Stothert & Pitt - Fitness for Rugby Union

FITNESS FOR RUGBY UNION

By Clive Brewer MSc, BSc(Hons), CSCS

The modern game of rugby union is one of the most demanding sports around in terms of the physical fitness levels needed to play at the highest levels. The game requires high levels of speed, agility, Strength, power and endurance in order to be effective at the top levels. This combination of requirements is rare in the sporting arena, and offers a considerable challenge to those who wish to play the game to the best of their ability.

Fitness is very important: You may be the best technical scrummager in a game, but you will not be effective if are not able to perform after the first few minutes due to fatigue. Research undertaken in 1992 (McLean, 1992, Journal of sports sciences) indicated that there were between 24 and 45 scrums in a 5-Nations match, so endurance is essential (and the game physical demands of the game have advanced since this research, due to professionalism and law changes making the game quicker!). Similarly, a scrum-half who cannot be at every breakdown to begin the next phase of play after every ruck and maul will never reach the top, and if he is not powerful or fast enough to exploit space around the base of the scrum, his game will lack a dimension.

Above are two examples highlighting examples of some positional demands of the players. However, every player (regardless of his position) needs to be able to work at high intensities with small rest breaks for 80 minutes. Top level players will run between 4 000 and 6 000m in a game (bearing in mind that 5000m constitutes an endurance event in athletics), much of it at high intensities.
Also, gone are the days when forwards tackled and backs ran: Every player needs to be powerful in the tackle (refer to Strength and Power), be agile enough to avoid contact where necessary, and explosive enough to break a defensive line.

Now you begin to appreciate the all-around physical demands of the game. Link this in with the different requirements of every position, and you can appreciate that, along with technical and tactical skill, and the correct mental state, physical fitness forms a huge part of the players individual profile and the overall squad profile. Coaches can, after all, only play a game involving multiple phases if they have players fit enough to do so. For this reason, squad fitness work can also be linked in with team training drills, in order to make the most of the time available in training (refer to Agility Drills).
Players also need to be thoroughly prepared and ready to train / perform at optimum levels, and therefore also need to be thoroughly warmed up prior to starting their physical activity (refer to Warm Up section).

Also, it is important that you structure your training, in order that development work is undertaken before match-intensity work, and that improvement in fitness is continued as much as possible throughout the training season.
(Refer to Planning section).
It is also important that, prior to planning any training scheme, you appreciate your current fitness levels, and so therefore you should also undertake some specific tests related to the performance demands of rugby union.
Lifestyle factors such underpinning your training with appropriate nutrition are also essential for the modern player (see Nutrition).

The aim of this page is to provide you with information and ideas to inform your training and provide you with the latest ideas for development of your fitness levels. If you have any further questions, feel free to e-mail me here.

Good luck, and enjoy the training!!

What Is This Thing Called 'Core Stability'?

This month before we look further at specific injury diagnosis and treatment, I would like to answer this question that is frequently asked to me. A great deal of attention has recently focused on the concept of ‘core stability’ or trunk stabilisation. This concept is embodied in many stretching and strengthening regimes such as yoga, Pilates, Feldenkrais and the Alexander Technique. It may crudely be interpreted as trunk strength but involves more than that - you need to have good body awareness and ‘balance’.
In mechanical terms this concept proposes that you need to have a strong or stable base from which any lever system i.e. your limbs can operate. Physically, this is allows you to brace your back whilst performing leg and arm exercise allowing a more effective transfer of energy to your limbs from the large and strong muscles in your back and pelvis i.e. gluteals (buttocks), hip flexors, back extensors and lats during activities such as running and scrumming.

In addition, it protects your back from injury as muscular forces are not absorbed by, but transferred from, your back during forceful activity.

It’s Not All About Strength

However certain elements may overwhelm the ability of your abdominal and back muscles to maintain a stable trunk. One of the benefits of stretching may be that the lengthening of a muscle may allow it to work more effectively and enhance the ability of a muscle to stabilise joints or areas of the body that allow better transfer of energy through the muscular system. This requires skill in identifying which movement is being compromised by a tight muscle. In particular tight hamstrings (back of thigh) and tight quadriceps (front thigh) may pull the pelvis into rotation during running and other activities such as scrumming, which no amount of ‘stabilisation’ may correct.
Thus stretching of the relevant tight muscles is an integral part of the stabilisation routine.

Here’s What To Do

Below are examples of some Trunk (Core) Stability Exercises. These exercises are important because they teach you to have a strong back and hips. It is my common observation that many rugby players have strong peripheral muscles but have poor central i.e. spinal muscle strength and control, and would benefit from the following basic exercises.

Repeat 15 times slowly with the emphasis on quality and control - brace back and keep pelvis straight and aligned

· Practice a back ‘brace’ in standing by tightening up your abdominals with the following cues (a) pull your belly button inwards without flattening your back (b) tighten up your pelvic floor i.e. stopping the flow urine if you were having a pee (c) relax your breathing without relaxing the brace and feel some tightness in your lower back. Hold for 5 seconds.

Standing balancing on one leg and slowly swing the other leg backwards and forwards in the full running action without the pelvis rotating, twisting or dipping. Progress to doing the exercise with the eyes shut.
Stand on one leg on the wobble board in the gym (or rolled up towel) and do single knee bends keeping your balance, pelvis straight and hip/knee/big toe in alignment as you glance down.
Lie on your stomach, brace your back and do the opposite/same side/all four arm and leg lifting routine without the back arching at all.
Sit on the balance ball in the gym (or inflated hot water bottle on a chair at home) and balance on alternate legs (the other out straight).
In the push-up position with the feet balancing on the ball, balance on one hand, then the other hand, then each foot on the ball, holding 5 seconds repeated 5 times.
Lie on your back on the ball (just above shoulder-blade level) and balance on one leg (knee bent at 90 degrees) with the other leg out straight. Hold 5 seconds repeated 10 times.

There are loads of other exercises on the physio / swiss ball, or sit-fit disc in the gym - we’ll speak more about these in the future. Many plyometric exercises are a progression of these exercises and should be incorporated into any program

THE STRETCHING DEBATE

By Ken Raupach

The relationship between stretching joints and muscles to sports performance is an issue that is commonly debated amongst sportsmen and women. Stretching generally has been seen as beneficial in all its forms. More recently sports scientists have reviewed the effects of stretching on a number of issues such as injury rates and muscle performance and have come up with some surprising results that challenge the accepted underlying concepts. For example it has been suggested that a muscle stretching programme does not have a positive effect on injury rates amongst Australian army recruits undergoing training, and that stretching was not related to better performance in endurance events. The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the current concepts of stretching and evaluate the benefits of stretching and propose a protocol of stretching that may be beneficial to rugby players.

The benefits of stretching have been described as physiological and neurophysiological. Physiological benefits are increasing the length of muscle, tendon, ligament and nerve tissue, and joint range of motion. This allows the overall range of motion during sport to be increased that may have benefits in improved performance, such as flexibility in the tackle situation and jumping in the lineout. However, in these situations, issues of technique, strength and speed may be of much greater importance.

Other physiological benefits such as increases in speed of running and other movements have traditionally been attributed to improved flexibility, however good quality research in this area is inconclusive. Speed is a complex interaction of a great number of variables such as muscle strength, speed of contraction, neuromuscular co-ordination, efficiency of movement and others. Indeed some researchers have proposed that increases in muscle length may decrease the elastic recoil in a muscle that may have detrimental effects on speed. This may be music to the ears of those who abhor the excruciting pain of a strong hamstring or sciatic nerve stretch. However, there is no evidence that this is the case and is not borne out by clinical experience.

Neurophysiological benefits are those that relate to improved firing of muscle contractions. It is recognised that the greater the sensory awareness of a body area the more efficiently the brain can programme a movement. It may well be that neuromuscular facilitation or ‘warming-up’ occurs with stretching prior to exercise that results in improved performance of muscle contraction.

One of the two main benefits of stretching may be that the lengthening of a muscle may allow it to work more effectively and enhance the ability of a muscle to stabilise joints or areas of the body that allow better transfer of energy through the muscular system. This requires skill in identifying which movement is being compromised by a tight muscle. A great deal of attention has recently focused on the concept of ‘core stability’ or trunk stabilisation. In mechanical terms this concept proposes that you need to have a strong or stable base from which any lever system i.e. your limbs can operate. Physically, this is allows you to brace your back whilst performing leg and arm exercise allowing a more effective transfer of energy to your limbs from the large and strong muscles in your back and pelvis (i.e. gluteals, hip flexors, back extensors and lats), during activities such as running and scrumming. In addition, it protects your back from injury as muscular forces are not absorbed by but transferred from your back during forceful activity. However certain elements may overwhelm the ability of your abdominal and back muscles to maintain a stable trunk. In particular tight hamstrings and tight quadriceps may pull the pelvis into rotation during running and other activities such as scrumming, which no amount of ‘stabilisation’ may correct. Thus stretching of the relevant tight muscles is an integral part of the stabilisation routine.

In my experience the most important effect of stretching is to avoid injury during sport. There are a multitude of studies that do not demonstrate a significant reduction of injury with warm-up stretches and exercises, and there are many sportsmen who appear to survive without stretching. However there is more evidence that stretching is beneficial in preventing injury. This is particularly true in preventing recurrence of injury, as there is usually some compromise of soft tissue flexibility with injury.

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF TRAINING

The principles of training that are outlined below should be followed to allow your training to progress. These should be applied to every, and all, forms of training that you undertake.

Overload:
This principle states that training programs should stress the players’ physiological mechanisms enough to cause an improvement. This means that working on the same programme for a long time will not cause you to improve. Therefore, training status will be improved by gradually increasing the load that your body is working against. This can be achieved by either progressively altering:
The intensity (how hard you work) of the session:
The number of repetitions that you do, the work time, the rest time, the mass lifted, etc.
The volume (how much work you do) of the session:
How many exercises or sets you do
The frequency of training: How many sessions per week that you do.

Progression:
This is a continuation of the overload principle. As the bodies physiological mechanisms adapt to your training, there is a need for the training to be advanced, otherwise you will remain at a training plateau and not respond to further training efforts.
This progression has to be gradual in nature however, so as to prevent you becoming injured by over-exerting yourself, and possibly demotivated to further training because you are not achieving the training targets.

Specificity:
All training routines need to be tailored to the specific demands of the sport, and the position being trained for, and the individual needs of the athlete, so as to maximise the competitive advantage. This is very important, as inappropriate training is a waste of time and resources, and can be detrimental to performance.

Recovery:
Physical training only provides the stimulus for strength development. The recovery period is the time when the bodies’ physiological mechanisms for improvement are implemented. Insufficient recovery time will lead to the body becoming overtrained. This will lead to poor performance and an increased risk of injury. If the recovery period is over-sufficient, then the training effect will be lost.

Indeed, it is important that everyone realises that training / playing only provides a stimulus for improvement: It is only through rest that the body can actually improve. This can be explained diagrammatically by a theoretical model of the overcompensation cycle:

Therefore, if you allow sufficient recovery time for each physiological component(s) (for example muscles, aerobic / anaerobic system, joint structures) that was trained in a session (or sufficient recovery time from a game, which stresses all the bodies systems) to recover, you will find your capabilities are enhanced.
Conversely, if you train too soon, you will not allow your body to recover sufficiently, and the next session will commence from a fatigued state. If this pattern continues, the result will be a state of overtraining and burnout.

Reversibility:
The “use it or lose it” phenomenon. The training gains achieved will be lost if the training load is removed. Therefore you need to plan and control training schedules (i.e. if you are going on holiday, or when injured) so that a sufficient level of general activity is maintained to prevent detraining (reversibility) occurring.

Structuring the training year

Planning is about deciding (in advance) what is to be done, how it is going to be done, and who is going to do it, so as to achieve pre-determined objectives. In order to obtain maximum benefit from your training, the yearly training programme should be divided into periods that accomplish different goals which build into each other, allowing the player to achieve peak performance when it matters.

The rugby player must try to perform at peak for a number of successive weeks over the extended period of a season. However, the basic principles of peaking (The manipulation of training variables so as to maximise potential for competition performance) must be adopted during out-of-season phases, and during individual weeks.

It is usual to divide the training year (known as a macrocycle) into shorter Mesocycles.
This is a system of several training weeks, typically 4-8 weeks in length, which are designed to control of the cumulative effects of training series & prevent disturbances to the training process. Each mesocycle has its own particular aim.
It is common to divide the rugby year into the following phases: Off-season, Pre-season (early and late) and In-season.
Microcycles are training weeks that build into the aims of the mesocycles. Within these weeks are individual sessions, each with its own objective (for example, endurance development, speed development, agility development, strength improvement, etc).

Click here to see how an example of how the training year may be structured.

The importance of recovery:

Training schedules should all follow the principles of training. (LINK TO PRINCIPLES OF TRAINING). These principles are all based upon a theoretical model (See figure 1). This diagram also illustrates that it is only through recovering appropriately from training sessions that the athletic potential of a player can actually improve, and that training / playing only provides a stimulus for improvement.

Basic principle: If you allow sufficient recovery time for each physiological component(s) (for example muscles, aerobic / anaerobic system, joint structures) stressed in a training session (or a game, which stresses all the bodies systems) to recover, you will find your capabilities are enhanced. Conversely, if you train too soon, you will not allow your body to recover sufficiently, and the next session will commence from a fatigued state. If this pattern continues, the result will be a state of overtraining and burnout, with all the associated injuries and mental problems associated with this. Therefore you should avoid the temptation to think that one more session in the programme is beneficial

Example training weeks:

Detailed below are 2 example training weeks, which would fit into different mesocyles with the training year.

Training week 1 is for an adult back-row forward playing at a high (not professional) standard of rugby (below national league level), from the mid-pre-season mesocycle. This player is not able to train at any other time than in the evenings, but requires high levels of fitness in order to cope with the demands of his position at the level he plays at.
The aim of this phase is to progress training towards the high intensity workloads encountered in the next phase, and add to the baseline strength and endurance levels built upon in the previous weeks. As matches are not played during this phase, the player does not have to worry about reducing his training volume towards the end of the week to ensure that he peaks for a Saturday match. Club training during this phase will normally, for the amateur player, be twice a week, and should utilise both running and specific fitness drills incorporating ball work in order to accomplish the aims of this training phase. Such sessions would therefore have to be encompassed within the designed schedule (i.e. the player should not be forced to undertake extra work, but adapt the outlined schedule accordingly).

WEEK 1:

Day	Activity

Monday	Agility drills, plyometrics and acceleration drills

Tuesday	Strength training

Wednesday	Aerobic training: long intervals

Thursday	Strength training

Friday	Anaerobic training: game related drills

Saturday	Strength training

Sunday	Rest (regeneration session)

WEEK 2:

This training week is an example of that which a professional back-row forward could expect in the early to mid-season phase of the year. This plan also demonstrates how concepts relating to peak fitness can be used to structure the technical and tactical (as well as psychological, although this is not obvious from the below example) elements of training.
The aim of this training phase should be to utilise high intensity, low volumes of training in order to continue to improve fitness levels whilst allowing peak performance in the matches on Saturday.
Notice, therefore, that the most physically demanding training is undertaken in the first 3 days of the week, with the lower intensity, less demanding sessions occurring on Thursday. Friday is given over as an active rest day, allowing recovery of the body tissues, and energy stores, prior to playing on Saturday. Notice also how the weight training sessions have a different focus, thus avoiding over-stressing the players muscle tissue, and that such sessions occur on different days to the heavy contact session (Tuesday morning).

Day		AM	PM

Saturday			Match

Sunday			Active recovery seesion: swimming pool

Monday		0930: Video review of game 1100: Club training - fitness (aerobic endurance: short intervals) & light contact, skills drills	Weights: upper body focus

Tuesday		0930: Club training - contact drills & fitness (anaerobic endurance: match intensity shuttles	1400: Club training - unit skills:scrum, line-out

Wednesday		0930: Club training - unit roles, moves, opposed practise & fitness: speed, agility	Weights: complex lifts, power training

Thursday			1500: Club training - positional skills & team preparation

Friday		Travel (away games), regeneration session (home games)	Team talk, preparation
	Pre Season Training Schedule