Ennis Rugby Club, Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland

stay fit & healthy

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 l Nutrition l Hydration l PRINCIPLES OF TRAINING l Stretching

FITNESS FOR RUGBY

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 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 4000m and 6000m 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, 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.
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.

Lifestyle factors such underpinning your training with appropriate nutrition are also essential for the modern player.

Its Not Rocket science you know….Just Sports Science

by Kevin King

Similarly, a scrum-half who cannot be at every breakdown to begin the next phase of play after every ruck or 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 further dimension.

The above examples highlight some positional demands of two 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 4000m and 6000m 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, 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.

Players also need to be thoroughly prepared and ready to train / perform at optimum levels, and there also need to be thoroughly warmed up prior to starting their physical activity.

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.

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 as underpinning you’re training with appropriate nutrition are also essential for the modern player.

I hope, I have shown from the above the modern rugby player is unique in that he his expected to have the dexterity and speed of a sprinter, the stamina of an endurance athlete and the strength of an Olympic power lifter, (the New Zealand players for the present world cup squad had to bench press 125Kg and Squat press 200kg just to make the preliminary squad).

The recent I.R.F.U. programme 6 to 6 Nations which you are all familiar is based
Mainly on the work of Dr. Istvan Balyi. (In this research he identifies five stages of change taking in which a person must go through so to achieve a skill, skill is the ability to perform a technique under pressure and it can take 10,000 hours or about 10 years to reach this state). This research has now been advance by the Australia Institute of sport and the Canadian Institute (Current Directions in skill acquisition by Damian Farrow AIS and Paralympic Long term development model by Dr. Colin Higgs CIS).

A normal male will burn about 2,500 Calories a day, a professional athlete about 6,000.

An accepted definition of fitness is “The body’s ability to recover after a series of exercise or work, in order that it may undertake a further series of exercise or work”

The importance of recover cannot be overstressed. Cyclist and eastern European athletes, the clean ones, were re-hydrating using interveinus drips of normal saline (salt and water) and dextrose (glucose and water) as far back as the sixties not to mention other concoctions, such as the famed “Belgium Mix” which Willy Voet was caught smuggling to Ireland for the tour of France start in Dublin a few years ago.

To day, they sleep in oxygen tents. We see the Irish players doing recovery work in pools and cryogenic centres in Poland, and in fact there is now a cryogenic unit in a hotel in Wexford with proposals to build one in the University of Limerick.

But, we at the junior game are not dealing with professional athletes. In the junior game our players have to go to work on Monday, train twice or three times a week and play at the weekend. This, along with modern lifestyles is asking a lot of our players.

From a purely scientific point of view the best we can do is, educate our coaches at all levels to increase skill levels especially at under age. Improve fitness levels again coach education that ensures proper scientific methods are used. The days of endless laps are long gone.

For each training session be it at adult or under age, we should firstly Plan and structure our training sessions well, and when that is done, plan it some more, to include fitness and skills drills. Stretching is not necessary for young players, but good habits can be taught so that it becomes second nature to a player to warm up and cool down properly before any exercise is undertaken. (Even if going for a walk, walk the first ten minutes slowly before increasing the pace and slow down for the last few minutes of your walk, it will all aid recovery).

For the adult players, and I would consider this from age eighteen up, help to aid their recovery, with the use of ice baths, Pool recovery sessions (if you have research to prove this give a reference) and most importantly proper Hydration, Nutrition, cool down and stretching is about all a junior club can do. For further information on Nutrition, hydration and stretching please visit our web site on www.ennisrfc.ie.

Remember, their big effort should be at game time, not left behind on the training pitch, the dictum of “it’s easy to train hard but hard to train easy” still applies.
Beyond that, there is possibly the most important factor of all, Skill and the ability to react and reproduce this technique under pressure. But that’s back to Dr. Balyi and for another day.

Kevin M. King. BSc (Hons).