The Top 5 Rugby Training Mistakes by Keir Wenham-Flatt MSc CSCS,

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1 The Top 5 Rugby Training Mistakes by Keir Wenham-Flatt MSc CSCS, Hi, thanks for downloading the top 5 rugby training mistakes. I'm Keir Wenham-Flatt. I'm an English rugby strength and conditioning coach working with Argentina Rugby Union. Below you'll learn the top 5 rugby training mistakes I've been lucky enough to learn from during my career of working with professional and international rugby players from all over the world in both union and league. If you too can study these mistakes and learn from them, you'll be one step ahead of the game in dramatically improving your performance on the rugby field. Enjoy! Mistake #1: Weight Over Technique It doesn't matter whether a rugby player is a man or a woman, young or old, back or forward, professional or amateur. One thing is true: rugby players are more interested in lifting weights to look good rather than perform well, and they ALWAYS sacrifice technique in the pursuit of heavier loads. Whilst heavy training is a cornerstone of a good strength and conditioning programme, we in rugby are all guilty of thinking that load is the ultimate goal of the programme. Quarter rep squats, violent cheat curls, super wide power cleans, you name it and we are guilty of it! True, heavy load is vital to trigger all the adaptations that are valuable to the sport: strength, speed, size and so on. But what most players forget is that load and technique are two sides of the same coin. Here's why... Training is about stress; how much stress can you apply to the correct muscles and force them to become more powerful? By using the correct technique, you will be able to apply more stress to the correct parts of the body i.e. the target muscles, rather than elsewhere like the tendons, ligaments, and other soft tissues and irrelevant muscles. Training is about efficiency; the more efficiently you can apply force in training, the better your ability to apply force efficiently on the field. If you train with poor form in training, you are teaching yourself to be inefficient on the field. This means you'll expend more energy, fatigue faster, and under perform. Training is about staying injury free: if you are injured, you aren't on the field, and if you aren't on the field, you aren't winning! Staying injury free is the primary goal of the programme and sound exercise technique is your number 1 weapon in the war against injury. Knees caving in

2 on the squat, back rounding on the deadlift, elbows flaring on the bench press- these are now dirty deeds and need to be removed from your training programme! Top tip #1: Aim to use heavy loads in your training but only after you have mastered the technique of the exercises you are performing with little or no load first. If you are unsure about what constitutes perfect form on an exercise, contact the Rugby Strength Coach blog or other reputable source of information. Study the movements and practice them until they are perfect. The time you spend up front learning these movements will save you this many times over down the road when the load gets heavy and your risk of injury and inefficient movement becomes significantly higher. Mistake #2: Programme hopping Let me tell you a secret about training that most rugby players don't realise: EVERYTHING you do in the gym has a limited shelf life. Any exercise, any method, any tool that you use in training will work at first, but each and every time you use it, your body's response will get a little bit less, and less and less until it stops working completely. This is exactly the reason we don't have many 150kg people walking around who can bench press 300kg, squat 500kg and run a 9 second 100m. Trust me when I say that if you train long enough, the day will come when your body will stop responding to training and you aren't going to get any better. It will happen and you need to make sure you don't do anything in your training to hasten it's arrival. Of course there are multiple factors that determine when this happens: genetics, nutrition, recovery, available training time, and so on. But a major factor in this is exercise selection and the progression of your training programme. Every exercise/technique/method is like an ace up your sleeve that can be played to kickstart your programme when your results start to plateau. The sooner you play each ace, the sooner your body begins to stop responding to it and the sooner your performance will stall. This is a major mistake in the average players training; the constant adding or removing of exercising based not on logic but rather boredom, curiosity or fashion. Big mistake. Top tip #2: Keep the aces up your sleeve. Stick with a programme as long as it continues to produce results (see my $5 ebook The 10 Commandments of In-Season Training on how to measure this). When the programme ceases to yield results, change one small aspect of the programme at a time. Change one exercise, try one new method, add one small tweak to a particular section of your training,

3 whatever it takes to gently push your body in the direction of responding. Don't be tempted into completely revamping your programme, as you will only shoot yourself in the foot in the long term. Mistake #3: If it doesn't get measured, it doesn't get managed This phrase is one that I have stolen from the world of business, but this principle is equally as true and valuable in the world of training. In my experience what unites the most successful rugby strength and conditioning programmes is their measurement of key pieces of information throughout the programme. They record nearly EVERYTHING: How every player eats, sleeps and drinks Previous and existing injuries Frequent assessments of height, weight, body fat and even urine Every exercise, set and rep performed in training Each players individual physiological and psychological response to training All of this information is used to answer key questions about the programme. They show if the programme is working or not. They show potential areas of strength and weakness in the programme. They show if changes or revisions to the programme have produced the desired results. Without this information, these successful teams cannot answer these questions. And these are precisely the same questions that every team and player whether professional or amateur should be attempting to answer, and yet so few do. Top tip #3: I'm not suggesting you try to bring the same level of measurement to your strength and conditioning programme as would an International or Professional side, but you can't afford to NOT measure something. If you can bring in a few simple assessments into your training, you'll put yourself ahead of the game and equip yourself with the vital information you need to make small and regular improvements to your training that will see you dramatically improve your performance on the field. Some things I like to monitor with my athletes and online clients include the frequency and severity of the injuries suffered, speed on the field, strength in the gym and endurance. Mistake #4: Equating suffering with effectiveness There is no doubt that rugby players are a tough bunch. You need to be tough to get through a game that entails this much aggression, gruelling physical demands and injuries; I have worked with some

4 players who's surgeries number in the double figures whilst still in their late 20s! But sometimes the mental attributes that make for a great player can sometimes be counter productive in training. In rugby we have been seduced by the idea that suffering equals effectiveness in training. If it hurts then it must be working. If it doesn't hurt then it isn't working. Is the mantra of the average rugby player. Whilst effective training can occasionally be unpleasant, this unfortunately flawed logic. Just because some fatigue or discomfort is good in training, does not mean more is better. I liken the typical training programme to trying to kill a fly in your house by using a hand grenade. You kill the fly, but you blow up your house in the process! Training is no different. A strength and conditioning programme is utterly useless if it gets you fit but at the expense of staying injury free or leaving you so fatigued you can't perform on the field. Avoid the mistake of the average rugby player or coach and select the appropriate tool for the job. Do not expose yourself to higher levels of fatigue or injury risk unless it is necessary to achieve your training goals. Pick the fly swatter not the hand grenade. Top tip #4: Never underestimate the value of sub maximal weight lifting and conditioning to your rugby strength and conditioning programme, particularly in-season. Lifting to failure and very intense conditioning methods should only be occasionally sprinkled into your training. The rest of the time try to err on the side of caution in training and try to keep yourself as fresh as possible for field training and matches. Mistake #5: Forgetting the field A coaching friend of mine James Smith (formerly of the University of Pittsburgh and Portugal Rugby Union) is fond of saying Getting strong is like falling out a boat and hitting water. Powerful words indeed, and 100% true. In the grand scheme of things getting bigger and stronger to play rugby is relatively simple: lift heavy, add food to your plate, add weight to the bar and repeat. What the average rugby player doesn't know is that there is more to strength and conditioning to this. Size and strength are only two pieces of the puzzle. The big challenge for most rugby strength and conditioning programmes is taking the strength and size that has been developed in the gym and learning how to apply this where it really counts: on the field. Do you have the necessary elements in your programme to build the physical abilities that turn an average strength and conditioning programme into a highly effective programme? I'm talking about acceleration, speed, power and agility. These abilities cannot be built in the gym alone.

5 Top tip #5: If your programme only focusses on heavy weight training in the gym, it needs some additions. The modern rugby player does need to be strong but he also needs to be able to run fast, jump high and evade opponents at high speed across a variety of movement patterns. My favourite tools to achieve this with my athletes and clients are loaded and unloaded jumps, plyometrics, explosive medicine ball throws, sprints and wrestling or grappling. Like what you see? Check out my 2.99 ebook If you liked the information contained within this report, be sure to check out my dirt cheap ebook on the 10 commandments of in-season training for rugby. This ebook contains a wealth of information that will take your training during the difficult in-season period to another level: Dramatically improve your performance on the field when it really matters- during the season Reduce your incidence of unnecessary niggles and injuries Maximise the efficiency of training time you spend in the gym and on the field Stop wasting time on exercises, methods and techniques that don't produce results Stay as fresh as possible for matches Individualise your programme and avoid the typical rugby cookie cutter training mentality Recover like a professional player Train specifically for your position Peak for play offs and important games Click here now for more information

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