats are completely different.
Program Build | 25 min
Aisling interprets your results and builds a class-specific strength and conditioning program directly from your scores.
Debrief | 15 min
Your written report and program are emailed to you within 24 hours, covering your scores, traffic light ratings, top two to three findings, and your program ready to start.
What Does the Test Battery Include?
Three tests are shared across all classes, and the rest are tailored to the specific demands of your boat. Every test maps to an on-water action.
All classes
Movement and flexibility screening, and pulling strength tested bilaterally. Every sailor has to pull a rope - this is the foundation.
Hiking class sailors | ILCA, 420, 470
are tested on rotational power, quad and hip strength at sailing-specific positions, and sailing endurance capacity. These tests reflect the specific demands of sustaining a hiking position across multiple races and back-to-back race days.
Trapeze class sailors | 49er, 29er, Nacra 17
are tested on explosive lower-body power, lower-body and posterior chain strength, dynamic balance and movement control, and calf and ankle endurance capacity. These tests reflect the reactive, dynamic demands of trapeze transitions and sustained wire work.
Keelboat sailors
are tested on lower-body and posterior chain strength, dynamic balance and movement control, and repeated pulling power capacity - reflecting the cumulative load of grinding and trimming across a multi-day event.
The test battery is evolving as Aisling's dataset grows and the service develops. Every test is chosen because it measures something that directly limits performance or increases injury risk in that class.
What Do You Walk Away With?
Your written report has four things on it, emailed to you within 24 hours of your session.
1. Your scores and ratings
every test result recorded in plain numbers, with a traffic light rating for each: green means a genuine strength, amber means acceptable and worth monitoring, red means a gap that is either limiting your performance or increasing your injury risk. Ratings are made against the demands of your class, not a generic population average.
2. Left versus right comparisonĀ
asymmetry data is often the most clinically significant finding, and it is something that goes completely unnoticed without objective testing. A meaningful asymmetry between sides in a key movement pattern often explains a niggle that has been building for months.
3. Your top two to three findings
the things most worth your attention, written in plain English you could read out to your coach. Something like: your left knee extension is twenty percent weaker than your right, which means your tacks are loading your stronger side and your weaker hip is at higher injury risk.
4. Your class-specific strength and conditioning program
built directly from your scores, not from a generic sailing fitness template. Exercises, sets, loads, and progressions tailored to what your test results and your boat actually need. Ready to start immediately.
Optional Review and Retest
The Sailing Performance Screen establishes your baseline. Return at three to six weeks to review your program, refine technique, and make any adjustments based on how training is going. Come back at eight to twelve weeks for a full retest - re-run the entire battery, compare your scores against your baseline, and update your program based on your progress.
This is where the numbers start to mean something, not a one-off snapshot, but a monitored process that keeps pace with your training and racing calendar.
Who Should Book the Sailing Performance Screen?
This service is for any sailor who wants to know where they actually stand physically. It is particularly useful:
- During the off season
get strong before sailing load ramps up, with a programme built specifically around what your class demands - In the weeks before a major regatta
identify and address physical gaps while there is still time to do something about them - After returning from injury
confirm objectively that your capacity has been rebuilt, rather than relying on pain-free as your only measure of readiness - If you want to perform better or simply stay injury free across a long season
!! One More Thing Worth Knowing !!
This is the first Irish sailing performance dataset. Right now, validated class-specific norms for competitive sailors do not exist,Ā nobody has systematically tested ILCA sailors at their hiking angle and built a reference range. That is what Aisling is building, one sailor at a time. The more sailors who come through, the more meaningful the traffic light ratings become, and eventually, there will be a genuine Irish benchmark for every class.
By coming in now, you are not just getting your own results. You are part of building something that will benefit Irish competitive sailing for years to come.
