Ian O'Riordan watches as Ger Hartmann puts Ronan O'Gara and the Ó hÁilpín brothers, Seán Óg  and Setanta, through their 'pre-hab' paces

Squashing the spider
Ronan O'Gara stands barefoot, lifts one leg, and slowly lowers himself on the other while holding a 10-pound weight straight out from his chest. Apparently this exercise works on leg strength and balance, probably ideal for learning to walk on a tightrope.

Across the room, Seán Óg Ó hÁilpín hops on one leg up a small stairwell, clearing three steps at a time. He runs back down and repeats the exercise, as if practising a getaway in the event of a fire.

In the middle of the room his brother Setanta lies face down, his legs raised slightly behind him, and his arms stretched out in front.

Ger Hartmann is in the same position just opposite him and they're throwing a small blue ball to each other. There is no obvious purpose to this exercise.

"Five more seconds," says Ger. "Hold it steady. No buckling." Seán Óg pauses to watch. "Go on, Setanta boy. Three, two, one." Back across the room O'Gara is quietly cursing to himself. "F**k this."

They've been at this kind of thing for the past hour, practising a variety of strange exercises and positions, some of which appear to be lifted from the Kama Sutra.

"Look at that," says Hartmann, pointing to Setanta as he holds himself up sideways on one arm, and raises the opposite leg. "As weak as a kitten."

We're in the basement of the Hartmann Sports Injury Clinic, which sits almost anonymously at the bottom of Patrick Street in Limerick. Leading athletes from all over the world have been coming here for years. Signed pictures on the wall offer proof of that. So the first thing unusual about this particular group is no one is injured.

"This is what I call pre-hab," explains Hartmann. "I coined that a few years ago, obviously it being the opposite of rehab. This is about injury prevention, not cure. And I believe the advantages actually go way beyond that. You could be talking about a 25 per cent difference in actual performance."

The second unusual thing is that three leading athletes, from three very different sports, are going through such a routine together - and willingly competing against each other.

"Now lads, we're looking at an hour and a half here," says Hartmann at the beginning.

"Is that all?" says Seán Óg. "Get the muscles firing," says Hartmann a little later. "We want buns like steel."

"We want buns like rocks," says Setanta.

And O'Gara curses again.

But what's most unusual about this group is that none of them should really be here, working this way outside their own systems. At 28, Ronan O'Gara is at the height of his rugby career with Munster and Ireland. He's the fully fledged professional, with all the professional back-up he needs. Something must be going on if he's spending the whole morning with Hartmann, less than 48 hours after a stomping Celtic League match against Leinster, and with a two-day session with Munster to follow.

Seán Óg Ó hÁilpín is also 28, and just over a month ago he captained the Cork hurlers to a second successive All-Ireland title. He's about to leave for Australia to play with Ireland in the International Rules series and wants to keep himself ticking over. But because he's the only amateur in the group, travelling to see Hartmann has meant taking another full day off work.

Setanta Ó hÁilpín, at 22, should probably be lying on a beach somewhere with his legs up and a chilled beer in his hand. He's just finished his second rookie season with the Australian Rules team Carlton Blues, and that's what most of his Melbourne team-mates are doing in the off-season.

The only obvious thing they have in common is that all three hail from Cork. So what is going on? It all goes back to their first contact with Hartmann, and what they now believe he has to offer. His calm assurances and simple advice, and his ultimate goal that athletes gets the absolute best out of themselves.

"When I started doing this I honestly thought it was a waste of time," says O'Gara. "It was only when I got back passing the ball I really noticed the difference. You just feel so much more compact, and tighter, and that makes a big difference when you're passing and turning like that."

The session starts shortly after 10.30am. Hartmann developed it over the past four years, and it's now a regular part of his day. It all came about when Paula Radcliffe came looking for more thorough guidance after the Sydney Olympics in 2000 - where she finished fourth (again) in the 10,000 metres.

"The main intention was to get her running more stable," explains Hartmann, "so I started to deviate into this area and expand a little bit from the treatment table to the exercise floor. I saw the improvements it was making with Paula, how there was much less bobbling about in her running, and I've just taken it on from there. Ideally, you'd want to do it three days a week, but up to seven days a week when coming off an injury."

They start with eight different floor exercises, which Hartmann calls the core regime. He means the core of the body, and works every stomach and lower back muscle that has the potential to be strengthened. His assistant, Ger Keane, models each exercise and helps with the counting. O'Gara and Seán Óg lie next to each other, with Setanta facing them. They start with some relatively simple leg raises. O'Gara is cursing before the first count to 10, when all three collapse in unison.

Hartmann walks through them like an army officer, looking for weaknesses. He calls it "buckling", when the whole body starts to shake, and he knows they're barely hanging on. Seán Óg watches himself in one of the wall mirrors, and straight away it's clear who's finding it the easiest. Setanta has some trouble with his lateral abdominal muscles. "You'll need to work there," says Hartmann. "A weakness there is asking for injury."

"We did nothing like this in Australia."

O'Gara's right shin is covered in bruises and scars. His face becomes a deeper red with each exercise but he gets through them nonetheless. "You need fellas to do this wilfully," he says. It's his will that gets him through it. Just when it seems he's about to buckle for good he finds the extra strength.

Hartmann has a name for the fifth exercise: squash the spider into the ceiling. They start by kneeling down, raise one arm out in front of them, raise the opposite leg, and then flatten the foot as if squashing the spider on the ceiling. You couldn't imagine squashing a spider being any more difficult.

Hartmann forgets what exercise comes next. "Ah, you're off the pace today, Ger," says O'Gara.

"Don't worry," he responds, "I've still to put you through your paces."

They move on from the floor exercises to what Hartmann calls the more practical tests, if jumping back and forth over a small stool can be deemed practical.

"These are much more functional," he explains. "They're more about movement and dynamics."

Hartmann takes on O'Gara in one of the medicine ball exercises, and soon has him grimacing. Revenge is sweet.

One of the last exercises is the step test - which involves stepping up and down to a 16-inch table, 20 times per set. It's designed to improve running drive, but it brings out the true competitive edge in each of them. When Paula Radcliffe first tried it about four years ago she was timed at 27 seconds. Hartmann got her down to 17 seconds. The unofficial world record was set in this room when British 110-metre hurdler Colin Jackson was timed at 12.78 seconds.

"Paula was all over the place," says Hartmann. "Really struggling to get going, like a bird with a broken wing. When she finally got the hang of it she could run her last 400 metres on the track in 63 seconds, and before that her best was around 68."

Seán Óg goes first and is timed at 15.12. Setanta clocks 14.23. O'Gara approaches the table like he would a last-minute penalty, tears into it, and finishes with 16.92. And then curses to himself.

Striving for perfection

As is usually the case, O'Gara was introduced to Hartmann by chance, or rather ill-chance. Last March he was playing for Munster against the Newport Dragons when he was caught from the side and felt his right knee bending in a way he knew it shouldn't. For 10 days he underwent various scans and it turned out he had about four injuries in one - including a grade-two medial ligament tear in the cruciate. An operation looked inevitable, and that meant kissing goodbye to his chances of playing on the Lions tour.

He was due to go under the knife of knee surgeon Ray Moran the following Tuesday morning. That Monday evening, as a last option, the Dublin physio Alan Kelly put him in contact with Hartmann. They spoke briefly about rehab as opposed to surgery. O'Gara was sold, and the best part of his season was saved.

Some seven months later he's lying on the same treatment table, but this time as Hartmann works out a small stiffness in his neck muscles. What he learned over those five weeks' rehab was more than enough to establish a long-term relationship, and he still visits Hartmann at least once a week.

"It was unbelievable stuff," he says. "I was coming up from Cork five days a week, and working four or five hours a day on the rehab. It was a savage amount of work and time but it was all worth it. I've absolutely no problems with that knee now. And I owe it all to this man."

But the relationship works both ways. Hartmann likes what he sees in O'Gara, the desire to be the absolute best, the quintessential professional. He's reached the stage of his profession now where he doesn't take on any new patients, unless they get some special referral.

And O'Gara knows he's privileged to get the access. It's not that there's anything wrong with the treatment within the rugby set-up, he just wanted the best.

By 1pm O'Gara has his extra session out of the way, and heads out to the University of Limerick to join his Munster team-mates on a two-day squad session. Seán Óg and Setanta are complaining loudly about the hunger so Hartmann takes them across the road for lunch. They get about three steps inside the restaurant when they're asked to pose for a photograph. "No problem," says Seán Óg. Setanta poses but looks less at ease under the spotlight. He's been the quietest of the three all morning. He livens up a little during lunch, having ordered two of the main dishes on offer. When he clears those plates Seán Óg just looks at him.

"D'you wanna go again?"

"I could go again," says Setanta.

"Go again so."

It was Seán Óg who introduced the brother to the Hartmann clinic, again after a run-in with ill-chance. He'll never forget the day - May 24th, 2001, two days after his birthday - when he crashed his car en route from Dublin to Cork. He was rushing when he shouldn't have been, but that's another story. He just knows he came that close to kissing goodbye to his hurling career. He shattered his right knee, severing his patellar tendon, with his kneecap ending halfway up his thigh muscle.

"When I first came into Ger's place I thought he was some kind of museum," he says. "Just look at that wall, and the athletes he's had in here. Then I was coming back for four or five months to get the knee sorted, still not knowing if I'd ever make it back. Ger was always confident I would, even though I could hardly straighten my leg.

"During that time I got to meet some of the athletes, like Kelly Holmes, and I realised that's the great denominator about sport, that any athlete, no matter who they are, can endure serious injury."

Seán Óg comes back regularly because he knows Hartmann will keep asking for more. He likes that. He tries to repay him in small ways, and after winning the All-Ireland in 2004 he quickly stuffed his jersey into his bag. It's now framed and signed in the clinic.

What ultimately brings Seán Óg back to Hartmann is that pursuit of perfection.

"Yeah, I do still strive for perfection. I see myself as an amateur that's striving to be professional, and that means striving for perfection. I see fitness as the part of my game that's easiest to work on, because when it comes to the training with Cork I do have to work on the hurling.

"And when you get to work with someone like Ronan you do see areas you can still explore. I mean I wouldn't make the first five in the 20-metre sprint at the Cork training, and for a player with my attitude that's not good. And I'd like to put a few more kilos on my upper body. I go swimming and I'm tired after 15 lengths, and Setanta can go on for 60."

Ready for Australia

When Setanta Ó hÁilpín lies on the treatment table for a general stretch-out, the first thing Hartmann comments on are his legs. "That's a serious pair of legs," he says, as if in all his years of working with elite athletes he's never seen anything like them. "What size feet are you?" "Thirteen."

Setanta does look the complete elite athlete. He's 6ft 5ins, and barely recognisable from the 20-year-old hurler who left Cork two years ago for a trial with the Carlton Blues AFL club in Melbourne. He weighed 88 kilos then, and now weighs 99. He wants to gain a couple more kilos, especially in those legs. If he weren't so laid back, incredibly humble and openly spiritual he'd be a quite intimidating young man. And he talks about the past two years in Australia with an overwhelming sense of pride and privilege.

"I know I'm living the dream of thousands of GAA players, and I'd never like to think I wasted any of it. But then I suppose I've always wanted to be different, and sport has allowed me to do that. I know I've still an awful lot to prove, but I'm exactly where I want to be.

"What I like best about it is I wake up and I know I've only one job to do, and that's train. I know so many people would love that job. It was huge step up when I first came out, especially with the amount of running we were doing. We'd train three times a day, five days a week, including those early mornings you'd hear about."

Setanta remains deliberately close to his family, and repeatedly credits his father for keeping his feet on the ground, and his mother for keeping him on the path he so desires. "When the club first offered to bring me over the parents really left it up to me. I did see my future in hurling, and of course I'd like to come back some day. But I've really grown to love the Australian game. I just love it. Like hurling I see it as a unique game and love playing it.

"But I don't think I would have survived it if the team hadn't been so welcoming. I was staying in digs for the first few months and every night one of them would come around to see me. For some reason they couldn't get my name right, though. They kept calling me Santana, as in Carlos Santana, the musician. That became Carlos, which has stuck. But I don't mind."

He was poised to make his first senior start towards the end of last season when a broken bone in his foot derailed him. With a renewed contract, and younger brother Aisake now established on the rookie list for company, he is relishing his return to Carlton on Saturday week. A day spent working with Hartmann helps him endure the wait.

"The way I see it now I served my apprenticeship. I look at Tadhg Kennelly, and still call him my hero. That's the level I want to reach. But our club has been rebuilding for the past few years, and we're still a very young squad. Average age of 22. But you know we're the Cork of the AFL, we've won more than anyone else. So I feel now a lot of my destiny is in my own hands."

Seán Óg calls in from another room. They'll hit the road back to Cork, before it gets dark. "I feel we'll be ready for the Australians now," says Seán Óg. "But are they ready for you?" asks Hartmann. Setanta shakes his hand and nearly pulls it off. Says he'll see him again next week.

Afterwards, Hartmann drives out to the university to view an unfinished section of the new sports hall, where he's considering moving his clinic next year. It's almost 6pm, and he spots O'Gara out finishing off some practice kicks. "Look at that," he says. "Still at it. That's the kind of guy he is. But I had him buckling this morning, didn't I?"