All right. What's going on everyone? Welcome back to the Rugby Muscle Podcast in YouTube channel. I'm your host, always, tj, and today we're gonna talk about the most underrated fitness protocol for rugby. Why most people don't do it, and why I would guarantee your game is gonna get better if you do this fitness protocol. So you wanna pay attention to this video. Okay, so to start the video, I'm not going to like build it up or, or a even ask for likes and subscribes right now. I'm just gonna get right into it. The most underrated fitness protocol that there is for rugby is gonna be your low intensity steady state work. And, immediately there's gonna be, One of two reactions from you guys that are watching this video. Some of you already know. Yeah, that's probably quite good. And, and maybe I should do more of it for you guys. I'm gonna explain exactly why it's that great and why you should be doing more of it. Some of you guys are not sold at all on it. Some of you guys, um, think that it's got nothing to do with rugby. Rugby has paid a much higher intensity. Um, you know, rugby do, you don't go for long, slow runs when you're doing rugby, so it doesn't really add any specificity. It's not good. And I'm going to explain to you why that is not the case. Why you might see, like, why that appeal makes sense, but also why actually you should be doing low intensity. You steady saying, and it, and this graph, uh, this meme, should I say, um, Is gonna give you a little bit of an insight as to how this thinking goes, but it definitely, there definitely is a lot of truth to it, right? You start, and it's kind of an, you know, when you first get into rugby, I remember if you watched my video from like a few months ago, I spoke about when I was like 15 or 16, or maybe even younger. And all I did was go for runs and that a absolutely massively helped my, my rugby performance. Now, I could have done that a lot better, but the point is that that's, I, I didn't know anything about rugby fitness at that point, so I was this, this, this, this. Whatever that simpleton is right at the start of this graph. Then as I started to understand rugby fitness and I started to like try to really care about doing, being as specific as I could, being as like intentional with my rugby performance as I could, but in the gym, not just train like a bodybuilder or not just, you know, doing random stuff. I started to really try to, you know, overcomplicate my fitness work, so, you know, to batters circuits. These days. It wasn't back in the day when I was doing my fitness, Broncos wasn't really a huge thing. But people do that time and time and time again, they do lots of sprint in the falls and they think that they need to be rugby specific. But once you've watched this video, we're gonna push you over to the top end of the IQ people, the, the monk here who just says, I'm just gonna go for a run and a bike, or a bike to work on my fitness. And you'll see that this does have huge benefits. So what is low intensity? Steady state work? Because some people like get it wrong. They think they're gonna go for a low intensity run and they just go and basically do a five kilometer time trial. That is not low intensity. Steady state, low intensity, steady state has to make sure that. It tick these boxes, right? You can work continuously for 20 to 120 minutes. I mean, technically you can work less than 20 minutes, but the time to benefit ratio is gonna be really small there because you spend, you know, five to 10 minutes at least warming your heart rate up or warming your body up to get to the heart rate zone that you want to be in. If you do a session that's just 15 minutes, You're gonna get really minimal benefit for the time. The idea here is that because it takes five to 10 minutes or a little bit to get up to the heart rate that you want to go, you can keep going and then you sustain that heart rate, you then sustain that effort, and therefore you get all of the benefits. So once you've reached that warmup like pinnacle, right? Once you've hit your, your zone that you want to be in, you stay in that for, yeah, 22, 120 minutes, depending on your fitness levels, depending on the modality that you are using, depending on the time of your season, the time of your, periodization and the time that you have available, the whole point with zone two stuff, or the low intensity steady state workers, that your pace is kept to a steady state throughout. You're not trying to increase or decrease as you go sometimes if you are not as efficient. As you think, you will end up slowing down to kind of stay in zone too, or to stay in your low intensity zone. But that suggests to me if you are doing that, that you're actually going, you're starting out a little bit too high intense, right? If you, if you are, if you're having to slow down to stay in that steady zone, then that shows that you, your, your initial effort was just a little bit too high and you were just sequentially and overtime, again, you keep it steady. Mostly with low intensity, steady state, it's gonna be cyclical work. So not talking about cyclical as in you're on a, you're in a bicycle, but you are, you are mo moving in a cyclical manner. So running is another example. Or a, a row machine would be an example. It's very difficult to do low intensity, steady state work on the rower. The elliptical is another example. Different types of bikes are also good examples. Swimming is also kind of an example, but again, difficult to do at this low intensity, for a long period of time. And again, kept a low intensity. Sometimes, like if you are using a heart rate monitor or if you're using an Apple watch or if you're using a smartwatch or anything like that, they're usually very good at. Getting, not necessarily your zone, but getting a decent approximation for your heart rate. And again, you're gonna go for 60 to 70% of effort. I prefer to use a talk test. So you'll use, 12 words. You'll, I usually say, this is my 12 words sentence, to check that I'm in zone two. And actually it's more than 12 words, but you get the point, right? Because I'm able to say those words. That's my torque test. That means that I'm not exerting too much effort. If I get out of breath as I'm saying those words, then I'm going a little bit too fast. You can also do this on pacing, right? You get to know how fast you go or power output. If you're on a bike, what is gonna keep you in this low intensity zone? And that's it, right? That's the most important thing is that you are not working too hard. So when I said that, I used to do 5K time trials, or I used to run as far as as as for a distance, but kind of as fast as I could. That's not low intensity. Even though it's relatively low intensity compared to like a hundred meter sprint, it's actually not working the right zone. You're not getting the benefits that you are hoping to get or that we are hoping that you get front or that we are knowing that you are going to get. Actually, we're not hoping for these benefits. We know that these benefits exist with low intensity, steady state work. If you keep that intensity low rugby players tend to go too fast. They tend to go way above that 70%, and they'll push themselves, even if they're going, you know, they go for a two mile or a three mile jog, they end up pushing themselves too fast and push themselves out of that heart rate zone, and therefore they're not doing the right protocol and therefore they're not gonna get the benefits. Speaking of which, I think that's actually one of the big reasons that low intensity, steady state work is underrated because most people get it wrong. I haven't put that here, but that's definitely one of them. You don't get that change in your physiology. You don't get that better aerobic, benefit, and you don't get that low fatigue cost. You end up fatiguing yourself a little bit too much because you're pushing yourself too hard. It's like if you're doing hypertrophy work and you end up doing one rep maxes and you're like, oh, why am I not getting bigger? It's because you're pushing yourself. Too hard, and it's the same equivalent aerobically when you are pushing yourself too hard, doing your low intensity steady state work. The other reason I think is what I've put here is that you don't get that validation of being tough, of doing that, you know, feeling like you are playing a rugby game. The, but the reality is you are not trying to play a rugby game. You're not, that's not how you would improve. If you're trying to pass a test, you don't improve by to pass a test by just doing loads of tests and then that's how you learn. Like you would get slightly better over time. But it's really inefficient. What would be better is you actually just go away and read some books around the topic that you're being tested on, and then you go back to the test, you get better. That's what you're doing here. When you're doing low intensity, steady state, you know you're not, you're not pushing yourself to a level of toughness. Sometimes you can do, because you can go without headphones. You can like, especially if you're in the gym, sometimes it's mind numbing, and it's really easy just to. Step off that, that machine that you're on, and you are staying on there for an hour. There is a little bit of a challenge there, but I'd say you're not being challenged toughness wise as much as you are. When you're doing high intensity interval sprints or you're doing those things cuz they, they're definitely tougher, like you push yourself. A little bit harder mentally, you're not held back on a rugby field by your mental condition. You're held back by your physical condition. If you're better physically conditioned to play, you're better aerobically conditioned to play. You're going to be performing better on the rugby pitch. And people will argue that it's not rugby specific, but it's like neither is sprinting without a ball. Like, like what are we doing here? Are we trying to get better for rugby? Or are we trying to do everything rugby specific? You know, the barbell back squat. Well, why not put. Uh, a player on your back and then squat them like, no, you're not doing this stuff to be rugby specific. You're doing this stuff to improve at the specific zones and the areas that do improve your rugby performance. And that's what this is doing. It's also like, I think it, people just feel like it's perpetrated through now through fitness has done a really good job of, of really pushing high intensity interval training to the point where it's of the detriment of this zone two. Zone two is definitely making a comeback. This low intensity steady state is making a comeback. Um, but you know, for the last 10, 20 years, it's been really the in thing to talk about high intensity, talk about sprints, talk about see this Jack Guy compared to this skinny guy here. And they, and, and like I just typed in Google Marathon Runner versus Sprinter, right? These are just two different dudes. They're like, if you look at this picture, they're actually running the same distance. There is just one happens to be more jacked than the other. It's a, it's a really false. Uh, image when you look at people and say, oh, marathon runners have to be skinny, and, and sprinters have, have to be jacked. No, it just happens that a lot of successful sprinters are jacked. And obviously if your goal is to run a marathon, carrying loads of muscle mass isn't gonna be the benefit to you. But like, that's not the goal here. The goal is just to, uh, work the aerobic system so you become a better rugby player. Now why low intensity steady state is absolutely great and you should be doing it. I, I'm gonna answer this in over a few slides here. So the first and foremost, I've explained this quite a lot now on this channel and on the podcast, your aerobic system is what fuels your rugby performance. Remember, the game lasts 80 minutes, right? Two big 40 minute efforts where there's mostly spent jogging, walking, and standing in place. That is all your aerobic system. Yes, you are doing high intensity actions when you're carrying, when you're tackling, when you are in a rock or you're pushing a mow, or you're doing, you know, you're moving about and you're. Making big efforts to impact the game, but those efforts are really, really high intensity, and then it's a lot of nothing. And so your aerobic system is what fuels all of that. In between, it refuels fuels the recovery in between those high intensity actions, so the more aerobically fit you are. The more high intensity actions you're going to be able to make if you are, if you are not very fit aerobically, you'll see yourself drop after, you know, 20 to 30 minutes, um, of the first half or even less. Sometimes you'll get a couple high intensity actions, and because your aerobic system isn't robust, you end up then floundering and. Really grasping for air, struggling on the pitch after only a few minutes, and I've seen this happen time and time and 10 time again. I've seen it happen a lot with people that I've played with that were CrossFitters, where they had a real good intensity effort because of, the average CrossFit workout being 10 to 20 minutes of real high intensity. But as the game got on and on and on, because they weren't aerobically robust, they weren't doing the most efficient CrossFit training. They ended up sort of flagging as the game went on. If you want a more in-depth, like full breakdown of why rugby is aerobic. I've got videos on this YouTube channel. We've got podcasts in the podcast feed. Explaining about why your aerobic system is the system that fuels all red performance. So I, I don't wanna get too in depth into that, but just know that low intensity, steady state is what improves your aerobic system the most efficiently. It helps you build, mitochondria within the muscles so that you can use more of the muscle and get more oxygen through the muscle. Which obviously is gonna help with that aerobic system, but also it helps the heart just develop and become more efficient in that aerobic zone, which again, is gonna really assist you between your high intensity efforts when you're playing a game of rugby. I also really like low intensity, specifically low intensity, steady state when we're looking at aerobic condition because it's so, so bloody convenient, right? You're gonna save yourself on time because if you are doing a, you know, a fancy uh, conditioning session, like a circuit training session at a gym, you've gotta drive there. You gotta drive back. you've gotta set up all the equipment you, you know, if you are. If you're just gonna go out on a run, like the most obvious low intensity studies, say, all you need to do is put your trains on and you're out the door, and that's it. Right? I think that's another reason, potentially why it's underrated. And a lot of people don't like doing it because they don't, they like the idea of working themselves a little bit harder. They like the, the idea of things not being so simple. When you give someone a really simple solution, they don't like that they, because they wanna find something else, they wanna find a secret. Well, if the secret is, Just go outside your door and run slowly. I mean, that's not what a lot of people want to hear, but it's something that does make a huge difference. I've seen it time and time again. Zone two. Also saves you as, as far as like your energy before and after your, your session goes, right. I know when I've done high intensity interval sessions, I've done really horrible sprint sessions and, you know, there, there's still a time and a place for some level of conditioning, but it's, it's definitely a negative compared to when you're doing your low intensity steady state stuff because, When you are, when you've got these conditioning sessions, you are nervous for them. You have to feel up for it. It's very easy to skip. You've gotta put a lot of effort into getting 'em. And again, that's maybe building up your mental toughness, but demanding that of yourself day after day or week after week. That gets a lot. Especially when you are the one that's making those sessions, you, you're planning those sessions. So you're planning how, how long you want to, push yourself for, how long you want to rest, what equipment you want to use, all of that stuff just adds more stress, right. there's a lot of guesswork in there, and then particularly when we're looking at like different CrossFit style circuits or different stuff like that. You could look at the skills that you've gotta learn when you're doing that. So if you are doing like a kettle bell swing, you've gotta learn how to swing efficiently. Or if you're doing rowing in of all sprints, like you can get a lot faster and efficient with rowing in of all sprints, just by altering your technique. Whereas when you're doing this low intensity, steady state stuff that's different, you're working the heart rate, you're working the cardiac system, you're doing true cardio work, and therefore it's not about developing the physical skills as far as like, your movement stuff. It's more about when we're looking at low intensity, steady state, it's more about developing the cardio system to then help you when you're playing a game. And then the final big, huge reason why I think low intensity, steady say, can be a huge benefit for you as a rugby player is because it is low intensity. That means you're able to save yourself for your best efforts elsewhere. You can save yourself for your rugby performance. I've seen so many people, I've done it myself when I first got into this. Leave all their performance in the gym. They get, they push themselves too hard in the gym, and therefore when they get comes to game day, they're not necessarily tired, but they're not feeling their freshest, they're not feeling their best, they're not ready for the game. So especially when you're trying to get fitter in season, like low intensity can really help you save, not just for your rugby games, right? Not just for your games, but sometimes you have to push yourself quite a lot in your rugby training sessions, especially if you are battling it out with someone else for a starting position. Like going into that training session already fatigued and you explained to your coach, ah, it's cause I did this high intensity effort earlier. They're not gonna buy that. They're not gonna care. They're gonna say, all right, whatever you are not, you are not performing as well as this other guy. He's gonna start, right? Whereas if you are doing a lot more low intensity, steady state work, you're gonna feel fresh and you're gonna put all of your effort, not just if you are vying to start, but also to improve, right? If you are really fatigued, it's gonna be harder to improve whether your rugby sessions right. Whereas if you're feeling fresh, you're feeling focused, you're ready to exert yourself, you're ready to do your best in your rugby games and your rugby training really important. Not just that, but when we're looking at improvement, we're also looking at our other strength and conditioning sessions. Remember, it's called strength and conditioning. So if you're not working on your speed and your power and your strength, like. You, you're missing out on that first part of strength and conditioning. You are therefore, if you are, or if you are working on it, but you're actually too fatigued, particularly when it comes to speed and power, you are not gonna make the improvements. Right. I've seen so many people, full victim to this where that they try to do their speed work, but they not only limit their rest periods within that session, but they go into that session already pretty fatigued. And then, you know, they feel kind of tight. You're not gonna get faster by working at your speed, anything less than 95% of your absolute max. So you need to be fresh for these sessions. So it's a very good idea if you're still wanna work on your, want to work on your conditioning, to do your low intensity steady state work before that so that you are not fatigued. Same thing for power work. Same thing for strength work. If you are trying to do, Three efforts of strength work during the week, plus high intensity conditioning. You're just gonna really struggle to recover, struggle to improve at your strength work. because of that, because of the amount of fatigue that is caused by your higher intensity, uh, conditioning work. Whereas if you're doing low intensity you can do as much as you'd like, um, and still see your improvement. Within your power, your strength, your speed, because it's not that fatiguing, it's barely fatiguing at all. You should feel fresh, and that's, that's why the intensity is supposed to be real low. And again, that's gonna allow you to improve. You're gonna put more weight on that bar, which means you're gonna get stronger, you're gonna be able to move more powerfully. You're going to be. Doing better in your rugby sessions, and rather than feeling like you are dying every single session and never feeling like you're getting outta that recovery hole, and then you're asking me, oh, what's the best recovery methods? Actually the best recovery method is doing more efficient training and low intensity. East Steady state is definitely taking that box. So then when we look at a breakdown of high intensity, uh, interval training versus low intensity said estate, and you know, adding that, like what rugby looks like, it becomes basically a no-brainer that this should be part of your fitness work that you're doing for rugby, if not, like the most important part, right? Maybe, maybe not for everyone. But it definitely is a huge part of your conditioning and, and everyone that I take with Rugby Muscle Elite goes through some sort of stage of doing this low intensity steady state work, at some point. And you can find links to that stuff in the description below. Actually at this point, right? We're in the middle of the podcast. If you haven't already given a thumbs up on the YouTube video, if you haven't already subscribed on Spotify or given us a five star review, all those things would be massive. And also comment below, what's your favorite condition protocol that you use? and why is it not low intensity steady state? And if it is, let me know. Alright. All that good stuff. Helps promote the channel, helps get this info out to more rugby players. Raises the standard of what we're doing in the gym on the pitch to improve our rugby performance Now this comparison. I'll run through it real quick, even though you can see it for yourself or because some of you can't see it for yourself cause you're listening on the podcast. So high intensity interval training, you know, it's usually 10 to 30 minutes. I don't see a lot of high-intensity interval training go past 30 minutes because it is that fatiguing and if it does, you're gonna feel rough the next day. That's. That's not gonna, you know, it's not comparable to the length of rugby, which is 80 minutes, right? So sometimes you can do like, and what attracts a lot of people to high intensity interval training is how it's over fairly quickly compared to low intensity steady state, right? But that doesn't prepare you. For an 80 minute game, whereas if you are getting in an hour, 80 minutes, you could even go, I've put here up to two hours. It really does depend on the modality and, you know, your, your current fitness levels. I wouldn't recommend your very first low intensity steady state run be two hours because yes, you will feel sore the next day because of that. Even then, actually maybe it wouldn't because you'd go slow enough that it wouldn't, no, you'd still feel it cuz it would be a lot of weightbearing for a long time and it would end up being mostly walking, but still, you get my point, right? You build up to 120 minutes, you build up that aerobic system and therefore it would give you a lot better transfer to the length of a rugby game. And then looking at the energy system worked, high intensity interval training is mostly work in the anaerobic lactic. There will be some aerobic in there, but it'll be mostly anaerobic lactic because you'll be constantly grasping for air. You'll work the aerobic system as you recover. But you just recover once. Right? When you're in it, you're working the anaerobic lactic system that, that middle intensity, or that it's fairly high intensity, but not the top 5% that we're after. That's what a rugby game is, that alactic system, that top 5% of anaerobic. Stirs, or your top 5% of your complete output. When you're carrying, you're not carrying, you know, your top 20%, you're carrying as hard as you can basically every time. That's alactic, that's not your lactic system. That's a, a, a, a separate one. Same thing for when you are lifting heavy weights. As heavy as you can, you are going as hard as you can, not quite lactic. And then, In rugby, most of your time is just recovering from that using your aerobic system, and therefore, when you're doing low intensity, steady state, again, it's gonna prepare you better for rugby because it is also working that aerobic system. Then we're looking at like practical stuff, right? The day after a high intensity interval training, you're gonna be sore and fatigued mostly. Maybe that day of your feel for soren fatigue, like that could increase appetite. It just could make you feel not as good. And that's not good, right? If you want to incorporate a lot of these sessions, whereas said, state, you should be fine. You should be fine to work strength the next day. You should be fine to do anything the next day. Sometimes if you're doing a really long run and you, you're not prepared for it, or you're doing a new method that you haven't done for a while, the muscles might feel sore. Yeah, that can happen. Um, full disclosure, like I'm, I'm not trying to be like Mr. Longton, steady state. There's nothing wrong with it. Like I'll still say sometimes after it, you can feel a little bit sore if you're do, if you are working a novel system, but, and you haven't built up to it properly. Sessions per week. High intensity interval training. Probably gonna get max too, like especially if you're doing strength work. I don't see how you would do more than that. In fact, with strength work, I don't see how you would do that at all, unless you're doing it at the same day as your strength work. And again, are you getting the best bang for your buck with all of that stuff? Low intensity, you could do up to six. Uh, you could do more. It's just how much free time you've got to do it, right? I think l steady state is, is, is going to really accommodate you quite well for this because you can just get more and more and more work in and that accumulates over our time, over time, and you get more and more work in without that fatigue cost, convenience factor. Obviously I've already said that before. You just. Go and do it when you're, when you're talking about your low intensity steady state, whereas with high intensity interval, you've gotta get to the gym. You gotta set up, you gotta find out the protocol. You gotta maybe set up the intervals on a timer or on your watch, just a little bit less convenient. Um, whereas low intensity, steady state is super convenient. Just set it up and you just go, I want you to keep going. That's it. Like that's the only thing that makes it easy for you to go. And then we're looking at the transfer to rugby. You know, high intensity interval training. I don't just don't see the big transfer because you're so fatigued. So you're not working on your sprint, you're not working too much on your skills because you're not improving your skills because you're doing all of it in a fatigue state. If you want to improve it a skill, you do it when you're fresh. Um, Low intensity, steady state. Again, not necessarily the the biggest as far as like rugby specific, but that work in that aerobic system will support your rugby. Fitness will make a huge difference to your game if you continue to do low intensity, steady state over a long period of time. You will see the improvements after at least, I mean, after no more than maybe like a month. You'll see some improvements after a long period of time that a few months, all of a sudden, like you will not believe the difference. It can be night and day when you do this work. So, They have it. Go run. This should be, and we'll build the bulk of your rugby specific fitness because the better your aerobic system, better everything else is. Yes. It's not fancy. Yes. It's not intense. So you're not pushing yourself, you're not making yourself too tough, but you are making yourself a hell of a lot fitter. And then you're also allowed to save yourself. Pushing yourself too hard for the, in, you know, the, the strength work, the power work, your speed work, the rugby work, all of that stuff allow then can get the majority of your, you know, your, your high intensity focus and your high intensity efforts can go towards that, which is going to make you a significantly better rugby player. Final piece of practical advice with this, it, it definitely doesn't have to be a run, right? Sometimes, uh, you can just go to the gym, you can use the bike, or you can use an elliptical. I used to shit on the elliptical. I used to say it was terrible. But actually, you know, it, it can save you a lot of impact and help you get into that heart rate zone fairly easily, and therefore help you be aerobically fit very easily. And then as long as you're doing sprints outside of it, you know. Just playing rugby, you're gonna see huge difference in your game. Sometimes it can take a little bit of time to see you on the pitch, but the benefit will be huge. That wraps up this video podcast. Thank you guys so much for watching. Go do your low intensity steady state work. Don't skimp on it because it's boring or because it's not hard or because it's, you know, any other reason. Okay, go do it. It makes a huge difference. I've seen people. Revolutionize like and I, I don't like use that word, lightly revolutionize their rugby performance because of their low intensity, steady state work that they've done. Go give it a try for yourself. If you want to give it a try with me, you'll find the links to the way to work with rugby muscle in the description below. If you want to just support the podcast, five star reviews really do make a big difference. And comments on the YouTube video. Also make a big difference. So again, comment your favorite fitness protocol, comment if you do low intensity, steady state, or comment any questions that you have in the comments below, and I'll, I'll make sure I get to answering them. Thank you guys so much for watching. see you in the next one.