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Assuming you take a four-week break after the end of the season, your off-season training should last 16-20 weeks. Whether you’re a Back or a Forward, you should use this time to make sure you’re strong enough to enter pre-season training. If you donât, you may well find yourself playing âcatch upâ for the first half of pre-season training.Â
Pre-season training should hone your fitness to a well-defined edge, but the off-season training is where you build the foundation. Remember, the wider the base of the pyramid, the higher the peak can be! Get this program now on the Ruck Science app.Â
For many players, the off-season brings a welcome rest from the demands of competitive rugby. Itâs a time to recover from a tough and hopefully successful season, allow all those accumulated injuries to heal, and generally enjoy some time off from what is arguably one of the most demanding sports in the world.Â
Pre-season training is months away so whereâs the harm in taking a well-earned training sabbatical?
However, weeks have a nasty habit of turning into months very quickly and, before you know it, the rugby season will be just around the corner, and that means
pre-season training!
Pre-season training will get you match-fit but, unless you have done your off-season âhomework,â you are going to suffer in the process. Pre-season training typically lasts 12-weeks but the off-season can last anywhere up to 24-weeks, and thatâs a lot of wasted time if you make the mistake of leaving training on the back burner.
Of course, at the end of the season, you SHOULD take a break from training but try to limit yourself to just four weeks off. Donât be completely idle during that time otherwise getting back into shape will be much harder than it needs to be. Instead, have one week of very passive rest during which you do as little physical activity as possible, and then enjoy some active recovery for the next three weeks.Â
Hike, swim, jog, do some light weight training, and just get your body moving. This will ensure that, when you start your off-season training, you arenât crippled with delayed onset muscle soreness and donât have a ton of excess body fat to shift.
The off-season itself is all about GPP = short for general physical preparedness. During this time, your training is mainly non-rugby specific but, instead, is designed to prepare your body for pre-season training.
Developing a solid base of
full-body strength on which the pre-season phase can build
Many rugby players see the off-season as an opportunity to become gym-junkies and bulk up using bodybuilding-style workouts, and while bodybuilding techniques ARE useful, they are not necessarily the best choice for most rugby players.
In bodybuilding, competitors are judged on how they look as opposed to how they perform. It is possible to make a muscle very big using light to moderate weights and moderate to high reps. This will produce muscle hypertrophy but will have much less of an impact on strength and performance.
In contrast, rugby players should be less concerned with âshow,â and more concerned with âgo.â Big, pretty-looking muscles are fine for the beach but, on the pitch, if you cannot put that muscle size to good use, they are little more than dead weight.
For that reason, rugby players should not follow a bodybuilding-type program but one that is more specific to the sport of rugby â like the one in this book! You WILL still see muscle growth, but it will be a byproduct of training rather than the main training aim.
Assuming you take a four-week break after the end of the season, your off-season training should last 16-20 weeks. Use this time to make sure you
are fit enough and strong enough to enter pre-season training in good condition and ready to work hard. If you donât, you may well find yourself playing âcatch upâ for the first half of pre-season training.
Pre-season training should hone your fitness to a well-defined edge, but the off-season training is where you build the foundation. Remember, the wider the base of the pyramid, the higher the peak can be!
Every good workout starts with an appropriate warm-up and ends with a thorough cool down. Warming up properly can reduce your risk of injury and facilitate a good workout while cooling down properly is the first step toward full and speedy recovery.
Warming up should achieve several things:
A good warm up should contain several different elements…
Although this might look like a lot or work, a good warm up shouldnât take much more than 10 to 15-minutes and could save you months of lost time by reducing your risk of injury. Letâs examine each of these elements…
The pulse raiser is the part of the warm up that gets you warm. Usually comprising of a few minutes of progressive cardio, the pulse raiser elevates your heart and breathing rate, increases your core temperature, and pumps oxygenated blood into your muscles.
This helps buffer them against the effect of lactic acid. Warm muscles flex and contract more easily so â all in all â the pulse raiser is pretty important. However, five minutes or so is all that is needed. After all, you are trying to warm up and not wear yourself out. Do not be tempted to turn your pulse raiser into a cardio workout.
Your joints are made up from two bones that come together to form a union. For these bones to articulate smoothly, they need to be properly lubricated. Your joints are lubricated with synovial fluid which is produced on demand.
Joint mobility exercises take the target joint through a small but then increasing to a large range of movement to maximize synovial fluid production.
Good examples include shoulder shrugs, shoulder rolls, arm circles, wrist rolls, shallow knee bends, ankle circles and waist twists. Mobility exercises should leave your joints feeling fluid and loose. Do one exercise for each major joint â 10 to 20 reps per exercise should suffice.
When it comes to stretching, most people think of the static variety where stretches are held for a predetermined length of time. This type of stretch is fine in a cool down but not ideal for warm ups. For starters, static stretching tends to cause muscle relaxation which can inhibit force production. Also, static stretches tend to cause your temperature to fall.
In contrast, dynamic stretches, which hardly look like stretches at all, involve lots of movement which helps to keep your temperature elevated and donât cause muscle relaxation.
Dynamic stretches can often look like joint mobility exercises and frequently overlap as they are very similar. Shallow progressing to deeper lunges, squats to overhead reaches, forward leg swings, side bends, and lunges with a twist are all examples of dynamic stretches. You should only need three to five dynamic stretches to prepare your major muscles for the workout to come. Ten reps of each should be sufficient. Do not perform dynamic stretches too quickly so they become ballistic stretches. Ballistic stretches are more likely to cause injury.
Is it ever okay to do static stretches as part of a warm up? Yes. If a tight muscle makes a particular exercise difficult, you can stretch it off using static stretches. For example, if tight hip flexors make squats and lunges difficult, or tight pecs prevent you from pulling the bar to your chest during barbell rows, deactivate these troublesome muscles with targeted static stretching. This does, however, require a good working knowledge of muscles and movements.
Inactivity can lead to inhibited muscles. Sitting down all day can âturn offâ your glutes for example, and hunching over a computer can do the same thing to your upper back. Movement prep exercises are designed to wake up specific muscles to ensure they are firing properly e.g. hip bridges for glutes, and band pull aparts for the upper back. Movement prep exercises should be selected according to your needs and what workout you are about to do. For example, if you are about to embark on a leg workout, you would focus on prepping your leg and lower back muscles.
The answer to this is â it depends. Cold weather, advancing age, an intense workout, a long period of inactivity beforehand; these factors would suggest a longer warm up is required.
If, however, you have an easy workout planned, are young and have just been active, or itâs warm, a shorter warm up should suffice.
Adjust the length of your warm-up so that, when it is done, you feel as though you are ready to start your main session. Take as long as necessary but no longer; there is no need to waste your valuable energy.
Warming up should never be rushed; it could be the difference between a good workout or getting injured. Warm ups not only prepare your muscles and joints for exercise but your brain too. Use your warm up as an opportunity to get in the zone so you can concentrate fully on the workout to follow.
With this information, you should be able to create your own warm up routines but to help you on your way, here is a general strength and conditioning warm-up that will get the job done.
This preparatory block is designed to ease you into this phase of training and introduce you to the methods and systems that youâll be using over the next 12 weeks.
This preparatory block is designed to ease you into this phase of training and introduce you to the methods and systems that youâll be using over the next 12 weeks.
Try to use heavier weights, perform more reps, or shorter rests between sets to increase the difficulty of your workouts. There is also a slight increase in training volume.
This week incorporates a slight reduction in training volume while training intensity remains high. This should boost recovery so that you start the next phase of training feeling fresh and well-rested.
This preparatory block is designed to ease you into this phase of training and introduce you to the methods and systems that youâll be using over the next 12 weeks.
This week incorporates a slight reduction in training volume while training intensity remains high. This should boost recovery so that you start the next phase of training feeling fresh and well-rested.
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