welcome everyone. This is our May Live q and a edition of the Rugby Muscle podcast. I'm your host, is always tj. I'm a strength and conditioning specialist. Who works with amateur rugby players all over the world. also a certified nutritionist. So we try and give this whole rounded approach when we look at rugby muscle. And if you have any questions pertaining to any of that stuff, today is your chance to ask those questions and get them answered live. If you have any questions and you are not watching on the live stream, still pop them into comments and they will go through to the June q and a. Uh, people miss that. I think. They think, uh, they've missed a live q and a and then they don't bother an asking a question, and then because they don't ask that question, it just gets lost in the, in the ether. I dunno. It just gets lost and then the questions never come up. So if you have any questions, can implore you, put them in the, uh, put 'em in the comments below, especially on the YouTube channel. But also, I believe this is streaming to the Facebook group as well. So if you wish to ask questions there, that's also fine. I think on the Facebook group, you can even ask 'em anonymously. Um, which is kind of weird. You don't, I wouldn't encourage you to do that. Like, it's all good. We're all mates here. You don't have to be anonymous. Um, It's just about getting better as a rugby player. So, um, ways that you can support the podcast. Make sure that you are, um, hitting the thumbs up button on the YouTube channel. Make sure you're subscribed on the YouTube. Make sure you're subscribed on whichever podcast platform you use. And, I like the Spotify's five stars that, that's, you guys have been doing a really good job of hitting those five stars. I really do appreciate it. But, um, If you, if any of you that are listening on Apple Podcasts, feel free to hit that five stars and actually type up a quick review, cuz that also bumps up the, the feed in other podcast streams. Although it looks like, from what I can tell, Spotify has really taken over in the world of podcasts. So I know a lot of you, uh, I mean we're getting a lot of new listeners from that, but I know a lot of you don't use Spotify, so, If you could go to Apple Podcast and hit a five star review and just type up a few words that would mean the world to me. Thank you so much. And now without further ado, we'll get into. uh, the questions that are on the live feed first, because those will get priority. And there's also a bunch of questions that I've got, actually there's only three, I think this week that I've got lined up from the feed on the YouTube channel and the community tab. So we'll start by getting into the first question on the live, I dunno why it says Facebook user rather than just whoever this is. In fact, I'm gonna quickly look who it is. It's Ian. What's up Ian? Um, he says, how do you get over losing the season ending final by not me knocking on over the trial line. Oh my goodness. In the 82nd minute to lose 30, 24 after coming back 24, Neil at halftime. Now there is two uh, ways I would look at getting over this final number one. right? Is looking back and saying, okay, like, you know, looking back and then looking forward, those are the two different ways. So if we look back, right, we say, okay, this person knocked it on over the try line. Is that the reason that we lost the game? No, we were 30, we were 24 knee down at halftime. Like that's, that's, you're already up against it. You, that one instance of knocking the bull on over the try line is not what's caused this. The, the caused this loss. The fact that you've conceded 30 points has caused this loss. Right. You needed that. Try to win it. Yes. It's heartbreaking. Yes. It's a really frustrating situation, but, No, like, you know, you, you, you, but like it's all the, the, the, you're already trying to recover from a, a bad situation. That bad situation's got nothing to do with knocking the ball on over the try line. Right. There's so many things, it's like the same thing when I see people always blaming the reff and one ref decision, and it's like the game is over 80 minutes long to put it down to one thing is, is kind of ridiculous. Right. And that's, you know, that's the way the sport is. It's the way any sport is, right? It's judged on. It, it's, the outcome seems to hinge on very small, pivotal moments, but actually, It's not, those are just the moments that we notice, right? There could have been five moments in that game where there was a two-on-one that no one really saw that could have been easily, uh, recovered for, you know, or converted for a try. There could have been moments where, uh, you know, in a, in a try that you conceded where there was a mis tackle or, or not, maybe something not as obvious as that. Maybe something where there were three people gathered around the ruck and they chose not to get into the defensive line so that the, uh, So that the, uh, attacking team end up having numbers and scoring a try. There are so many little things that go unnoticed that it's silly. Just to, to reflect on the one, the, the few things that you do notice and. Not only is it silly to reflect on those things and say that's, you know, that's, and feel bad about them, but it's also foolish to say that those are the only reasons you lost that game. Um, then you also can, like, we can look back even further, right? We can look back to all the other instances and unknown instances in that game, but you can also look back to, okay. Have, have we all prepared as best we can as a group, right? So that's like 25 other people for months leading up to this final. There are probably few things that you could do better, which would've again, given you a better chance of winning this final at the same time. Right? You, you, you may be as prepared as possible and you're comfortable with, okay, we got as good as we could get. And we still lost. That's okay. Now we look forward and we look back and we, and, and we look forward and we say, okay, um, what can we do better? What can we improve upon? What were the training mistakes? What were the things that we could improve upon? Not talking about not dropping the ball over the line. We're talking about have we had good attendance at practice? Have we been focused for the full duration of practice? Have we showed up to practice week after week, month after month with individual things that we wanna work on? That's a, that's a huge area that I think a lot of people, uh, miss out upon is try not to practice and say, okay, I'm gonna just work on my left-handed, passing in, in training. And so you put yourself on the left-hand side of the PIP so that you have to constantly give those left-handed passes. Don't hide away from your weaknesses. Work on your weaknesses. Maybe it's that you've never been lifted in the line, or you're not a regular line jumper. Put yourself in there and become a regular line out jumper or a harder carry. Put yourself up for more carries. Put yourself into positions where you can improve in training and. you will get better, right? Have things that you've gotta work on, and that means that you don't even necessarily have to have done something wrong in the previous season to work on that. You've just got weaknesses or holes in your games or areas of your game that you want to improve, and so you go forward and go, okay. We got to the final, we lost by one score that we could have even got. Now I'm going to go forward to this next season and we're all gonna work on, you know, all these different things. We're gonna be so much better that this other team, if they are at the same level, we're gonna fucking wipe the floor with them. Um, that's what I would say to getting over a. a, a loss like that because, you know, it's one thing losing to that team and it's one thing having a real good competitive match. Now, another thing, knowing that you are probably gonna meet a team of that standard again and being even more prepared, right? Every, like, it's a continual game. I if this person is retiring forever, that you could still learn lessons from that and move forward to whatever other pursuits you do with your life. But I would say if, if you're still continually playing rugby, if you're still playing rugby, it's a continual improvement. The, the end of the season isn't the end of like, that's, that's not it. That's not just like, it's like a, there's a famous. Or famous. There's quite a viral clip of a NBA guy going about, I think he's in the nba, nba, and he's talking about failure. And he was saying about, you know, do you, uh, ask for a raise every year that you, from your job? You know, chances are no. But does that mean you've succeeded or failed? You know, who knows? It's all on a spectrum. And just because a rugby season has a hard stop, right? Doesn't mean that that's the end. Like of that, like it's a, it's a. It's a continual, uh, evolution and continual improvement. All right. Um, we will go to one of the preloaded questions before answering, actually, speaking of which, sorry, before I wrap that question up, uh, the, we will be getting, I did see that one of the preloaded questions is an off-season question, so maybe I'll get into that. Uh, next, actually, yes, I will. um, where is that preloaded question? Uh, this one. So here, this person says, in terms of off season conditioning, is it best to do hypertrophy, then strength block, or a blend of both strength and hypertrophy at the same time, and then focus on power later in preseason. Okay. So first and foremost, I will have a off-season, bit of a off-season guide, video ideas video coming out within the next week or so. So keep an eye out for that. But my overall summary of this stuff is that I think you should still, your off-season, your your like is, is almost a default to where people just say, okay, now I'm just gonna get huge and I'm just gonna lift weights every day. I'm not sure if that's the best approach. Right. And, and even with this one, right? This person has just spoke about, do I do hypertrophy and then strength this? You are not a power lifter. Um, and you're not a bodybuilder. So we're not, those aren't the main focuses. They are a component to rugby, strength and conditioning. And there are a component that if you train. In with, in the weight room three, you know, even two times a week, you're gonna get most of your improvement out of doubling that. So going from two weight sessions to four weight sessions isn't gonna give you anywhere near double the improvement. but it's gonna cost you double the amount of time. So that's something that you've gotta consider, right? Yes, you've got more time in the off season, two lift weights, but you've also got more time to do conditioning. You've got more time to do, uh, power work. You've got to more time to do speed work. You've got more time to really work on your movement, potentially go to a field with a buddy and spend time working on your skills. As I said in the previous question, think about if you. you know, you had been asked, or you, you have been add, you added a fourth session onto a three day weight regime, right? How much extra gains would you expect to get? I'll let you answer that question, right? Compared to if you act, if you switched from you, you kept your three day weights, right? But you added in one skill day per week, and you spent 40 minutes to an hour just working on your skills. And you did that for 12 weeks, how much better would your skills be? And then you take those two scenarios, how much better a rugby player would you be with either of those? Something to think about right now as far as doing, uh, strength and hypertrophy at the same time, or hypertrophy and then strength. You're kind of always doing both, especially as a natural athlete, as a spec, as as a athlete that is looking for hypertrophy and strength as a small factor in your overall performance. And so what I would say is like, you, you were just, I, I think you're kind of training them both at the same time. I would just start lighter and gradually build those loads throughout your three or four month off season. Right? So your, your 12 to 16 weeks, I would start fairly lighter just to give the tissues a rest, just to give yourself a rest from all the impact that you are doing potentially. Um, Start higher reps and you knew gradually increase that load, you'd increase that load in terms of like absolute load, right? So if you're benching, I don't know, 70 kilos, you would, you know, you, that load is, uh, the beginning of pre-season, uh, off-season, that load is gonna slowly increase just because you get stronger. But also I would increase the ab, the relative load. Uh, yeah. So what you would be doing is, rather than doing 10 reps or start using, maybe you start your off season on 15 reps on the lighter days or 12 reps or whatever, over time, I would slowly work down to like, you know, six to eight reps on the, even on the lighter days. So you would do one. So if you were doing heavier day in lighter day, you would start at maybe like six to eight reps on the heavy days and 15 or so reps on the lighter days. and you would work that slowly down to three, you know, two to three reps on the heavy days and six to eight reps on the lighter days. And that therefore you are, you know, you're constantly increasing that load, therefore, uh, pushing yourself strength-wise, but also you're increasing that load, which should also lead to some hypertrophy. Um, and then you can even go heavier than that. Um, as far as like just doing one heavy day and one power day as you get into preseason. Now, power is an interesting one that you asked about because power is not necessarily just built. Yes. It's mostly built, you know, with that explosive movement in that low re ranges. But you also want to do some level of like accommodation work whereby you work in. 10 to 20 reps of jumps at a low level just so you get that movement down and your, your tissues get used to firing together so you can jump efficiently or you can bound efficiently, or you can hop efficiently or you can throw a medicine ball and just keep that repeated power. That stuff can be done right at the beginning of off season. Like there's no, nothing to say that you, you don't need, like you have to take time off of that. If you were to train power, like, you know, month one of pre of off season. Not train it for another two or three months and then go straight into preseason. Yeah, that would be a waste of time because you would've lost those power gains. But if you continually keep it moving and keep it progressing throughout offseason, I think you could kick preseason, firing, and then you, you know, potentially you don't need to do all your power work anymore because you're expressing that power in rugby and it won't drop off. same thing for speed, right? If you're someone that's slow, and same thing for over any component in the off-season, if you've got a glaring weakness, like take your time to address that weakness in the off-season and it will pay off. Like you don't just have to work speed in pre-season. You could spend three or four months working on your speed in the off season if you are glaringly slow and actually, um, you know, then hit preseason and you're faster than ever Now. Actually thinking about that, like, right, you probably, a lot of people listen to this like need to work their condition or could be fitter. So again, the, the common thing to say is, oh, we've gotta, you know, work weights and get bigger and get stronger. You are not going to necessarily massively speed up that process. By adding in an extra, you know, 25% of extra work or, or even doubling your work, right? You're still not gonna progress significantly faster. But if you replace those extra sessions with more conditioning, with more aerobic conditioning, you might hit pre-season fitter than ever and really be like pushing the boat. Because another thing with off season that you must consider is that if you are not doing any conditioning in your off season, you're going to regress because. A lot of amateur players in particular, like their Saturday game day and their Tuesday training, their hard training, that's the majority of their conditioning. Now, if you're in the off season, you lose that opportunity to work on your conditioning. So not only are you, you are not working a new conditioning in the, in the gym or, or out, you know, with your strength and conditioning program, but you're actually missing out on all of the, the. Side benefits of conditioning that you would've got from your rugby. And so you're gonna regress with that and you are putting on weight. It's a recipe for disaster, so make sure that you are getting in your conditioning and in fact, a lot of you that could work on your condition, that might even need to be a focus because if you're already progressing your strength work and your your hypertrophy work, because it takes months, years to get better at. There's no need to up that and to try and force feed yourself. Cause all that's gonna happen is you're gonna put on fat. Um, because you're, you're so focused on trying to bulk and you're gonna waste your time. So I think rather the, I'll explain this more detailed in the off-season video that's coming out, once it's camera stops flying around, um, and. that will give me a, that will give you a more coherent like guideline to follow. But the overall approach here is don't think of off season as just hitting the weights and just getting bigger and stronger. It should be all the components that make you a better rugby player. This camera, like, I can't use my hands when this camera cuz it just flies up. Oh, it doesn't now. Alright, whatever. Hopefully that answers that question for you. Oh, we have another question on the live one. Um, I'm gonna find out who this is as well. I dunno why it says Facebook user instead of, um, the name. Uh, ah, Sophie, uh, she says, Hey, tj, previous rugby player here worked with you for a bit yet. Uh, now I'll turn BJJ white belt. I'm gonna start competing. Woo. Uh, maybe you noticed that cause of the, the t-shirt here. I'm actually competing on Sunday as well, so I'm looking forward to it. Uh, I've found strength power reps to be rel Yeah. Uh, so, oh, what would you say the best bang for your area of training focus would be? Uh, for a BJ g a white belt, it would be training BJ j um, I, you know, this is something, so there's, there are massively, um, like there are huge carryovers from, or, or not carryovers similarities between BJ j and um. Rugby training, particularly if you're looking to compete, like they're both focused on like explosive, powerful movements that make the difference. But they're also all completely fueled by having a really strong, robust aerobic system, particularly when you're looking at competing because people think, ah, a bj j matches no more than five to 10 minutes, but you in a, in a competition, you're doing three or four of those, or even more. and you're doing them, you know, it's even the same thing for sevens. Maybe BJJ is a lot more like sevens where it's, you know, explosive bouts that are fueled by the aerobic system. Um, so, uh oh, she follows this up by saying, uh, do you think training outside of rolling over, oh, 10 hours a week or around 10 hours a week is necessary? Looks like you're killing nogi. So I would, um, again, this is, this is so similar to rugby in that if you are new to a sport, the best thing you are gonna like the most, the thing that's holding you back the most, and this is what I say to new guys, to rugby. So if you are new to rugby, like replace this with what I'm saying about BJ J with rugby, the the new you are to a sport, the biggest thing that's gonna hold you back is your proficiency at that sport, right? You're not going to circumvent. learning the sport by getting stronger, more powerful, more explosive, more mobile, any of that stuff. That stuff can give you a little bit of an X factor and can help you progress faster. But you still need to go through that ladder of learning and feeling the movements in rugby, it's learning and, and watching the plays and how a play develops, et cetera. Um, and so, What I would suggest for a lot of people, and this is, this is not a thing that you should say if you are running a company, specializes in strength and conditioning, but a lot of people, your strength and conditioning, especially your strength, if you're strong enough, should be put on maintenance for the first year or so that you are trying to learn this new sport because, um, all of your physical improvements are going to be technical adjustments. They're going to be proprioceptive, they're gonna be feeling how to roll better or in a match feeling how to, you know, carry better and, and adjust and hit a rock better or tackle better and complete a tackle better, or get into a turnover because that's a completely foreign movement right in, in Brazil and jujitsu, there's so many different completely foreign movements that. like rather than just say talk about techniques, it's more about feeling it and how you feel when you're under attack or how you feel when you're gonna be swept and what to do. That stuff is only developed by playing the game, right? And so the more time you can spend doing that, the better. Now what you would still need to do is not make The mistake that I ma made when I first started doing Jiu-Jitsu was. Uh, whereby I basically stopped lifting because it got really boring to me. Um, and that's because I, you know, I got burned out on lifting. I'd spent two years, having two years, something like that, having retired from rugby, just lifting. And I was so burnt out and I was so happy that I found Jiujitsu. But then that made my lifting really boring, and it was only after, it was only like pandemic times where I, like, I got a, a new enthusiasm for the compliment of lifting and, uh, jiujitsu. Now for you guys it could be lifting and rugby. They really do compliment each other well, but you can't really. like say that more lifting is gonna, like more, lifting on top of just the base that's necessary is going to increase your ability to, uh, play rugby. Likewise, just getting like, like, again, it's the same thing I would say for Juujitsu. Get like you only need two sessions a week to get stronger, more powerful, more explosive, even bigger to an as to a certain aspect. Right. because these games come on so slow. So that's all you would need to do. That's what I would do. That's what I currently do for my Juujitsu. I train twice a week in the gym and then the rest of my stuff is spent doing juujitsu. Now it's different for rugby players because you've only got your, your. Two sessions a week as a team, right? To, to improve work on those skills. So Sophie here is, is rolling 10 hours a week, right? You're probably not gonna have that ability, the ability to do that as a rugby. So then you look at, okay, what can I still do? All right, I can go for a longer run or I can work on my skills on my own as far as like passing, or I can yeah, really work on my condition or I can work on my speed, right? But it's not necessary just to think I've got more time. All I'm gonna do is lift more and more and more. um, now bang for your buck area of train focus. Yeah. That would be doing the sport. Doing the sport as off as much as you can. Um, you are not just gonna do the sport as intense. Like you're going to make that approach that I said for the player who was getting over the, in the previous question, it was getting over, knocking the ball over the trial load your. and I have the approach that it's okay to, to, to you come in with things that you want to work on. It's okay to mess up because you're working on these new things. You're going to mess up because you're working on a new thing. If you only work on the things that you are really solid at, you're gonna hold yourself back. Same thing that so many rugby players do, where they play to their strengths and they never, they hide their weaknesses at training because they're afraid of showing their weaknesses, potentially being dropped or just making a mistake in front of everyone. You, you can only, you can only get better if you make mistakes because that's you exposing yourself to areas of weakness. So like shed that approach or shed that mindset, right. Be okay with losing a lot. Be okay with like, I'm a purple belt, and there are times where a white belt, uh, kind of might tap me because I put myself in really terrible positions because I wanna practice those positions. Or I put myself, I try something brand new and I don't just abort it because it's not working. I, I really try and tr like, feel how it's supposed to feel with my new techniques. So hopefully that isn't too much of a bjj, nerdy, uh, question or answer that those that aren't doing juujitsu, that those that rugby players can see those parallels there. And I, I really do think that there're huge parallels and actually, uh, there are so much parallels that I have two people that I work with that are juujitsu athletes. Actually one judo, one juujitsu athlete. So the para like, and that's why I still do what I do and train how I train. I basically use the rugby muscle templates to train for myself as a juujitsu athlete. Um, and I just keep everything really to maintenance. So yeah, no more than two weight sessions a week. It, uh, are really necessary. But I would get in your two sessions a week just to make sure that you are slowly still building that strength, building that power, and addressing areas of weakness that aren't necessarily, uh, I touched on in Juujitsu, like full range of motion, right? You're not in jujitsu. It's lots of like jerk in motions and, and small explosive, but not full contractions. So that's what I would work on. Take a pause for the course. If you are joining us on the live, this is, uh, Been quite fun so far. I'd love those thumbs up. Uh, particularly on the YouTube cuz that sends it out to everyone. But, um, thumbs up. Any comments, any questions? I think we've still got another one here on YouTube to get through. And then one more of the preloaded questions. We are already 30 minutes in. Can you believe it? Uh oh. Yeah. Thank you for Sophie for saying I'm killing Logie. I'm doing all right. It's now my sport for fun. It's not my sport for. Um, glory. All right, g Gik, Bek. How would, I'm, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, that's how I would say it. GK Bek. If, if that's wrong, type your name in phonetically in the comments if you're still here. Um, and I'll, I'll, I'll pronounce that better. He says, I'm 20, almost 21 and restart playing rugby after a four year stop. Welcome back. Great decision. I'm 167 centimeters, 2 65 kg. Do I believe I should weigh more to be competitive? Most of rugby player play at my height? A bigger, uh, you'd need to be stronger. like you can always be stronger. Um, I wouldn't necessarily focus on just getting as big as possible. This is a mistake that a lot of people make and it's kind of one I've already alluded to and I, I sort of harp on about at this point is like, gaining muscle is a, oh, here we go. Okay, perfect. And I pronounced that Italian even before I saw you as Italian. So shout out to you mate. You could be bigger, but like, the main focus here is being strong and like those two, like getting big and getting strong are so intertwined that sometimes, like it's always gonna be on a scale. And sometimes separating 'em is, is a fool's errand. Um, like getting bigger is gonna help you get stronger and getting stronger is gonna help you get. Bigger. So you just focus on doing those two, like lifting heavy enough that's gonna get you bigger. You don't have to work a hypertrophy rep range. You can just really focus on getting stronger and eating a lot and hopefully gaining something like, uh, a kilo to maybe two kilos a month. Seeing that scale slowly go up and making sure that your body fat doesn't go up too high, you'll be able to judge this, right? But it's a long patient process that you need to go through. But if you gain a kilo a month, that's 10 kilos. You know, 12 kilos, sorry, in a year. That's a lot right now. One kilo in a month or two kilos over two of eight weeks of hard work. And you only see your, your, your scale guard up by two kilos. You know, it's not overly impressive, but that's, that's a realistic amount, especially when you put it in the context that I just said there. Um, and if you are lifting heavy enough and you're, you are really pushing it, then you're gonna get stronger. You can also then give yourself time to get more explosive, do all that sort of things. But I don't like, um, I don't like recommending like, certain. I don't even like recommending how much you should lift because it is all relative. It's all about how you play rugby, right? You need to get strong enough. You need to get big enough. But where that is, is like, you know, who knows cuz like a lot of people would say chess and Colby has to be bigger, right? Or, uh, Harry Randall, right? He's tiny, but the way he plays. It doesn't need to get bigger. He's still really effective at how he plays. Now, is he working again strong? I'm sure he is, but he's also probably still working on getting more explosive and faster at the same time as well. And so when you realize that like, because size is a thing that you see, right? Every time you see a person, you see their size, right? Anytime you go up to a training session, you see your teammates that look big, you're like you. You see that immediately, but you, but what? takes a lot more time to consider is actually how does each individual player play rugby? Some people are big and they really don't use their size. Some people are a lot smaller and they're really difficult to bring down because they're really aggressive. So I would put, and that's more important than the size. It's just less obvious until you watch people play Game off the game. Off the game. Right. that, and that's, that's way more important. And that's, you know, that's what rugby is about. It's about being a better rugby player, not being bigger or being stronger. This, uh, gym culture, this gym, bro culture that is, is starting to get bigger and bigger and bigger with, I think it's with TikTok and Instagram, right? Encourages size over everything and, and strength over everything and all this stupid stuff, but like, Those are 10 to 32nd clips that don't appreciate the years that go into buildings or, or years and genetics, right? That go into building size and strength. You might be someone that just cannot get big, um, as far as like getting really, really huge, and that's okay. Just get as big as you're comfortable with and, and play it your best. Take one more sip. The coffee's finished, but the water's still here. Uh, with that also with, after answering all of those questions, something I should have said for all of those is go to rugby muscle.com/team. check out team rugby muscle, because I do think that is the solution, right? You know, you're gonna be doing enough strength work with the, it's a, it's a, sorry, I need to explain it. Team rugby muscle is, my strength and conditioning program is year round. Um, working on all aspects to improve you as a rugby player is delivered through a app, which is getting worked on by the day. It's. Now at a point where it's seamless. So all you do, every time you step into the gym is open up the app, you figure out what, or you, you see what the work is for that day and you take care of business. Sometimes I'm more, uh, I'd say less often than you'd think. You are not actually going into the gym. You're going and doing some conditioning work, or you are having a day off and you can enjoy yourself and you can just watch rugby. Um, ooh. That's a late answer to that per that question from before. Uh, if you no, another big bang for your buck for you are someone new to Rpy or you're new to a new sport, watch that game. Watch that sport as often as possible, right? That like learn what the people at the high level do so that you can then try and emulate that when you go, especially for rugby, but also definitely for juujitsu. Like spending time doing that again actually could give you more bang for your buck than, um, than. just doing an extra strength session. So with team rugby muscle, you don't have to go to the gym more than two times a week. But we set, I think it's, it's anywhere between two to five total sessions for the week. You can repeat those. You also have, uh, skill work in there. You have, uh, complete guidance on how to structure everything. And every three weeks there are small, subtle changes to the program. Every six weeks, the program. We'll change out some lifts. We'll progress, it's completely progressive throughout the year so that you never have to think about it, right? You know that you're constantly improving in all areas with certain focuses of rugby, and therefore you are gonna be a, you know, revolutionize the way you play. Even for Juujitsu, like I say, I run a very similar program for myself. I would say team rubbing muscle would be a perfect option for you as well. You would just potentially not have to worry about the speed work. and you would just recover. But for, for rugby players, I've tried to make it as much of a no-brainer as possible that this is the program that you should do, and you'll find it in the, I'll put it in the description below after this, or you can just go to rugby-muscle.com/team, and that is where you will find the ultimate Rugby Strengthening Conditioning program that lasts the year. Now, you'll also find that program, particularly if you're on the podcast, Actually, wherever you wanna be listened to this, you'll find this program, um, at a cheaper price than it's ever been. And that's because I've been really doing some thinking about, um, the amount of times I've received correspondence from people that are really keen to get in on the program. But just say, you know, the, the amount of times I've heard the phrase just this year, uh, we all know these times are hard or times are tough and I feel like. If I'm trying to, if I'm making this a difficult decision for someone to join Team Rub muscle, I'm doing it wrong. And so we've reduced the price by, uh, 30 or 40% on the monthly subscription. So go check that out. Um, sign up and I'll see you guys on the inside. Next question. Felipe says, opinion upstairs for rugby conditioning, uh, between the 120 to 160 B bpm. Uh, I would say if it's static and you're doing one 60, that's way too high. Way, way, way too high. I wouldn't go above one 40. Um, uh, it can be good, particularly if you're someone that's, um, like struggling to put on leg masks, just getting extra. Well, you can see this on from two lenses. If you're someone that needs to get more work through the legs, like. you can do a, you know, some, some heavy leg work and, and, um, work on your leg hypertrophy and then also add in extra, uh, stairs for the conditioning, just to push them for, uh, for more work. Is that going to, uh, you know, and the theory would be okay, then you're building up your slow twitch fibers in the legs, particularly, um, whilst doing your aerobic conditioning. That could help. You could also suggest that doing that is just gonna be too much and you're not giving your legs a chance to recover from the heavy, you know, strength work. You know, your squats, your rds, your lunges, your, your heavy work that you are doing to improve your, your leg strength and power for rugby is gonna be compromised by the fact that you are doing stairs for your aerobic conditioning. Now, it depends how hard you're going, but I would say probably not the best idea I would say. what? You know, if you go, if you look on the YouTube video or on the podcast for the, uh, most underrated rugby conditioning tool there is, or protocol there is, it's low intense spoiler alert, it's low intensity, steady state. It's difficult to do stairs at a significantly low enough intensity or a low enough intensity that it then, you know, It, you get the benefits of that low intensity, i e aerobic work, I e a more efficient heart pulmonary system, I e better aerobic conditioning that fuels everything else that you're doing. And also, on top of that, even if you do stay in that range, it's, it is the reason that I sometimes will, uh, tell people to do, to do the to, to the elliptical, overgrow out for a run. I know it's ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, but I do tell people to do the elliptical overgrow out for a long run. Simply because doing a long run or doing the stairs as well would probably be go, would go under. This can end up giving you a level of muscular fatigue that is going to impact later sessions. The beauty of low intensity steady state work, the beauty of zone two work, the beauty of Q work conditioning is that it does not impact subsequent sessions, right? In theory, you should be able to do a solid. Low intensity, uh, uh, steady state session, and it can be running as long as your running slow enough, and it can be, it can be the stairs if you are doing them at a low enough intensity. The beauty of doing that stuff is that you could do an hour of low intensity, steady state work, get all the benefits of the conditioning, of the aerobic system, et cetera, and then go ahead even later in that day or the next day, and do some heavy strength work and not feel any negative sides from doing that. Right. Whereas if you do the condition you've suggested here where you're going up to 160 bpm, your legs are probably gonna be filling it that day, the next day and maybe even just systemically, you'll feel it a little bit fatigued and it'll be, and that will compromise your strength session. Therefore you get less out of that strength session, uh, for what is no extra benefit of that conditioning session. Okay. Final question here, uh, from the community tab on YouTube, Mary asks, do you have a mass gain, favorite mass gain shake, recipe, flavorwise, or certain fruits you add? Thank you very much. Uh, no. I like, I don't have favorites. I think favorites are, are, um, like I, I mean, I have favorites for two weeks and then I get bored of it because I've done it every single day for two weeks, and then I, I have to change it up. But overall, you want to, you wanna always con, be continually rotating so that you've, you're giving yourself like something new, something fresh. Honestly, I, I have no idea why this camera just keeps shooting up and now it's gone out. Where are we going? Here we are. We're back. So as far as shakes go, just keep rotating the flavors, keep rotating the, uh, the fruits, I'd say as tactically wise. Um, right. You probably have some staples of shakes now. Um, actually there are some staples that you, you must include on every shake that you have. Um, I have a shake basically every day. Now those things are going to be, Protein powder, but it doesn't matter what it is. Um, I'm not really bothered. Some sort of fruit and a good blender, maybe I'd also put spinach in there cuz you can put spinach into any shake and you just don't taste it. And obviously you get the benefits of having some leafy greens. That would be it. Now, me personally, I like to eat my shakes. Uh, I don't, I'll drink them if I'm on the run. Um, and I'll just put in a little bit more liquid, but I really like to eat them. I like to eat my food. I don't like to drink it cuz I am a man that could eat loaves of food forever. So like to, to really make it thick. So losing lots of ice. Now you would've two tactics here, right? So you've got two outcomes for this shape, or, or a spectrum, I would say actually, right? One outcome is as low a calorie as possible to keep you as full as possible. so that you can, you know, keep your calories in check. Then the other one is to get as many calories in as possible, um, so that you can, you know, not have to worry about eating more in other parts. And again, it's all gonna be on a spectrum in reality, right? The, to keep you fuller, um, and to keep the calories low. We're looking at more and more ice. We're looking at potentially more protein powder. We're looking at, um, berries, like dark berries like your, we're looking at, uh, strawberries. We're looking at blueberries, we're looking at dark berry mixes. Those sorts of things are going to really make the shake thick, particularly if you, you, you know, you, you. I would say 100% buy 'em frozen because again, you're getting a thicker shake, um, and you're not worried about them going off. Just helps with everything. Um, the darker the berries, the, the, the more, more likely is gonna be less antioxidants and. probably not gonna get more calories for that. Whereas if you go for the lighter fruits, right. On the other side of the coin where we're trying to get in the calories, we're looking at, you know, bananas, um, mangoes, um, uh, what else would that be in that I'd actually say bananas and mangoes for now off the top of my head, whatever fruit you like, the light of the fruit, usually the higher, I mean apples, but I don't put apples in the shake. Um, the light of the fruit. The more outside of berries, the more caloric they're gonna be, which isn't a bad thing, it's just the way it is. Um, you could also, if you are looking to like, get as many calories in for, for that shake as possible, as, uh, he said mass gain. We're looking at peanut butters, we're looking at nut butters, we're looking at, uh, potentially putting some honey in there or some syrup in there. All that stuff would be great. Uh, when I'm trying to get my calories as high as I can. Yeah, usually I'm, my shake is gonna be a couple hundred ca grams of, of bananas, a couple hundred grams of strawberries or some other berry. Um, and then I'll even put some banana on top because I, like I say, I eat my shake, so putting stuff on top is also always gonna help. So, some cereal on top, some maybe some granola. Again, if you're looking to, um, get in a lot of calories. Dark chocolate's always good to put on top, um, or even normal chocolate if you, again, putting in the calories, that sort of thing. But I don't really have a absolute favorite. But those, those are some ideas to get going. Um, maybe the milk that you can use can, can order the calories as well, right? So if you are using, um, al almond milk, that's always gonna be lowering calories. Or if you're just using water lowering calories, um, water's obviously gonna take away from the flavor unless you're using a vanilla. protein that then usually doesn't make too much of a difference. But a nice thick soy milk is my favorite, and again, bumps up the calories. All right. Woo. We've got time for one more question and we'll see if we can fit this in before the 50 minute mark. Felipe says, un play second row. Oh, he is a tool bastard. Uh uh. Why, uh, let's put this here. Let's add it to the. There we go. 1 98 centimeters, 102 kilos, 19 years old. Nice. Good stats mate. Would you recommend Jock fat or maintain weight or feel strong but not very fast? No, I would just work. Um, if I was you, I would again, rub muscle.com/team. I would work on your strength. I would probably maintain that weight. I'd look at maybe slowly even gaining weight. But also then working on your speed, working on your power, working on your strength. Um, again, if you feel, if you, if you feel strong or not very fast, that can be speed. So, you know, spend some time working on speed, which we'll do in team rugby muscle, but also spend time working on your conditioning. A lot of, um, forwards I notice are, you know, if you take them for one or two sprints as fast as they can. They're not too far off the backs at all, if not like keeping up with them and sometimes beating them. But the fact is a lot of fools will get through quite a lot of work, rucking and scrumming and, and doing all, you know, all that dog work. that they're just more gased so they don't feel, they don't have space or time to see the, the, the spaces to go on these sprinting runs. Whereas actually, if you just get fitter, that might give you a chance to express that speed even better. But I would say I wouldn't recommend dropping fat, uh, particularly as a 19 year old. I would just focus on like, you can drop overall body fat percentage just by getting more muscle. but you're not actually gonna like make a cut necessarily right as a second row. Like you just need to be big and strong. Uh, and as long as you can jump in the line out high, uh, well enough and you're gonna be fine. 102 kilos, no one's gonna have a problem lifting you. So I would just really work on, again, as explosive and as strong as possible and as fit as possible whilst potentially, you know, working more on speed. But I wouldn't, I would just make sure you're fueled enough. I wouldn't, I wouldn't get any lighter than 102 kilos. Um, but I mean, just, just saying that for that height. But again, it would depend on how you play. I just wouldn't make I off those recommended or off that information. I wouldn't necessarily look at. Uh, focusing on losing weight or losing fat, I would say the speed and the power, like working on that stuff is gonna have more bang for your buck than just losing, uh, some weight. And losing that weight is gonna potentially compromise some extra strength and power gains that you can make by making sure you're fueled enough for your training sessions. Okay, that will wrap up this fun edition of The Rubbing Muscle May Live q and a. Thank you guys so much for joining. If you've made it to the end of the podcast and you haven't given us a thumbs up, what are you doing? Give us a thumbs up. Um, this video will be re-uploaded so that it's all consistent because these live videos don't come up on the feed for some reason. It's also, obviously, you made it to the end of the podcast. If you listen on podcasts, give us that five star review. That really does help us out share the show with a teammate, a share rugby muscle with a teammate. That also makes a big difference. Um, that's how this, that's how we all grow together. That's how we all get better together. Um, I hope that that's the approach that you can make. I hope that you can, uh, listen to the st advice that I'm given, take it on board and really like, enjoy your game more. Um, play better rugby. Just enjoy your game more ha be more fulfilled because it's just, you get much a, a much better experience by playing better rugby, by doing the right things, not by just sacrificing and hustling, but by doing the most efficient, effective. Um, training, not wasting your time. Speaking of which, that's the Finishes podcast there. Thank you guys so much for listening and watching. I'll see you guys. The next one.