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How To Improve Rugby Fitness (it’s not obvious!) · The Rugby Muscle Podcast

• 0:01
  TJ: What's going on everyone?
• 0:01
  TJ: Welcome back to the Rugby Muscle Podcast.
• 0:04
  TJ: Today's episode, we're gonna discuss a concept and a little bit of a metaphor to really help you understand what you need to be doing in order to improve your rugby, fitness, and also what you should be avoiding to make sure that you don't stagnate or burn yourself out, and make no progress.
• 0:32
  TJ: What's going on everybody?
• 0:32
  TJ: Welcome back to the Rugby Muscle Podcast.
• 0:35
  TJ: I'm tj.
• 0:36
  TJ: I'm a strength and conditioning coach who specializes in working with amateur athletes.
• 0:41
  TJ: And of course, this metaphor, this concept really does apply to amateurs, but I don't think it's just limited to amateurs.
• 0:47
  TJ: I think you'll, you'll see a lot of professionals.
• 0:49
  TJ: Get this wrong, but they get away of it.
• 0:52
  TJ: Since they have the prerequisite base, they, they're okay and it doesn't bother them as much.
• 0:57
  TJ: But I do find that even like the semi professionals and the higher level athletes that I work with if I change their training in order to fit along with this way of improving their rugby, fitness, they make significant progress.
• 1:11
  TJ: And I want you to make this significant progress as well.
• 1:13
  TJ: I want you to blow your rugby fitness levels out of the water and be the fittest guy you can possibly be.
• 1:20
  TJ: And I want to introduce a concept or let's introduce a little bit of a metaphor to help you understand exactly what your rugby fitness should be looking like.
• 1:30
  TJ: this method of training is a really obvious and simple concept, and I've hammered it home, or I've at least hinted at it and I two opposite ends of the spectrum There.
• 1:43
  TJ: that could be a little bit of a hint.
• 1:44
  TJ: Let's not get into that um, that if you are slightly aware of what you might be expecting from this video, then.
• 1:51
  TJ: Uh, that it was a hint.
• 1:53
  TJ: If you don't know, then that's completely gone over your head and I do apologize.
• 1:57
  TJ: Um, I wanna introduce a metaphor to help you understand it, and I think this is the, the best way to do it, and it's the best way I could think of, of introducing it.
• 2:06
  TJ: Um, and that metaphor is you've been given a task where by you are, you are put in a vacuum sealed room and you're given a task to complete in that, um, vacuum sealed.
• 2:19
  TJ: And you are graded on how well you perform at that task before you either A, pass out, b knock on the door, or I guess that's it.
• 2:26
  TJ: There could be a c where you, you, you know, you complete the task perfectly and you're okay.
• 2:33
  TJ: I don't think that works.
• 2:34
  TJ: That doesn't work for the analogy.
• 2:35
  TJ: So let's, let's admit that option.
• 2:37
  TJ: Okay?
• 2:38
  TJ: Let's say the task is, uh, you're going to build a card tower.
• 2:41
  TJ: Your, your task is to build, uh, a playing card tower as high as possible in that vacuum sealed.
• 2:48
  TJ: Um, and then from there, like you, you, yeah, you're graded on the height and maybe the quality of the tower.
• 2:55
  TJ: I don't know.
• 2:56
  TJ: You're graded on the height of the tower, whatever, doesn't really matter.
• 2:59
  TJ: You're graded on that performance.
• 3:00
  TJ: Right.
• 3:00
  TJ: So if I was to ask you, okay, you've got, you know, X amount of months to train for this performance, what would you spend most of your time doing?
• 3:12
  TJ: this is similar to how we sort of think about training for rugby.
• 3:16
  TJ: The answer that most people come up with is practicing, you know, the performance that you're supposed to do.
• 3:22
  TJ: So for rugby it would be, you know, training for rugby as hard as you can, or, or replicating the demands of rugby.
• 3:28
  TJ: With this task, it would be, um, okay, I want to be able to, you know, be as proficient a, a, a card tower builder as.
• 3:39
  TJ: and that's an absolutely fine and like completely rational solution.
• 3:44
  TJ: You know, it seems like the only of your solution, right?
• 3:46
  TJ: That's the only thing that you can do.
• 3:50
  TJ: Actually, it's not right, because when you're given this room, like you've given six months to to, to perform at this task, that six months also includes like being given access to that room.
• 4:02
  TJ: What you can actually do, and this is what you can do as a rugby pla to improve your fitness.
• 4:07
  TJ: Improve that room, get in a better room.
• 4:10
  TJ: That room is, I guess it's, uh, the metaphor or the analogy for your actual body.
• 4:16
  TJ: because that's what you're gonna do as a rugby player.
• 4:18
  TJ: You're not going to try to improve a rugby within the constraints that your, your body has given you.
• 4:24
  TJ: You are trying to improve the constraints that your body has.
• 4:27
  TJ: So you're trying to improve your level of fitness, right?
• 4:30
  TJ: So if you were to get a bigger room like you were to, um, increase the size of that room, all of a sudden you've got that much more room for oxygen in that room.
• 4:40
  TJ: God damn it.
• 4:41
  TJ: I said room's way too many times.
• 4:43
  TJ: You get the point.
• 4:45
  TJ: You should then have a longer time to be able to perform that card tower building task rather than force yourself to improve or to enter the constraints that are proposed on you by the game, which is that room or your body.
• 5:01
  TJ: You wanna make the constraints easier.
• 5:02
  TJ: You wanna make the game easier by improving, the constraints, by making the easier for you to perform at that task.
• 5:10
  TJ: within the, uh, scenario of this metaphor that would be done by lowering the floor and increasing the height of the ceiling.
• 5:18
  TJ: And when you're doing, and when you're talking about rugby fitness, it would be the same thing.
• 5:23
  TJ: You would lower the floor and increase the height of the ceiling for your fitness, for your conditioning, for your rugby.
• 5:29
  TJ: Specific aerobic, anaerobic, alactic, conditioning that you do for the sport.
• 5:35
  TJ: So, Let me break that down.
• 5:38
  TJ: So lowering the, the floor is your low level aerobic training.
• 5:44
  TJ: All of a sudden, if you lower the floor in this game, you've got more room to lie down to cool down to breathe.
• 5:49
  TJ: Training the aerobic system you're lowering your floor because you're able to still get through quality work at a lower intensity, right?
• 5:58
  TJ: So say if you, you know, when you're running, when you're jogging from ruck to R or when you are just, uh, keep being a part of a defensive line, or when you are walking to the scrum, if you are aerobically unfit, all of those things are significantly more taxing on your body.
• 6:15
  TJ: So you are, rather than recovering, big action to big action.
• 6:20
  TJ: You're actually still operating at a higher intensity, and you're finding it hard to, you know, just to keep, uh, your head above water.
• 6:28
  TJ: So by lowering your floor, you are able to keep your heart rate low and not just, keep your wits about you, but be able to recover from those high-intensity efforts, and then be able to reproduce those high intensity efforts over and over and over again.
• 6:45
  TJ: To go back to this, this metaphor that I introduced, if you know, if your floor isn't very low at all, if you've got a real small room that you're trying to construct this card tower in, it doesn't matter you how good you are at building a car tower.
• 6:59
  TJ: If you run out of oxygen within 30 seconds, you're limited.
• 7:04
  TJ: uh, by those 30 seconds in order to build your, your tower.
• 7:07
  TJ: Whereas if you're actually suck building a car tower, but you've got hours in that room, you're probably gonna perform better.
• 7:14
  TJ: And that's the same thing for your for, for rugby, right?
• 7:16
  TJ: You get more opportunities to carry if your aerobic system is good.
• 7:19
  TJ: It doesn't matter how dynamic a carry you are, if you are gased out after the first five.
• 7:25
  TJ: You're not gonna play too well.
• 7:26
  TJ: And so that's what you need to understand is aerobic work is what gets you to be able to perform consistently, not just week to week to week, but throughout the game with your actions.
• 7:38
  TJ: You get to keep reproducing high level actions.
• 7:43
  TJ: Not only that, but you also get to, you know, communicate better in, in, in those low intensity environments.
• 7:49
  TJ: So when you are, you know, in your defensive line or in your, in the attacking line, you get to communicate with your teammates.
• 7:54
  TJ: You get to assess and evaluate what the defense are doing or what the off or.
• 8:00
  TJ: What the attack are doing and how you are going to make the best decision if you are really tired in those moments.
• 8:05
  TJ: And if you haven't got a low floor, if your, if your heart rate is really, you know, ramping up and you're just waiting for the referee to blow his whistle, when you're in a defensive line, you increase in the likelihood that you're gonna make a poor defensive read or just, you know, potentially even coward out.
• 8:21
  TJ: Right?
• 8:21
  TJ: Because as Vince Lombardi once said, fatigue makes cowards of us.
• 8:26
  TJ: and that's why fitness is so important, even for our, you know, especially for, should I say our fly halves, our decision makers on the pitch.
• 8:35
  TJ: But that's everyone throughout the game, uh, or everyone throughout the, a rugby team should be a level, you know, a decision maker.
• 8:44
  TJ: They should be able to make the decision as to where they want to carry or what they want to do.
• 8:48
  TJ: And the fitter you are aerobically, the more you're going to put your hand up and do that.
• 8:53
  TJ: Think about if you are doing a, IQ test in the middle of a 5K run, right?
• 8:59
  TJ: A a max 5K run, versus if you're doing an IQ test in the middle of, I don't know, a lazy afternoon.
• 9:07
  TJ: You want to be relaxed when you're making these decisions because that makes you think better.
• 9:11
  TJ: And so operating at a low, lower, lower heart rate doesn't.
• 9:16
  TJ: Help you recover from the actions.
• 9:17
  TJ: It helps you make better decisions to make, to, to choose when you're making those actions.
• 9:21
  TJ: It also helps you communicate around, also helps you last for the full 80 minutes.
• 9:26
  TJ: Um, and in order to train the aerobic system, you need your intensities to be low.
• 9:31
  TJ: That's why we say lower the floor.
• 9:33
  TJ: It should not match anywhere near the level of intensities.
• 9:38
  TJ: Well, actually it should ma match the level of intensity of a rugby game.
• 9:41
  TJ: But the low part, the part where you are walking, the part where you are jogging, you're just in a defensive line because your, your goal is not to match the intensity or replicate what a rugby game is doing.
• 9:51
  TJ: Like the card analogy, the goal is nothing to do with the task.
• 9:55
  TJ: The goal it's nothing to do with replicating what the task is.
• 9:58
  TJ: The goal is to improve your situation so that when you get to doing the task, you are in a better place.
• 10:04
  TJ: So, you know, get in a big shovel and however you want to lower the floor of, of this room that you've been given.
• 10:11
  TJ: It's not actually, when you're doing it, you're not directly improving at the task, right?
• 10:16
  TJ: You're not working at doing the task.
• 10:17
  TJ: But when it comes to doing the task, all of a sudden things are that much easier, and that's how your aerobic system will help you to play better at rugby.
• 10:25
  TJ: People don't think about this when they think about condition.
• 10:27
  TJ: They just think about, I've gotta match that intensity so that I've gotta do better.
• 10:30
  TJ: You don't just test to get better.
• 10:32
  TJ: You've got to improve your physiology.
• 10:34
  TJ: You've got to improve these things that help you play, not just improve playing by playing.
• 10:41
  TJ: And then the other side of the coin is that you can raise the ceiling, you can increase the height of the ceiling.
• 10:46
  TJ: This only works really if you are already quite proficient at the game.
• 10:51
  TJ: So if you can't pass, it doesn't matter how fit or how powerful, how explosive you are, there's nothing really physically in the gym that you can do to improve your level of passing.
• 11:01
  TJ: However, if you've got good passing mechanics, getting slightly stronger can absolutely help you increase the length of your.
• 11:08
  TJ: same thing with, we are going back to this analogy, right?
• 11:11
  TJ: I'm, I'm gonna get rid of this analogy as then explain a bit more clearly how this works.
• 11:17
  TJ: But this analogy does work for this part, is if I increase the height of my ceiling, Now if I'm really good at building this car tower, I'm now no longer, uh, affected by the height of the ceiling in order to know how high I can build this carb tower, right?
• 11:33
  TJ: So I already have to be good at building car towers in order for this to make a huge difference.
• 11:40
  TJ: Um, as far as my actual performance of, of building the high car, car, high car tower goes, but it will affect it at some point if I get proficient at the skill.
• 11:50
  TJ: Same thing for your rugby, right?
• 11:52
  TJ: If you get a little bit stronger, it's gonna allow you to get into better position or to hold a better position when you're jacking.
• 11:58
  TJ: But if you don't know how to jackle, it does not matter, um, how strong your deadlift is, right?
• 12:04
  TJ: You need to learn how to jacke first.
• 12:07
  TJ: also, increasing the height of your ceiling does still also give you a little bit more oxygen.
• 12:12
  TJ: It gives you a little bit more wiggle room as far as performing the, the, the task goes, and it's the same thing for rugby, right?
• 12:17
  TJ: If you, if you're a little bit faster, you can make poor decisions or you can get away with stuff.
• 12:22
  TJ: Just because of how fast you are or just because of how explosive you are.
• 12:25
  TJ: So that's where you see these naturally high performing athletes get away with more.
• 12:30
  TJ: It's not going to, um, make or break their career as far as, um, you can't rely solely on that.
• 12:36
  TJ: You need to be a good rugby player, but if you get explosive, if you get powerful, if you get really good at your conditioning in those high powerful area, then you're going to improve your ability to perform these tasks, um, better.
• 12:53
  TJ: And so doing that isn't just a case of getting stronger.
• 12:55
  TJ: It's a case of getting more explosive, but it's also about working that energy system.
• 12:59
  TJ: So doing things like, uh, going on the what bike, and you'll see a lot of the, this is usually what, uh, international teams will post when they post about their high intensity sessions.
• 13:10
  TJ: When you finish listening to this podcast, if you are really that curious about this, like high intensity, uh, conditioning stuff, go and watch any of the All Blacks gym videos where they do conditioning or the lions or, uh, England.
• 13:23
  TJ: I know I've seen a few of the England videos where they do this, watch their high intensity bike stuff, uh, where they go on the what bike and see how long their efforts.
• 13:32
  TJ: They're never more than 10 seconds, and then they never show how little they're resting, because more often than not, they're doing a protocol where they'll go for six to 10 seconds and then they'll rest for a minute.
• 13:43
  TJ: Because what they're working is their ability to ramp up to a really high intensity, go back down.
• 13:50
  TJ: And then ramp it back up again every minute or so, and that kind of replicates rugby, but it also just replicates your ability to repeat those high performance efforts.
• 13:59
  TJ: There's also another protocol where you would go for like five seconds, rest for five seconds and go again.
• 14:03
  TJ: That would improve your capacity rather than your outright ability to produce power.
• 14:09
  TJ: But that method wouldn't be done as consistently as your ability to reproduce power.
• 14:14
  TJ: So rather than getting to the nitty gritty of exactly what those training look like, this is more of an overview of how you need to approach a rugby, uh, strength and conditioning, or more specifically just your conditioning, but you could use this, uh, metaphor analogy to work for your overall strength and conditioning.
• 14:30
  TJ: Your overall approach to it is you, increase the height of the ceiling and decrease the, the depth of the.
• 14:37
  TJ: You get a, you get my point.
• 14:38
  TJ: Work on the floor, work on the ceiling.
• 14:41
  TJ: Don't work on a space in between.
• 14:42
  TJ: That space in between is your rugby, right?
• 14:44
  TJ: Your ability to play rugby.
• 14:46
  TJ: You should be doing this anyway.
• 14:48
  TJ: This isn't part of your strength and conditioning.
• 14:49
  TJ: You replicate the demands of rugby when you are training your rugby.
• 14:53
  TJ: When most people watching this will be training their rugby once or twice a week at.
• 14:59
  TJ: That's the time when you're, when you're already replicating the game of rugby, when you're replicating the demands as far as fitness goes, and you're also obviously, clearly, because it's important.
• 15:10
  TJ: Replicating the skills that you need to do.
• 15:11
  TJ: You're working on the skills, you're working on, the tactical decisions, you're working on the sport itself.
• 15:15
  TJ: Let that be the time when you're in that intensity because that intensity doesn't do much to help you, um, prepare your body physically.
• 15:23
  TJ: It helps you prepare all of the other stuff, your skills, your tactics, your techniques, your teamwork, your decision making.
• 15:30
  TJ: All this stuff is improved whilst you're training the sport, but physic.
• 15:36
  TJ: it's negligible.
• 15:37
  TJ: It's not the way I would do it because it causes excess fatigue, um, and the actual returns that you get aren't that great.
• 15:44
  TJ: Whereas if you improve your aerobic system, the returns that you can get are absolutely astronomical.
• 15:50
  TJ: If you get really explosive, you want your high end strength and condition.
• 15:53
  TJ: If you want your high end strength and power, sorry, again, the returns you can get on that stuff are astronomical.
• 15:59
  TJ: So you work the floor, you work the ceiling.
• 16:02
  TJ: And the room that you are in all of a sudden becomes that much easier if you nail this right, Donna, keep belaboring this point.
• 16:12
  TJ: I hope this metaphor makes sense.
• 16:14
  TJ: I hope it helps you understand how you should be working on your rugby shrinking condition or, or your rugby fitness.
• 16:24
  TJ: It helps you wrap your head around that you shouldn't be doing these long, excessive sprint intervals where you get minimal rest and all you are doing there is degrading your ability to actually sprint fast and making yourself tired.
• 16:38
  TJ: If you're gonna do sprints, do them really intense.
• 16:41
  TJ: Get a decent recovery.
• 16:43
  TJ: Don't practice sprinting slow, cuz that's just gonna reinforce that if you're going to do stuff like that when you're tired, if you're going to sprint and, and keep trying to sprint and force yourself to sprint when you're tired, do that when you're doing rugby, when you're practicing that because it's not improving anything else other than that, you don't want to practice sprinting tired.
• 17:00
  TJ: You don't want to be tired when you sprint, so work on your aerobic.
• 17:04
  TJ: Likewise, you don't wanna practice sprinting slowly, so don't practice sprinting slowly, sprint fast when you're doing your sprints, sprint really fast, get full recovery and be back, um, faster each and every single week.
• 17:19
  TJ: Okay, I think that makes sense.
• 17:21
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• 17:22
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• 17:27
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• 17:28
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• 17:41
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• 17:43
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• 17:46
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• 17:57
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• 18:09
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• 18:14
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