For variety, perform these sprints on a slight incline to make them harder, or a slight decline to increase stride length and leg speed. Speed workouts are better with Pre-Game. Designed to maximize the effect of your workout, Pre-Game may increase mental and physical performance so you can give your training your all.
After your workout, boost recovery with Post Rugby , specially formulated for the demands of playing and training for rugby. Our range of supplements can help professional and amateur rugby players alike to perform, recover and live better. Some of the concepts presented herein may be theoretical.
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Codes Account Orders Contact Menu. No products in the cart. A speed program for lightning-fast rugby wingers. September 25, Training Team Speed , Training. This basic weekly training program is designed to address all of these needs. Check out this video to see how speed kills the opposition:.
Workout 1 Strength and power complexes e. Monday Strength and power complexes prime your nervous system for maximal speed and force development. Workout 2 Acceleration and agility e. After a general warm up consisting of light cardio, and dynamic stretching, do the following drills: 1. Kneeling arm action Kneel down so your legs are bent to degrees, thighs vertical. Knee-ups and butt kickers These two drills will increase range of motion and leg speed.
High knee power skips This exercise develops leg drive and knee lift. On completion of your extended warm up, do the following exercises. Push-up sprints This drill replicates recovering after a tackle, regaining your feet, and getting back into the game.
Flying zigzag sprints This drill increases both acceleration and your ability to swerve. Pick-ups The aim of this drill is to develop your ability to accelerate and decelerate at will. Side step to your right until you reach the right—hand marker cone.
Immediately side step to your left until you reach the furthest left-hand marker cone. I used Pro Training Programs to put on a lot of mass, from 84kg I got up to 96kg. My bench press went up to 1RM of kg from kg and I could throw around 55kg DB like they were nothing! Just overall strength was greatly improved with no change in my speed!! Note that we do not have a direct phone number, but we make up for this by responding to every message and email we receive within days! Home Team Sports Exercises Blogs.
Train smart and play your best Rugby Union! Training Program Preview Our PDF training programs are easy to follow, and have everything you need to train for your sport, so you can get the most out of your training!
Choose your Program. Training Programs Author. Training Programs Description. Each training session includes a combination of gym based and field training sessions. Personalised Pro Rugby Union Programs. Players who are naturally skilful are usually highly coordinated. Regularly practicing the skills of rugby will help improve coordination. Strength produced quickly is properly called power.
Where a slow squat performed using a heavy weight is an expression of strength, an explosive vertical jump is an expression of power. Power requires the ability to recruit a lot of motor units groups of muscle fibers controlled by a single motor nerve simultaneously. This is why very lightly muscle muscled weightlifters and boxers can produce similar performances to their heavier, more muscled counterparts.
Bodybuilding, that tends to focus on controlled and even slow movements, will do very little for increasing power production. In fact, it may even be contradictory. Power training typically involves explosive, short-duration activities such as jumping exercises called plyometrics, throwing, Olympic lifting, and performing compound exercises like squats and deadlifts very explosively using light to moderate weights. The ability to generate maximal force, strength, in the words of coach Mark Rippetoe, makes everything better.
He also said that stronger people are harder to kill and therefore more useful! Hyperbole aside, strong muscles are more resilient and resistant to fatigue, can make the difference between winning or losing possession, and can be what stands between winning and losing. The aim of this book is to introduce you to some of the best, most rugby-appropriate strength training methods around so that your gym workouts are as productive as possible.
Strength is, by and large, developed in the gym. Strength training is easily quantifiable — if you can lift more weight or lift the same weight for more reps, you have gotten stronger.
Numbers do not lie and if the weight on the bar goes up, whatever you are doing is working. In contrast, bodybuilding focuses more on muscle appearance than muscle performance. Results are measure in inches gained or body fat lost rather than the amount of weight lifted. People do often believe rugby players train too much like bodybuilders, check out Eben Etzebeth arms for example, they are bodybuilder like!
Often referred to as the king of exercises, squats build leg strength and power. Unlike leg presses, leg extensions and leg curls, which are all inferior for developing strength, squats also require and develop core strength.
In fact, heavy squats work virtually every muscle in your body directly or indirectly. Jumping, sprinting, scrummaging — your performance in these key rugby skills will improve if you squat hard and often. There are several squat variations to use. Choose one, work it hard for several weeks or months and then, if progress stalls, switch to another. Also, select your squats based on your anthropology body shape , limitations from old injuries and what feels best.
Barbell back squat — high bar. Performed with the bar resting high on the traps and typically with a shoulder-width stance, high bar squats produce an upright torso position that favours taller lifters.
Best done wearing weightlifting shoes that have a solid, built-up heel. Barbell back squat — low bar. In the low bar back squat, the bar rests lower on the traps and roughly level with the shoulders. This position shortens the lever length between the weight and the hips which takes stress off the lower back.
Low bar squats inevitably involve more forward lean and are better suited to shorter lifters. Low bar squats are usually performed using a wider-than shoulder-width stance and flat shoes which help keep the shins vertical.
Front Squats. With the barbell resting on the front of the shoulders, the front squat keeps your torso upright and involves less torque on the lower back. It requires good upper body flexibility and tends to emphasize the quadriceps over the hamstrings. Stance can vary from wider-than to less-than shoulder-width and front squats are generally best performed wearing Olympic weight lifting shoes.
Big arms can also make front squats prohibitively hard for some lifters. Safety Bar Squats. A safety bar is cambered and has a built in yoke. Squatting with a safety bar feels like a front squat but is much easier on the shoulders. The camber in the bar means the weight is slightly forward of your base of support which means you have to work hard to stay upright which will strengthen your lower back. Because of the mechanics of the safety bar squat, less weight is required to provide good results.
This can be beneficial for injured players. Zercher Squats. This oddly-named exercise involves squatting with the bar held in the crook of your elbows. Holding the weight in front of you means that your lower back has to work overtime to maintain an upright torso.
The main limiting factor in Zercher squats is pain tolerance — heavy weights can be very uncomfortable on the arms. This can be remedied by using a bar pad or wrapping a towel around the bar. Zercher squats make for an ideal deloading exercise as you simply cannot lift as much weight compared to front, back or safety bar squats.
The simple act of bending down and picking a weight up off the floor is arguably one of the best strength exercises you can do. Working the entire back of your body from your heels to the nape of your neck, deadlifts will do more for your strength than almost any other exercise. There are several deadlift variations to consider:. Conventional barbell deadlift. Performed with a hip-width stance, the conventional deadlift favours shorter lifters with good hamstring flexibility.
Executed with an overhand grip or a mixed grip as preferred, conventional deadlifts are the most common variation of this barbell exercise. Focus on maintaining a strong, tight lumbar curve when performing this or any other deadlift variation. Sumo deadlift. A wide stance and hands inside the feet make this deadlift a little easier for tall lifters as it reduces the distance the bar has to travel. More hip and hamstring dominant than the conventional deadlift, pulling sumo requires good hip mobility.
If you normally pull conventional deadlifts, pulling sumo-style can make a nice variation from time to time. Deficit deadlift. Deficit deadlifts involve standing on a two to four-inch thick platform which essentially increases the range of motion and therefore the difficulty of this exercise.
Requiring good flexibility, deficit deadlifts make deadlifts harder without increasing the load. This can be useful for lifters who want to train hard but need to limit the weight lifted e. Raising the weights to just below knee-height decreases the range of movement and allows heavier weights to be lifted. This is also a good version for tall lifters who find it hard to maintain a strong lumbar arch when performing conventional deadlifts. Bench Press. While squats are the king of gym exercises, the bench press is arguably the most popular!
Bench pressing will develop your chest, shoulders and triceps which are your primary pushing muscles. A strong bench press should improve your ability to push players away from you. There are several types of bench press to consider:. Barbell bench press. Adjust the hands so that, at the bottom of the press, the forearms are vertical. This is mechanically the best position for generating maximum force. A slight lower back arch with feet planted firmly on the ground will also aid performance.
Lower the bar to the highest part of the chest — usually just below the nipple line — to take stress off the shoulders. Never bonce the bar off your chest but make sure it touches lightly. Dumbell bench press. Working with dumbbells instead of a barbell means that each arm is trained independently.
This helps ensure both arms are working equally hard. Dumbbell bench presses also allow for a greater range of movement and require and develop control and balance. On the downside, getting heavy dumbbells into position alone can be hard. Some lifters find dumbbell bench pressing easier on their shoulders. Paused bench press. Using a barbell or dumbbells, pause mid-rep with the bar resting lightly on your chest. Do NOT relax! This pause means that each rep starts from a dead stop which makes the exercise harder and also develops explosive starting strength.
A good method if you want a lighter-than normal but still productive upper body workout. Narrow-grip bench press. A shoulder-width hand placement increases range of movement at the shoulder and also places an extra emphasis on the triceps and deltoids.
Some lifters also find a narrower hand placement less stressful to the shoulders. Combined with the pause described above, the narrow grip bench press can be every bit as tough as regular bench presses but using much less weight. Good for anyone with injuries.
For both barbell and dumbbell bench presses, exercising on an incline or decline places a small but significant emphasis on either the upper chest incline or the lower chest decline.
Bodybuilders will select incline or decline to target specific areas of the chest but for strength training these variations simply allow for greater workout variety. Incline bench pressing tends to be slightly weaker and decline bench pressing is often slightly stronger than flat bench presses. Military Press. The military press is the term used to describe many overhead pressing exercises. Traditionally, the military press is performed standing, with straight legs, and using a barbell pressed from the front of the shoulders to full arm extension.
The bar can be first cleaned to the shoulders or taken from a rack. Over the years, however, the term military press has been used for any type of shoulder press — seated or standing, barbell or dumbbell. Overhead pressing develops shoulder and triceps strength and helps keep upper body pushing muscles balanced. Over-emphasising the bench press can lead to over-developed pecs and shoulder injuries. There are several types of military press to consider:.
Standing barbell military press. The classic upper body exercise, the standing barbell press not only develops strong shoulders and triceps, it also develops a strong core too. Hands should be roughly shoulder-width apart so that forearms are vertical at the beginning of the movement. The bar should travel straight up which will necessitate a small backward lean. As the bar passes the face, the head should be pushed forward between the arms so the weight is directly over the base of support.
Legs should not contribute to the lift and should remain straight but not locked throughout. Dumbell military press.
Using dumbbells means that each arm must work independently which helps ensure balanced strength development. It also keeps the weight over the shoulders which many lifters find more comfortable. On the downside, the dumbbells will have to be cleaned up to shoulder height which may make the exercise harder to perform for some. Lifting and controlling two dumbbells instead of a single barbell means less weight is normally used.
Both the barbell and dumbbell military presses can be performed seated. This provides lumbar support which reduces core involvement. Many people find that they can lift more weight in the seated variations simply because core strength ceases to become a limiting factor.
However, performing overhead presses while seated reduces the functionality of these exercises. Push press. Performed standing with a barbell or dumbbells, the push press combines a quarter-depth squat with a powerful overhead press. The idea is to start the movement with a strong leg drive and finish it with the arms. This makes the push press a good total body exercise that allows for heavy weights to be lifted. A strong core is essential for this exercise. I feel by providing a specific load an athlete has a great starting point.
They are allowed to slightly modify the weight if they feel it should be slightly different. On the supplementary strength and hypertrophy exercises I generally allow athletes to choose the weight depending on rating of perceived exertion RPE. They simply fill the weights into their program and adjust week to week depending on the number of repetitions.
I tend to keep the main lifts similar whilst providing variation in the assistance exercises. I hope you have enjoyed this article. Strength Coach? Click here now to get access to our extensive library of video webinars, discussion threads and career advice from world class coaches.
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