“I think it is fair to say that as a nation we are more concerned and interested in the playing of an organized game than with the tedious but necessary business of getting fit and mastering the basic skills. Most players, at all levels, prefer to play less well with less training and coaching rather than work really hard to become better performers.” --Gerwyn Williams, Modern Rugby, 1964


Despite the fact, or perhaps in spite of the fact, that Rugby Union at the highest level became a professional sport nearly 12 years ago, I think that Gerwyn Williams’s words still ring true. Regardless of the huge increases in size and strength seen amongst the game’s top players, rugby remains mostly a sport played by admittedly pretty physical men, and women, with a generally amateur and social ethos. This has always been one of the wonderful things about the sport as a whole: a game for people of all shapes and sizes who smash seven bells out of each other for 80 minutes before enjoying a beer—or many beers—together in the clubhouse afterwards. In many circles, training has been positively frowned upon.

Sadly, while this may be one of the great things about rugby, it is completely counterproductive to bringing off decent performances on the pitch. If you want to participate in a sport where you put nothing in away from the field of competition, go and play golf. I have played rugby when I’ve been off the pace and I’ve hated it. And I’ve played rugby when my team mates have been off the pace and I’ve hated them. I enjoy tackling, but I do not enjoy tripling my tackle count because I’m the only one doing it. I’m not challenging the great spirit of the game; I’m commenting that playing a very physical contact sport with little preparation seems to me to be mindless.

Every rugby player can get stronger and faster and for longer. On paper the ways and means are really not rocket science.


The (Very) Basics of Rugby

I’ve quite often seen posts on sites like Crossfit.com requesting advice regarding rugby training and noticed that they usually do not get answered or if they do, get answered badly. Indeed it was a question on the Performance Menu forum that led me to finally give some answers myself. The silly thing is that the internet has brought a wealth of information to anyone able to post on a message board should they bother to look. In comparison to the in-depth discussion on the correct way to perform Moldavian Fanny Hammers (barbell or cable stack?), it’s quite poor. But the stuff is there. Even in the UK the source material with regards to actual books on the subject is limited so I realise the USA will be at a considerable disadvantage. One problem is often the people searching for answers are really not that familiar with the game. So let’s have a look at it.

Rugby is a sport played at high intensity by two teams of 15 players over a period of 80 minutes. Players require stamina, strength, power, speed and flexibility. You could take the attitude that the dominant attributes of a middle distance runner, an Olympic weightlifter, an NFL lineman, a 100 metre sprinter and a gymnast all blended together would make the Frankenstein’s perfect rugby player. Complicating this is the makeup of the 15 players in a team, all require these attributes but in varying degrees. Each position has differing fitness and, very importantly, skill requirements. Backs are characterised by their speed and mobility (and usually their ability to handle the ball) running for lengths varying between 10–60 metres. Forwards are typically of much bigger builds and are required to do much more work in a game, typically tackling, mauling, hitting the ball up in 5–15 metre bursts alongside the set piece work of the scrum and lineout. Strength and stamina are at a premium for forwards.

Let’s break down the positions further:

15. Fullback Speed is a big requirement for the modern fullback because that makes him very dangerous in the counterattack and as an extra player in the attacking line. Speed is also necessary for the cover tackling and other defensive work required of the fullback. The player is the last line of defence and the ability to knock an opponent down in a one on one tackle, often head on, require good strength alongside technique.

14/11 Wings The fastest players on the field, wings are there to score tries. There is no substitute for pace on the rugby field. Rugby is not necessarily about linear speed and the ability to change direction is vital to all backs, but out and out pace is what we are talking about here. It is not uncommon for wings to display the greatest relative strength amongst their team mates.

13/12 Centres The pairing of 12 and 13 can display different attributes (a playmaker alongside a basher) or be identical in make up. Here is not the place to debate this but the centre should have good speed, exceptional acceleration and power to both break and make tackles. Centres are likely to have much heavier forwards running at them and the strength to deal with this is vital. The outside centre tends to have the furthest to run when the back line realigns in both defence and attack and this can hit the stamina reserves.

10 Fly Half Fly halves are the generals of a side, the closest to a quarterback. Like centres, acceleration is a must alongside good speed generally. They are often slighter in build than the other backs and alongside regularly being the most talented player on the field can go the mantle of being a show boating puss. Tackling is not optional for any player, especially fly halves and opposition back row forwards are always going to run hard down the 10’s channel. Dan Carter of New Zealand is the world’s best fly half if not best player full stop. He knocks people backwards in the tackle as did Jonny Wilkinson of England before his body broke down. Fly halves need to lift weights and bring a level of physicality to their game.

9 Scrum Half The 9 is often the smallest player on the field (an exception would be the 6’ 3” Mike Griffiths of Wales). Excellent endurance is required to follow the forwards through play and make the ball available to the fly half. The scrum half is the link between the backs and the forwards. Speed off the mark allows for breaks from the scrum and the ruck. Good strength levels the playing field for a position that finds you often tangling with forwards enjoying a 56 lb advantage over you.

6/7/8 Back Row (Flankers and No. 8) The back row are ball winners, tacklers and ball carriers. Their endurance levels must be up there with the scrum half. They need the strength to make tackles and rip the ball from their opponent. Power from the base of the scrum allows them to make hard yards. They are the transition between the requirements of being a back and being a forward. A decent vertical jump gives their side added line out options.

4/5 Second Row Usually the tallest players in a side (at international level anything between 6’4” and 6’10”) the second row must provide ball from the lineout and provide the drive from the engine in the scrum. Since lifting was permitted in the lineout, pure jumping ability has not been as necessary because the second row will be lifted by a prop who is built like an ox. Second rows in the modern game should be able to make repeated bursts with the ball in hand, driving into the opposition forwards. Upper body strength is necessary for tackling and mauling for the ball.

1/3 Props The players with the highest levels of absolute strength. Strength is a must across legs, back, arms, and traps. They need to scrummage strongly and lift their jumpers in the lineout. Props are the players who look closest to powerlifters and strongman competitors. Modern rugby has put a lot of emphasis on the increased mobility of props. In the past they just walked from scrum to scrum and existed purely to practice the black arts of the front row. They are now expected to run around the park, carrying the ball forward and making tackles. Some, and we are talking about 250-lb-plus guys here, will have startling 40 metre times. This is a good thing but nonetheless if you’re a prop and you cannot scrummage then you are as useful as a chocolate fireguard to your side.

2 Hooker This player should combine the attributes of the prop with that of the back row. A dynamic, powerful hooker is an asset to the team. Unfortunately many hookers haven’t got over the fact that they haven’t been picked in the back row and don’t spend enough time practising their key skills: throwing the ball in at the lineout and hooking for the ball in the scrum.

That was a pretty simplistic look at the positions; now let’s think about the game as a whole. Consider the following:

1. A study originated within the New Zealand camp in the early 1990s suggested that the ball was actually in play during an international game for 25 out of the full 80 minutes. That’s just over a quarter of the match. For 25 minutes you are running, tackling, pushing, jumping, being smashed to the ground. The remainder of the game you are standing around with your hands on your hips listening to the self-important interjections of the referee, waiting for a player to receive medical treatment (the clock stops for this in the top level games), or watching someone climb over a fence to retrieve the sole match ball that has been kicked from the field of play. In the highest echelons of the professional game the number of minutes will often be higher, although not always. Yet it won’t really have changed much at the amateur level particularly as skill levels will be lower leading to more technical infringements and therefore stoppage of play. To train for rugby you need to be preparing for 30 minutes of actual power based bursts of activity interspersed with jogging/walking/standing breaks. A forward will move more for most of the game. A wing can stand alone for 70 minutes and then suddenly be given the opportunity to win the match with a run to the try line from 45 metres out. I’ve stood on the wing for a full 80 minutes and the ball hasn’t come near me and nor has anything else. That’s a tedious way to spend an afternoon.

2. The following is derived from The Rugby League Coaching Manual by Phil Larder. It applies equally to both codes of Rugby. A rugby pitch is 100 metres long, goal to goal, maximum. Imagine a fullback or a wing counterattacks from his own try line. He covers 100 metres of the pitch (assuming he just breaks the defensive line and heads straight up field, more allowing for dummying/swerving/sidestepping/changes of angle). Just before scoring a stunning try he is tackled and stripped of the ball, his opponent immediately launching an attack in the opposite direction. Grimly our man gets to his feet and tracks back in defence at top speed. In total he covers 200 metres. This is very rarely going to happen, certainly never going to happen for a front five forward. Even a 100 metre all out sprint is going to be unusual. The ability to run 5, 10, 20, 30 metre sprints though, often involving a collision, is going to be necessary.


Theories of Rugby fitness

In the UK we tend to view the USA as a land of overweight burger-stuffers. Please don’t take this too personally—I have a point to make here. This denies our own sad state of the nation. Britain suffers from rising obesity, chronic heart disease, binge drinking, etc. Sport has been systematically eradicated from the nation’s state funded schools. Recreation fields are being built upon to meet the demand for affordable housing. I run to a park where I believe there to be pull up and dip bars and the dip bars have been vandalized and the pull up bars built for elves. Our understanding of nutrition is chronically deficient. The rise of a multi-million pound fitness industry where people go to Fitness First once a month to walk for ten minutes on a treadmill, complete a set of lat pull downs and dream of Brad’s abs does not make this better. When I read about the things the likes of Dan John and Mike Burgener get their kids to do at school I’m astounded. An American can walk into Wal-Mart and buy a kettlebell; I live in London and I have to get a blacksmith in Yorkshire to make me one and fly it to London.

I’m simplifying matters, I know, but bear with me.

What I’m getting at here is that although we have a long tradition of sport in this country, we don’t have the physical culture of the US. Many rugby players are big guys because, well, they happen to be big guys. They have started the game at early age, discovered an aptitude for the sport, often because of their physiques, and stuck with it. The idea of a game for people of all shapes and sizes is very misleading. Yes, props are traditionally seen as hulking potbellied brutes and scrum halves as little whippets, but many people have tried and abandoned the game because they don’t suit it. A man of 6’7” is going to have an easier career than a man of 5’7” who lacks speed.

Another defining factor of the past concerns social background. The private school methods seen in the UK have of course seen a lot of players graduate to the senior game. I went to a public school that took rugby very seriously; in fact the fixture between Cheltenham and Rugby School (after which the game is named) is the oldest fixture in the sport. We were in extremely good shape at school, but we could have been much better. A constant diet of push ups, interval sprints, burpees if we were lucky, and a bitch of a three-mile run if we were really very lucky, half of which was up an increasingly steep hill, certainly had its benefits. I also think that a lot of rugby skills and drills if performed properly do condition you and we did lots of them. On the other hand, though, weight training for example was almost unheard of. I learned about lifting through rowing; in fact I learned about most intelligent training through rowing, not rugby. What I did get from rugby was a high volume of actually playing rugby. I’ve heard many times that you cannot actually get fit from playing a sport. I totally disagree within certain conditions, mostly dependent on position. I played in the back row until I was 17 when I moved out to the backs and there I felt my conditioning levels drop off because I didn’t have to do as much in a game anymore. I think this applies to all positions outside the forwards and the scrum half.

What made us good at any sport at school was that we trained five days a week and ate and slept properly. My week could look like this:

Monday: Circuit training; weights with the Rowing Club.

Tuesday: Rugby practice for around 1 1/2 hours (this normally followed by a 20-minute knock around game with my friends)

Wednesday: Some sort of physical activity: a long run, knock around game of rugby, game of soccer, etc.

Thursday: Rugby practice as per Tuesday followed by circuit training and weights with the Rowing club.

Friday: Around 70 minutes of rugby practice working on moves, set plays, etc. for the competitive match on Saturday.

Saturday: Match day

Sunday: Couple of hours out with my dogs working on my kicking and sprinting. Other than after the odd benching session in the gym, I didn’t know what muscle soreness was as a teenager.

This was interspersed with the general fooling around with friends, pull up and press up challenges, quick games of soccer, etc. that teenage boys cram into their lives.

And this all seemed to work, but it ignored the fact that we had a well equipped gym, we had a running track and we had a swimming pool. If I had been a prop, for instance, I might have left school with a fairly high level of technique, but I don’t believe that I would have been physically prepared for stepping up a level.

Rugby is often seen as a very middle class sport, but that is unfair. In the past many players came from physically demanding jobs or jobs that demanded these players to be physically capable. So alongside the privately educated individual who carried on their rugby (and often the other sports that they were equally talented in) at university and beyond to their working careers, rugby players included farmers, miners, construction workers, policemen, firemen, soldiers. These guys got their conditioning from their jobs and fit in alongside the doctors, lawyers and bankers.

This is not to be underestimated. The relative decline of Welsh rugby from the 1970s onward has often been linked to the closure of mines and steelworks. Rugby in New Zealand and Wales has been intrinsically linked with farming. Colin Meads of New Zealand, a player who trained as well as farmed used to do hill sprints with logs on his back while he was working and handled his sheep like he was on the rugby pitch. Indeed the very heritage of many former colonial countries, such as New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada and Argentina, has left them ideally prepared for contact sports. In the case of New Zealand and Australia, add in the genetically gifted Pacific Islanders to the mix and you have a pretty potent formula for success.

There is of course no reason why this couldn’t be applied to the USA.

But problem arise when you professionalise a sport—you cannot have some players lifting kegs, some players running with rucksacks full of rocks, some guys sprinting on the track and the rest doing their altitude training on a barstool while reverse curling Guinness for reps. Rugby in the late 1980s and early 1990s had its weights work and its shuttle runs on the pitch. England had started to stretch out, very noticeably in its use of the Concept 2, a model being loaned to every squad member. I remember being impressed by an England player doing handstand push ups in the changing room as a warm up before a game (and partly, I suspect, as a gesture to the television cameras). English players were bigger and stronger than the Celtic nations of Ireland, Scotland and Wales and the conditioning provided by methods like the Concept 2 combined with Anglo-Saxon discipline saw them match France’s combination of Gallic flair and brutal forward play. A lot of the French didn’t even lift weights. It was against their mentality. Laurent Cabannes, a brilliant flanker who played for France in the 1990s, is a good example. Later in his career he came to play for the London club Harlequins. After a couple of poor performances by Cabannes, the Harlequins coach Dick Best approached him and asked what was up. Cabannes replied that he had never lifted weights in his life and the heavy schedule at Harlequins was leaving him absolutely crushed. This was a guy who had his body wrecked by a car crash in his early 20s and had rebuilt himself after 9 months in a wheelchair to be one of the best players in his position in world rugby. He is one of those athletes that stand out for having amazing natural talent, like his fellow Frenchman Serge Blanco who smoked forty a day and ran like the wind. I remember another Frenchman who did lift weights, Philippe Sella, being described as a bodybuilder. I don’t know if he spent a lot of time split training or whether that reflects the ignorant perspectives of the past. Who lifts weights? Arnold. Therefore all people who train with weights are like Arnold.

So you had this mixture of different types of players doing different things. These guys were training but in comparison to the NFL or even the original professional code of rugby, Rugby League, standards were not that high or indeed homogenised across the board. Intelligently, rugby started to look at other sports and adopt many of the principles that they saw there. NFL, Rugby League, NBA, soccer, rowing, and very recently Judo (I would have had a look at that ten years ago myself) have all been plundered for ideas. And, less intelligently, bodybuilding. Oh dear. If anything winds me up it is a man who cannot pass a rack of dumbbells without picking one up to bang out a curl. Curls were actually a strength test at Harlequins for the Under 21 side when I was a student. Trivia connected to that is that the then captain was the US international Jason Keyter (who has incidentally just been banned for taking cocaine, a sad end to his career). I’ve seen sets and rep ranges that have been 2 x 15 with machines (and you could tell by the way the team played) and routines that took around 80 minutes at a time with only minimal rest time (you didn’t want to go into the gym for month after that because it was so bloody boring). You cannot just adopt the phenomenal training demands of NFL and apply them to a sport that is played to a very different tune. Nor can you adapt the philosophy of training method used for aesthetics and expect your athletes to be dynamic as a result.

But, as you're reading this in the first place, I think you already know that. And I really want this to be conveyed to you as a reader—you already pretty much know what to do.


Doing Things Properly

• Master your own body weight. Press ups and pull ups are underestimated outside the armed forces and Crossfit type circles. Burpees eat you up. Mike Boyle is one of many coaches who observes that often people bench press when they aren’t able to do that many press ups. Greg Glassman has pointed out that it seems pointless to squat with weight when you have a poor body weight squat.
• Learn to squat and deadlift—properly.
• Learn the Olympic lifts.
• Sprint.
• Learn how to stretch and stretch regularly.
• Sprint some more.
• Realise that professionals in any sport are looking for an edge. Do you need to use rotational work on the cable stack when you cannot squat your own bodyweight? Do you need to buy a parachute for sprint work when you only sprint once a month? Kettlebells are very useful but they don’t own you. Powerbags are a very cool tool but you could make do with a home made sandbag.
• Sprint up some hills.
• Row.
• Surf to www.rossboxing.com and www.rosstraining.com. The routines Ross Enamait employs are excellent and have fantastic carryover to sports other than martial arts.
• Don’t waste your time. Go back to the idea of the player sprinting the length of the pitch and back, some 200 metres. Why spend hours training for a marathon? If that’s what you enjoy then you are better off running a marathon. I love distance running and I don’t think it’s as evil as many make it out to be, but there is a time and place for it.

Something we cannot escape from as amateur sportsmen is time. We do not have the luxury of fixed and structured training blocks, adequate rest time (although some would argue neither do professional rugby players), top notch nutritional support, etc. Unless we are unemployed or still studying, we have the tricky matter of having to work for a living alongside balancing family commitments and other domestic matters. You can learn from the professionals but if you try to train like them you’ll fail. Part of the genius of Crossfit is the intensity of its workouts across a number of disciplines in a relatively short space of time. I think you could experiment with training for rugby by doing CrossFit, but I would advocate taking certain elements and using those alongside methods more commonly used in the sport. Despite CrossFit’s emphasis on learning new sports and skills, I think a lot of time is devoted to getting better at CrossFit. You need to work on your rugby skills, not your planche. Using the Coach Rut format would be a viable approach with its Monday/Wednesday/Friday workouts.

I’ve set out a fairly strict strength routine below. I would be more flexible with elements like plyometrics. You can become weighed down with different facets of physical training. Try to do a little well rather than everything poorly. Strip little bits and pieces from the methods of others and give them a go.

Of course a lot depends on what is expected of you from your club, or rather what your club provides you. Most amateur clubs train 1-2 nights per week in this country, focusing on team skills. Some fitness benefit can be gained from this, but not much. Get together with some team mates and plan out a program that you can stick to.


Structure of the Year

I don’t want to cover this in too much detail, and I think there are better places to read about microcycles and periodisation, but we break up the year as follows:

Off season: Following the last game and covering a period of 4 weeks. Players need to recover from the demands of the season (up to 2 weeks of rest) whilst minimising a loss of fitness through a variety of non-specific work. Do something you enjoy.

Pre-season: This is the preparation phase. High volumes of work are performed over a period of 12 weeks to improve conditioning.

In season: The period of competition lasting approximately 36 weeks. Many sports have relative short competitive seasons—NFL for instance—and simply look to maintain fitness in season. Pre-season is too short in the case of elite players to have a large impact on fitness and they play too many games in season. Amateurs are at an advantage because they don’t play so many games, but fitness levels will drop off if only a maintenance program is followed. A balance of periods of fitness development, maintenance and recovery must be employed in season.

This is of course a guideline; your season will probably be shorter, but that gives you more time to prepare in the pre season period. You should use that wisely.


Strength

We can all be stronger. Below is a table of fitness standards and strength training prescription for aspiring professionals from the Welsh Rugby Union. This is a player’s 1RM:

Position Bench Press KG Bench Pull KG Squat KG
Fullback 132 107 171
Wing 127 105 186
Centre 139 110 179
Halfback 131 102 176
Back row 139 114 194
Second row 137 113 185
Hooker 144 114 203
Prop 155 121 223

A chin up test should have been included in this table, but for some reason it is missing. Mike Boyle gives some numbers in Functional Training for Sports and elite males come out at 30 chins, with a NFL skill position pushing 15-20 and a lineman at 320 lbs shooting for 7+. I know that Neil Back (217 lbs or so), the former Leicester and England player consistently topped his club’s testing of this with around 35. These would be dead hangs, not kipping.

We will work on the basis of a twelve week pre-season. This would be a standard template for strength gains. The twelve weeks are split into 3 phases.


Weeks 1 – 4

Exercises

Monday Wednesday Friday
Squat Clean Pull Squat
Bench Press Romanian deadlift Bench press
Bent over row Upright row Bent over row
Military press Hamstring curls* Military press

*Yes, I know, disgraceful, but this is an example

Sets & reps

Week Sets Reps
1 4 12
2 4 10
3 4 10
4 3 12

Intensities of all exercises as a percentage of best lift

Week Monday Wednesday Friday
1 65% 65% 65%
2 70% 70% 65%
3 75% 75% 70%
4 70% 70% 65%

All recoveries should be around 90 seconds and strictly adhered to. This period aims to maximise hypertrophy.


Weeks 5 – 8

Exercises

Monday Wednesday Friday
Power clean Clean pull Power clean
Squat Romanian deadlift Squat
Bench press Push press Bench press
Bent row Hamstring curls Bent row


Sets & reps

Week Sets Reps
5 4 5
6 4 5
7 4 5
8 4 5

Intensities of all exercises as a percentage of best lift for last 4 weeks

Week Monday Wednesday Friday
5 80& 80% 75%
6 82.5% 82.5% 77.5%
7 85% 85% 80%
8 82.5% 82.5% 77.5%

Recoveries in this phase should be around 3 minutes.


Weeks 9 – 12

Exercises

Monday Wednesday Friday
Power clean Clean pull Power clean
Squat Romanian deadlift Squat
Bench press Push press Bench press
Bent row Hamstring curls Bent row


Sets & reps

Week Sets Reps
9 4 3
10 3 3
11 3 2
12 1 1

Intensities of all exercises as a percentage of best lift for the last 4 weeks

Week Monday Wednesday Friday
9 87.5% 87.5% 82.5%
10 90% 90% 85%
11 92.5% 92.% 87.5%
12 New max New max New max

Recoveries should be around 3 to 5 minutes


Note again that this is for the pre-season; you are not going to be making strength gains while you are playing. Rugby Football Union (England) studies have shown that players' strength and body mass drops off dramatically through the season.

I am by no means advocating this as the only way to train strength; this is an actual recommendation for players by the Welsh Rugby Union. You could of course adapt other methods depending on your knowledge and experience, but I like the concept. It employs some key lifts (hamstring curl excluded), uses intelligent set & rep ranges, measures progress and won’t keep you in the gym all day. Nor will it leave you crushed. Both these points are important because you have some other things to do.


Power Training

I don’t think I need to explain what power is. We are amongst other things aiming to move heavy weights (90% 1RM) as dynamically as possible for 2-3 reps with very high rest periods to allow the nervous system to recovery. Work up into the Olympic lifts from the power clean and power snatch at the end of your strength phase.

To enhance this we shall add in some ballistic and plyometric exercises. I suggest we keep these simple and avoid hammering our bodies. I’m not going to lay down all the arguments about a player being able to lift this weight before he can attempt to do that jump as I’m not qualified to express this view. Think sensibly though as to whether you really need to be doing depth jumps.

Here is a table of plyometric exercises illustrating intensity:

Low intensity Moderate intensity High intensity Very high intensity
Tuck jumps Two leg bound Drop jump Drop jump to single leg bound
Box jumps Alternate leg bound Standing triple jump
Squat jumps Two leg lateral hop Single leg hops Plyometric to sprint activity
Wheel barrow walk Med ball back toss Uphill bounds
Standing long jump (or broad jump) Lunge jumps Drop clap press up


As we are trying to keep things as simple as possible I’m going to suggest you work the following movements:

• Box jumps
• Ball slams
• Tuck jumps
• Single leg hops
• Squat jumps

Complete your strength training program and then introduce these plyometrics. Start with around 50 reps (be it a throw, a jump or a step) divided up into sets within a session. One session a week will be ample and adequate recovery between sets is necessary. 100% effort on every repetition is the key.


Complex Training

Complex training is defined as weight training combined with sport specific methods in pairs. Here are a couple examples:

• Bench press @ 85% for 4 reps followed by med ball chest passes for 5 reps
• Power cleans @ 85% for 4 reps followed by hurdle jumps for 5 reps

These pairs would be repeated with adequate rest between sets. From a certain point of view, CrossFit can be perceived as involving complex training and I would like to expand the concept to a slightly wider range of methods. I think as well as great power benefits, you can gain a considerable conditioning-related bang for your buck.

I like Dan John’s idea of Litvi sprints. Get outside with a weight like a dumbbell, a kettlebell or a sandbag. Perform reps of an exercise (say swings with the kettlebell or cleans with the sandbag) and then dump the weight and immediately sprint 10,15,20 metres. Vary the directions of your sprint. Place a ball in your path that you have to dive on and then return to your feet before progressing.

Alternatively you could try something like a variation of Ross Enamait’s Quantity over Quality:

• Perform 12 Burpees
• Immediately sprint 30 metres (I’ve reduced the distance)
• Perform 10 clap press ups
• Jog back and repeat 6-10 times

Or his Sequential Fatigue Challenge:

• 10 Burpees
• Sprint
• 10 Clap press ups
• Jog back
• 10 Diamond press ups
• Sprint
• 10 Tuck jumps
• Jog back and repeat 5 times

Now we are starting to move away from pure power work and into the realms of the endurance requirements that a rugby player needs to develop, but I think that this combination of power movements, strength and sprinting is very important. And I think CrossFit can be very useful here. These are what I consider to be the most appropriate named CrossFit workouts:

• Fran – Thruster s @ 95 lb, Pull ups, 21-15-9 reps for time
• Grace – Clean & Jerk @ 135 lbs, 30 reps for time
• Helen – 400 metre run, 1.5 pood kettlebell swings x 21 reps, 12 pull ups, 3 rounds for time
• Linda – Deadlift 1.5X bodyweight, Bench bodyweight, Clean .75X bodyweight, 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps for time

Work on your own variations. Mix up lifting with sprinting and vary the distances and directions. Try to do a couple of sessions per week with adequate recovery between sessions. This should really come in after the strength base has been developed and will work well in season—but avoid thrashing yourself close to a game.


Endurance

Rugby players need to develop both aerobic and anaerobic energy production. Like power, I don’t think I need to go into too much detail on the nature of these two energy producing pathways.


Aerobic training

Aerobic training serves as a base for players to develop from and on which to build other components of fitness. I could, and perhaps should, have started this discussion on training methods with an explanation of aerobic training, but I wanted to move away from the idea of long, continuous steady state runs. Aerobic endurance accelerates the rate of recovery in rest periods during a game and after both intensive training and matches. By delaying the onset of a player’s fatigue, they will be helped to maintain concentration, focus and decision making capabilities. Players who have this solid endurance base will be able to utilise greater quantities of energy from fat stores prior to using muscle glycogen.

Rugby is of course a game played at speed over short distances so continuous steady state exercise is counter-beneficial to a player. Long distance runs at a constant pace have a role to play in off season, very early pre-season and rehab, but should be generally avoided. Intervals are far more efficient, particularly from a time perspective. I would avoid Fartlek, however, as I think it is too unstructured. Fartlek is very easy to cheat at.

I prefer variations of interval like this: 1 minute running, 1 minute walking for 30 minutes, 2 minutes running, 1 minute walking for 30 minutes 7 minutes running, 3 minutes walking for 30 minutes. Run as hard as you can for the duration of each interval with the aim of always completing every interval. Don’t go so fast that you step into anaerobic training.

The killer that I employ is the 1 minute on, 1 minute off, 2 minute on, 1 minute off up to 7 minutes running with a minutes rest back down to one minute again. Seven minutes has never felt so long (other than when playing seven a side rugby) and one minute so short when you're gasping for air.

Mix in with these the odd 5 km or 3 km run which you perform at 70-85% of your max heart rate.

Perform a session twice a week, and as pre-season continues, start to reduce the distances you are running in an interval but also the recovery period. By the end of this period of training this would be something like 3 sets of 6 100 metre pieces, jog recovery between reps and 3 minute rests between sets.

Alternative to running is our friend the Concept 2. Here are a couple of aerobic sessions created by Wayne Proctor, conditioner of Llanelli Scarlets in Wales:

Session 1

3 x 1000m
Target pace:
Rep 1 sub 3 mins 15, Rep 2 sub 3 mins 20, Rep 3 sub 3 mins 30

3 x 500m
Target pace:
All sub 1 min 40-42

Session 2

3 x 2000m (3 mins recovery between reps)


Anaerobic Training

Rugby’s requirements for frequent high intensity periods of activity interspersed with periods of recovery makes anaerobic capability a cornerstone of a player’s potential. Add to this that rugby is chaotic; neither intensities nor the duration of the activity or the recovery can be predicted, so therefore training must at times be chaotic.

Anaerobic training should again be based around intervals but performed at a higher intensity than the aerobic work. Here are some examples:

• 300 metre runs: 2 sets of 4 reps aiming for 50 seconds per rep. 3 minutes walk between reps, 10 minute active movement between sets.

• 150 metre runs: 3 sets of 4 reps at 22 second target. 2 minutes walk between reps, 5 minutes active movement between sets.

• Hill runs: 3 sets of 1 minute up and down a short steady slope. 100% up the slope, jog back down. One minute rest between reps, 5 minute rest between sets.

Game specific work is the most efficient way to improve anaerobic fitness, so shuttle runs and relays are particularly good, but it does not mean that other methods such as rowing, cycling and well designed circuits should not be employed. If you are a big forward, don’t flog your joints into the ground just for the sake of it. I would recommend that you Google ‘Concept 2’ & ‘rugby training’. Goldmine of information there.

Do not forget that muscular, aerobic and anaerobic endurance are extremely important. Rugby is not like the short, sharp bursts of power interspersed with long recoveries seen in NFL. A forward can find themselves in a mauling situation similar to a round on the wrestling mat, and when the ball passes through multiple phases of play without stoppage, you will feel your lungs start to burn. Many games see the points rack up in the later stages of the second half as one team starts to tire.


Speed

Finally we come to what is arguably the most important component (accepting that a balance of all the elements of fitness are vital to performance). Top players will obviously display different levels of speed, but all will be working to improve those levels. As I have said above, there really is no substitute for pace on the rugby field.

Speed will be improved as you become stronger and more powerful with the various training methods outlined above, and this is why running-focused work is of an advantage. But you should incorporate specific drills as well. Speed and agility training improve the ability to accelerate, increase top speed and teach the ability of an athlete to manage their own body weight when changing direction at pace.

Speed is about frequency of stride and stride length. Good running form is a prerequisite.
Although I think it is unnecessary to explain a power clean, I should probably talk about sprinting technique:

Leg cycle

• Legs individually go through a three phase cycle per stride:
1. Support phase: the purpose of the leg is to support the weight of the body;
2. Drive phase: as the body passes over the foot, the ankle, knee and hips are extended, driving the body upwards and forwards;
3. Recovery phase: the leg finishes the drive phase, the ankle is tucked up behind the hamstring and the knee is brought forward and upward. As the knee comes to the end of its motion, the lower leg is extended, ready to move into the support phase again.
• The height at which the knee is raised and the closeness of the ankles to the hamstring depends upon the velocity achieved.
• During acceleration, the knee raise and foot tuck are not as great as when running at full velocity.
• When accelerating you are taking fast, short strides rather than the longer cyclic movements required for top end speed.

Arm action

• Arms should remain locked at 90° with the shoulders relaxed to allow a fluid motion.
• Arm action opposes that of the legs: as one leg moves forward, so does the opposite arm.
• The extremes of motion of the arms are best measured using the fists, which should be relaxed, neither clenched or fully splayed (imagine pinching a potato chip between the thumb and first finger).
• The most forward position is when the fist is level with the jaw.
• The rear drive of the arm assists the forward leg drive of the opposite leg and is the most important part of the arm action. If you have done much sprint training you will know how sore the arms can be afterwards. Sprinters don’t just have big guns for vanity reason.
• In the rear drive, the fist should move backwards until it is at least level with the hips.
• Elbow bend should remain at 90º for the entire cycle.

There are many drills to assist with running form and you may have seen some of these if you have ever watched track athletes training. These would include skips, butt kicks, arm swings. Colin Jackson, the British hurdler, used to practice arm swings with light dumbbells.

A drill I have a lot of time for is 40 x 10m sprints. Really drive your arms and legs for each rep and then walk back and repeat. This is particularly good for forwards.

If you can, go down to a track and get a little coaching. It will be extremely worth your while.

Sport loading

This is sprinting while being resisted by some means. Sleds, weight vests, parachutes etc. I would actually avoid training like this as an amateur. Resistance can often impair technique and you want to focus on your running form. An amateur’s time is precious and you don’t need to introduce too many methods. However, hill sprints remain extremely useful and I would include those. For speed work, keep the distances short, 5 - 30 metres, reps low, 4 - 8, and recovery from 1 - 3 minutes. I recently did a set of 9x20m hill sprints off a 5 burpee start and 2 minute recovery. And I really knew about it.

Over-speed

This is preparing your muscles to make them move faster, a neurological adaptation to training. It can involve being dragged along by a harness so that the body becomes used to moving at speeds greater than previously experienced or running down gentle slopes. I would opt for running down a slope. You will notice how your stride turnover increases.

Once again, focus on correct form and posture.

Both methods should be executed by the athlete while free of fatigue and high recovery periods should be used. Do this while fresh and focus on what you are doing.

Speed endurance

After developing a solid speed base it is important to work up to maintaining high speeds for longer. Work on speed endurance at the end of a session or in a separate session entirely. Pure speed sessions usually will not involve sprints further than 40-50m (and this has specificity to rugby as a game); speed endurance sessions on the other hand will cover distances of over 100-200m. Start with high quality work even if it means shorter distances and longer recoveries. Extend the distances and reduce the recoveries as you improve.

Gear Work

Rugby is not played at a flat out pace for 80 minutes. Nor is every break by a player executed at top speed. Often a player will slow down while looking for support and then accelerate again as they spot a gap in the defence. Many very dangerous players will seemingly be running at full throttle only to be able to step on the gas yet again to pull away from a defender.

Practice running lengths of the field slowly increasing your speed. Start off jogging, finish with a balls-to-the-wall sprint.

Agility

You must be able to move over short distances quickly, change direction efficiently and manage your own body weight while doing so. Deceleration is as an important part of agility as acceleration.

Drills using hurdles, speed ladders, cones and so forth are used to imitate movements that would occur on the pitch.

You should work on an element of reactive training, responding to a training partner dropping a ball for instance or dodging tennis balls being thrown at you by team mates.

Once again, concentrate on form and posture.


Comments on the Above

I’ve set all these ideas out to give you an overview of the training methods utilised by top level players. I have not written a concise 12 month plan and I have not touched on periodisation. All the methods above need to supported by a dedicated flexibility program, intelligent work to secure core stability and a balanced approach to nutrition. Despite emphasis on strength and speed, these last three areas are the glue that hold everything together.

I’m not suggesting you do all of this, but be intelligent, assess your strengths and weaknesses and work where work is needed and work hard. Yes, you are an amateur, so be practical in how you apply your time and be selective in what you do. Swimming is a great activity and excellent recovery for rugby, but don’t spend your life swimming when you need to work on your sprint. Likewise, don’t do a massive deadlift session the day before a match. I read a hilarious article once by a guy who had trained for marathon purely by using kettlebells. Needless to say, he didn’t do that well. OK, it was an experiment, but what a doughnut.

Just for the sake of completeness, here is a table that will help you when thinking about planning your training. It is based around a European season running roughly from September to April. Once more, I thank the Welsh Rugby Union for this.

Generalised Macrocycle for Rugby Union

Month M J J A S O N D J F M A
Period Off-
Season In-season or competition period
Aerobic work Develop Maintain
Anaerobic
work Non
Specific Develop Maintain - attempt to develop if periods of inactivity are present
Strength Non specific Strength endurance Max strength Rate of force development Max power Speed strength Max
Strength Max
power Rate of force development Speed Strength Maintain
Speed Non specific Emphasis on technique Top end speed Acceleration Agility Game specific
Volume Low Trend high. Start lowering towards season
Volume will be lower than pre-season but may increase during periods of downtime/injury or non-competition game. Intensity needs to remain high. Will decrease if volume increases.

Intensity Medium Trend medium, increasing towards season


The Rise of the Freaks and Some Final Thoughts (and Words of Caution)

In the Rugby World Cup in 1995, a certain Jonah Lomu took to the fields of South Africa and took the game by storm. In the build up to the semi-final between New Zealand and England, the rather typically snooty English press dismissed Lomu’s athletic abilities. Surely he was more likely to be around 6’2” - 6’3” and 210lbs? No, he really was 6’5”, over 260lbs and able to cover 100m in under 10.9 seconds. He scored 4 tries as England were mauled 45-29 by the All Blacks. So began the start of a legend and of a legacy.

Jonah was huge; therefore everyone had to get bigger. This coincided with the start of professionalism and indeed to this day, everyone playing professional rugby has become considerably bigger. Yet a point was missed. Jonah Lomu was big because he was born that way. When Will Carling, the England captain described him as a freak, he was inadvertently correct. But rugby has ploughed on, looked at other sports, fallen in love with the players of Rugby League, and missed a vital point.

It has worked for a while. The England team that won the 2003 World Cup were the best prepared rugby team of all time, possibly one of the best prepared teams in any sport. They had probably played their finest rugby at a peak some six months prior to the tournament, but they had reached a point where they were so well conditioned physically and mentally that they just didn’t lose games even when playing badly. They possessed a very talented pool of players at their disposal, and of course this was a massive advantage.

Since then England have declined abysmally and I think the rot was there before the World Cup. The English Club competition is confrontational and attritional. Most crucial to the decline is the drop in skill levels. It doesn’t matter how big or fast you are in rugby if you do not have mastery of the basic skills. Union looked at League and saw these wonderful athletes with very developed skill levels and thought, "We want some of that." But League is a less complex game and there is less specificity between positional requirements. Rugby League players have more time to train hard and work on the basic skills, particularly handling the ball. They don’t have competitive scrums, lineouts, ruck and maul situations to contend with.

The English situation is being hotly contended at present, but the English are not alone, and after a series of Autumn international matches, only New Zealand and Ireland seemed to be on track for the sixth World Cup in France next year. Come that tournament, sure, other nations will be competitive, but the game as a whole needs to look at itself. Former England international Austin Healey recently hit out at the young players who were becoming ‘gym monkeys’ to the detriment of their games:

“The strongest athletes are gymnasts who never go in a gym in their lives. It should all be own bodyweight stuff. A lot of players are too big for their frames.”

I take most things that Austin Healey says with a pinch of salt and I know that he certainly didn’t build his physique without the use of weights, but he’s spitting in the right direction. You have to work on your skills. I’ll say it again: You have to work on your skills.

Basic requirement for all players:

• To pass the ball off both hands when both stationary and on the move
• To catch the ball from a pass
• To catch a high ball from a kick
• To tackle

Basic requirement for backs:

• To kick strongly and competently off at least one foot

Work on these as much as you work your bench or your vertical leap. Likewise, if you are 5’10” and the coach tells you that you are too small to play back row, work your arse off to prove him wrong. Master the skills of the position and do your time in the gym and train smart. If you can’t kick, you’re never going to be a fly half, just as if you can’t run quickly, you’re not suited for the wing. Buy your own rugby ball and get used to handling it when you're watching TV or walking round the house. Get out with the guys you play with at your club and kick and pass the ball around. If the training program at your club is poor or non-existent, hook up with the guys who want something more and train together.

While preparing for this article, I have been watching New Zealand’s unbeaten tour around Europe and it has changed a few of the ideas I was going to present to you. They are huge, but they are extremely skilful as well. Their players look functionally big and strong—not like the gorilla at the end of the bar downing beers. They tossed big, strong English players around like rag dolls and they blew away a skilful but much smaller Welsh team. The New Zealand management have gone away and thought about how to train smart. Their guys have worked hard, no doubt, but they haven’t been flogged to death in the weights room or on the track. If you get the chance to see them play, do so.

Earlier on in this article I made reference to the physical culture apparent in parts of the US. This gives you a huge advantage in developing your game. That you are reading the Performance Menu would suggest you are on the right track. Take advantage of all the things you have read and the facilities you have available to you. Work intensely on your skills and structure your training to be manageable. Many officials in the Rugby world are very envious of the talent available in the US, all the guys who don’t make it in the NFL, the NBA, track & field and so forth could easily be channelled into rugby. And those same officials are pretty fearful that one day that might happen. To quote one official: “If Americans will pay good money to see monster trucks smashing into other monster trucks, they’re going to love rugby.”