All right, so these moments I do want to see you doing. I do want to see more people doing these in the gym, especially rugby players because they are definitely effective to make you a better player. That's why they're in this list of underrated gym exercises for Rugby. All right, so what's going on everyone? TJ here from Rugby Muscle. Last week we did overrated gym exercises for rugby. This week we're gonna do underrated gym exercise. I wanna give it a bit more of a positive vibe in this video. I've also previously done, unconventional exercises, so it would go figure that there's a little bit of overlap here because, you know, if they're unconventional, they're probably underrated because you just, they're unconventional because you don't see them done in the gym very often, which means. If they're not seeing, if they're not done in the gym very often, that means they're kind of underrated. So there will be a little bit of crossover. I'm not going to have a deep dive on every exercise or, or completely guide you through how to do each movement, cuz some of them are bloody obvious. But, without further ado, let's get into it now before, actually I do get into it. First thing is first. These exercises are not here because of how good they are at mimicking the game of rugby. Right. Nothing mimics the game of rugby, like the game of rugby. You need to play rugby to get better at that game. We're in the gym to get better at the game, but we're in the gym. To get better at the game by improving our physicality, by improving our, physical ability to play the game. It's not by being as specific as possible. We're in the gym to look at outputs. We're in the gym to get faster, to get stronger, to do those things or to, increase those abilities to look at those. Outputs, those physical outputs will improve us as a player. And of course, we'll reference the rugby physical preparation pyramid because that is the outputs that you need to consider when you want to improve yourself as a rugby player. Now that doesn't mean that these movements are all like, completely generic. There are some specific, movements that are gonna not mimic the game of rugby, but give you a bit more benefit to rugby than a conventional gym movement or, something else that might be overrated. What we're gonna get into, in fact, and if I'm honest, I did these slides. I came up with these exercises a few days ago and actually someone decided that that's when they were gonna, mow their hedge or chop their hedge. And this real loud chainsaw was going on outside, so I couldn't record. So I'm now getting back to this video. and it's been a few days, so I've. We're gonna go through these together cause I've kind of forgotten what ones are there. But no doubt you're gonna learn some stuff. No doubt you're gonna find, one or two exercises that you can add to your program. Hey, if you enjoy this video at any stage, give it a thumbs up. If you, are listening on the podcast, of course, five star reviews are always helpful. You guys on the podcast are doing an amazing job. And you guys on YouTube are doing a really good job with a thumbs up. What I'd like to see is more comments. So if you can comment below, any exercise that surprises you or any exercise that you disagree with, or any exercise that you think is underrated that you don't see people doing that's you found beneficial for your rugby performance, I'd love to hear it now. Excise number one. It's sway work. So sway reaches are a fantastic movement for your rugby performance. Yes. They're on my top five unconventional movements, which I'll link in the information thing above and I'll put it in a description below. But they're also currently underrated cause I just don't see 'em done by basically anyone and I don't even see them, like being touted as an excise that you should be doing. These are like agility 1 0 1. If you've never done these before, then don't do anything else For agility, start doing this sway work. And if you're already really good and you're really good at stepping and you're really agile, you'll find that you're pretty good. But you can still extend that out and get. Better. Essentially what you're doing is you are, you are gonna, improve your ability to absorb and control force all the way as laterally as you can, in either hip. You're really trying to be able to not let your upper body dictate where your lower body goes. You're really trying to stay in control of that force that is going to help you when it comes to. Your rugby performance when you're stepping and you're moving from side to side because you're being manipulated not just by other people, but also by yourself. Because if you're sprinting in one direction, you wanna change direction, you're forced your body, you are going in one certain direction, and you, you have to stop that. You have to absorb that in the hips. The better you can absorb that in the hips, the better you are going to be able to change direction and step and,, beat an opponent. Not just this, but it also will help your mobility because it's gonna help like this. Absorption of force kind of helps with mobility and balance, not because you know, you get stretchier or you, you know, get a really good balance thing that doesn't exist. It's, it's because you get stronger because you're absorbing. Force is about strength and mobility is about strength. It's about being able to, hold yourself in these different movements. If you take yourself and just take a limp body, right. The limp body is going to get into positions that you can't, not because it's strong, it's not because it's more flexible, it's just because those parts are now unlocked. It's a neural thing cuz the body doesn't want you to go into positions where you are weak because it's gonna r it thinks you are gonna risk falling over or hurting yourself. So you have to demonstrate strength in that pos in those positions to be able to not just hold your balance and not fall over, but also reach new ranges of motion. And once you're able to do that, it doesn't just give you, like, it gives you obviously subconscious confidence because those unlock and that's something that you can't consciously do. But also it gives you your own confidence in yourself because then you're able to understand that, okay, I can, I can, I feel better. Like, moving side to side, you felt those like big stresses in your hips, putting you from one direction to the other or putting you really far laterally. Then when you start to play games like touch or any sort of, you know, rugby based games where you are trying to step, you go into those and you get start to practice more and more stepping, you actually get better at stepping by practicing it and seeing that, oh, actually I've improved at this ability, so I'm gonna keep doing it more. And it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy cuz you feel like you're getting better, which means you practice it more. And if you practice it more, then you definitely get. Better sway worker. I'm not gonna describe exactly what it is. You can see what it is on the video. Just be sure that your chest doesn't collapse when you're doing this movement and, and add it into your warmups, or as a superset with any lower body movement. Number two, we're looking at directional jumps. Now, I think this picture is a bad picture that I've selected to do it because it's a guy jump. It's Damian Mackenzie jumping straight up. same sort of thing as your, you know, improving your ability to, be agile and to step. But we are look now looking at, rather than building like that mobility and that coordination, that confidence, we're now building that raw power. Everyone does box jumps. We said box jumps were the overrated one for last week. And it's not because just jumping on a box is a terrible idea. It's just that it's unnecessary and by constantly just trying, trying to jump on a box, you're missing out on a lot of different other jumping movements that you can do that involve rotation, that involve lateral movement, or even like 180 degree turns. Those sorts of things should be in your program at some point, because when you play rugby, Right. You play on a 360 degree plane. You don't just run jump forward or jump up. You jump around or in all different directions and in fact, I guess lineup, jumpers jump up, but in oth otherwise your, it's not your ability to go up really high. It's your ability to go forward or left or right, or wherever. The threat is, or wherever the space is for you to run through. So the more powerful you can move into those directions, the better it's gonna be. And you do that by doing directional jumps. You also learn then to absorb the force with good land and mechanics. And again, your not gonna do this by just jumping up and down. You need to get your body to coordinate the land mechanics of, Hitting the ground from multi directions, right? If you're jumping at a 45 degree angle, if you are, or if you're stepping at a 45 degree angle, if you're landing on one foot, if you're landing, on two feet, if you're taking off on, you're in outside foot, if you're taking off on your inside foot, all these different things. Come naturally in a game of rugby because you just do it. You see what's happening. You, you try and move as fast as you can in the gym. You can be a lot more intentional and you can really coordinate that and teach, not necessarily teach your body how to move, but train that aspect so that when it comes to a game and you have different ways that you've got to move and you've got to do those explosively because you've trained those jumps, you're going to do them more efficiently. And again, I see lots of people in the gym jumping up and down on a box. I see some people jumping and doing broad jumps, but even that, I could have put that there as underrated cuz that's a directional jump. It's jumping forward. I never see people jumping from side to side. I never see people doing real, deliberate rotation jumps, and I think it is a criminally underrated movement that you should be doing in your program. Next I. This isn't underrated because no one ever talks about it, but it's underrated because even myself has said that, you know, you don't need to do barbell squats in the gym and you don't, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't ever do them. It doesn't mean that actually they've got no use. It doesn't mean that you should avoid doing them because I said that, and then you, and that reaffirms your bias that you don't kind, you don't really want to do 'em because you like, cuz they're hard. Right? You should do hard things in the gym. And you shouldn't avoid things because they're hard now. You don't necessarily see things that are difficult and think, okay, I have to do those things because they're hard, because, you know, you could hold your breath for as long as you can. That'll be difficult. Is it gonna improve your rugby? No. So there's a. A line there that needs to be addressed. And that's why a lot of us will say, oh, actually, you know, you don't need to be doing front or back squats. And that's true. However, the amount of people that can do back squats that don't is why this, the, the back squats and the front squats just in overall barbell squats have made this list. It's also much easier and simpler to set up in any gym. So if you're moving about, if you're going to different gyms or if you're only going to a commercial gym, more often than not in commercial gyms, the, even when they're packed, the spaces that are most, empty and the spaces that are the machines that are easiest to get access to or the places they're easiest to get access to, it's gonna be the squat rack. So why not take advantage of that and do some front and some back squats. Firstly, I would argue that they're overly technical, particularly when we're looking at like the power lifting variants. But in order just to get the strength benefit from doing a back squat. Yeah, it's, it's very, it's fairly easy to learn, and in fact, not only is it easy to learn, it's probably crucial to, for you to learn because getting down that movement pattern really well and really smooth with a heavy weight on your back again, is gonna help your ability to play rugby. It's also gonna give you a huge stimulus for the lower body. Yes, it, that stimulus does come with a big bit of fatigue, but you can do just a few sets of back squats and that's going to give you, you know, a, a bigger stimulus than doing multiple sets of other movements that might just. Kill your legs for later. sessions, like particularly rugby sessions or particular running sessions, you know, doing just a few sets of heavy front or back squats are gonna give you a big stimulus that you can carry over and get a good benefit from without giving you too much fatigue cuz you're doing it's, it's an overall more of a volume and intensity management thing than it is like, let's just change out front or back. Squats. Unlike deadlifts. Deadlifts, no matter what, There are times in your program where you're gonna have to, that you can't do them because you've just got too much. It's just too much fatigue front and back. Squats can pretty much be included in any program. I'd say it's, you know, the stimulus that it gives you is definitely worth the fatigue, now, one of the biggest reasons I think that they're underrated, and I think that a lot of people don't do them, is to say, you know, it hurts my knees. To me, that is, that's, that's not how back squats work or even front squats. It's not how barbell squats work. They don't hurt your knees. You doing them poorly is what hurts your knees. You've got to be able to move well, and if you move well, you can get a real deep squat. And, and I wanna say move. Well, I actually mean control your fucking ego because a lot of people will just add way too much weight to these movements. And when they do, then they, they can't get as low or they get into a bad position and then they go into old habits and that's what hurts their knees. It's nothing to do with that. Your, your barbell squats are going to improve your knees. They're going to help your lower body. Some people that have really bad back issues, Maybe. Maybe you guys can't do front or back squats, for the other people. This is definitely something that you need to be Inc. Including at some point, not all the time. And it doesn't ha like it's, it's, you know, this isn't a religion, this is just something that, it's a, it's a good bang for your buck. It, and I've pushed back a lot,, because too much of the information that we get as strength, you know, for your strength for rugby players comes from who are the strong people, power lifters. And they have to do a back squat. Now you don't have to do back squat, but you probably bloody should cuz it gives you a lot. Final thing I didn't touch on here is the mobility benefits that get, that you come from squat. Really squatting well is gonna give you more overall, hip, knee and ankle mobility than anything else, but you've just got to treat it for what it is. You are not gonna load it up and go as heavy as you can and constantly push yourself so that you are grinding stuff out. You're never improve that way. Just like you're not gonna get more flexible by like being as heavy as you can and really tense and trying to hold a stretch. Not how it works. If you move well over time, you're gonna be doing squats deeper and deeper and deeper, understand how your four applies to the ground, how it feels best. Slowly adding weight, slowly getting stronger, but also getting deeper and moving better and feeling better. And that's gonna give you good mobility benefits. Next we've got is a Scrum push. So rather than having your hands on the ground and doing like a walking bear crawl, that kind of challenges your core, but doesn't apply to scrummaging whatsoever this time. What I've done here is a, is a very old demo of me doing it in a squat rack. I've even got short hair there. I've got my night Ramos on. Man, I don't own any of those clothes anymore. Anyway, you can do it in a squat rack. You can also do it in a Smith machine. You can also do it with a partner. You can also do it against a wall, I guess, with your, your, your hands, like in front of you and push it like in front of you, but like over your head because you're in a Scrum position and. This way you are engaging in the isometric contraction and getting stronger in the isometric contraction that applies to rugby. And yes, you are not getting the, the dodgy, like different multi-directional forces that come through in a scrum that make the scrum the challenge. But you can really focus on your force. Output in that isometric contraction so that when it comes to scrummaging, you're gonna get stronger. Once again, we are not trying to be as specific as possible as far as replicating the movements for the movement's sake, because that's what we've got to do to be functional. We are doing it because we want to get stronger so that when we go into the pitch, we are physically more prepared so that all the challenges that we come across we're more prepared for and we're more likely to achieve success. So isometric scrum pushes are a fantastic movement definitely something I should see. A lot of you, not just front rows, but also ma pretty much all forwards. It's a good idea to practice this because it does challenge your core to hold strong. It holds strong by your force that's pushing through your toes, then able to project itself through your shoulders or your hands forward in a horizontal direction. If you've got a weak core that might cave and might, bow out in a, in a,, in a different direction, which is not good cuz that's wasted force. So you really want to keep your core nice and strong. You also wanna stop your feet from sliding. So again, you're gonna build up real strong feet, strong calves, strong ankles, and actually a strong overall push so that you can hold onto the floor whilst pushing. it's also gonna get you nice and confident in that position. If you can get lower and lower and lower. Then you are finding yourself more and more confident in that scrimmaging position, and you're not doing so by wa with wasting your energy, by putting your hands on the floor. That's, again, that takes away from the movement. That's why I was in the overrated exercises So snatch criminally underrated. I've spoken about this before as well. this was on the unca veteran ones cause you don't see, you see some people cleaning. You don't really see too many people snatching. You definitely don't see people just doing, like sports specific power snatches. We're not trying to snatch like this fellow on the picture here. We're trying to snatch, to help you improve your rugby. All you're gonna do is take a bar, jump and catch. That's it. You don't have to overthink the technique. You don't have to, you know, over worry about are, are my, are elbows flaring at the right point. What am I doing? Just put some weight on the bar. Jump and then catch it overhead. There's no like, that's gonna make you more powerful. That's it. That you, you will learn. And by doing the movement, you'll feel what's gonna improve you at that movement. And it doesn't matter if you can only do 20 kilos. It doesn't matter if you, you try it for a few months and you can only get up to like 40 kilos. That's still great. or if you can't even get to 40 kilos, it's still fine. You're not worried about snatching the most amount of weight. You are worrying about building an explosive body that performs really well in the rugby pitch, right? Snatches are a fantastic way to help that. You don't even have to do the really wide grip that you see people do when they do snatches because you just don't, you, you can just hold it at the, the hips, take a little drop down. Jump and explo as explosive you can, so that you can catch it overhead. As you add more and more weight, you're just gonna feel it. You're gonna feel how it makes you, or you're gonna feel how to improve at that movement. And therefore you are gonna learn the coordination that you need, need to do to get, like, produce full body power. And it's something that is difficult to replicate. And otherwise you can do it with like an overhead medicine bull throw, which is a fine replicant, but some gyms have., low ceilings. So snatches are a really good alternative. Plus snatches you can load up relatively heavy. Now, I'm not saying absolute weight, you don't have to worry about what the weight is, but relatively heavier, you're gonna be able to do snatches than other explosive movements of the same speed and movement. Speaking of which I already said it, manpo throws, they're underrated. I don't see enough people doing these, especially in gyms that have got like drywall, like plastered up walls because they don't want you thrown against the wall because they'll break. You need to do these against brick walls. Gyms that have medicine ball should have brick walls for you to throw against him. Otherwise, They dunno why they've fucking got Medicine Bulls in the first place. But Medicine Bull throws are something that it goes, it, it goes so far as like there's nothing that you can do to replicate Medicine Bulls, apart from just getting a heavy rock and chucking it. But Medicine Bulls are much more easier, more efficient way of doing that. So that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna take a medicine ball and you're gonna throw it against the wall., obviously the rotational one. Remember, you're not trying to replicate a rugby pass. You're gonna just train the ability to rotate explosively, which is gonna help your ability to pass, but it's not, you're not training the pass by with a heavy medicine, but you're just training a rotational element. You can also do overhead throws, you can do scoop throws, lots of different throws that you can do. They're gonna help you. It's just you can't replicate it with barbells, you can't replicate with machines. Even if you go light and you lift it explosively. Eventually when you stop the movement, unless you throw, you have to slow down as you finish. With a medicine bull, uh, with any bulls, with anything that you throw, you're accelerating through the finish, and that's something that you want, you cannot get with a barbell or with any lift. So give those a go, add those into your program. Learn how to have an explosive upper body to help you on the rugby pitch itch. And then finally the pull up. Yes, the pull up is, is bloody common, right? How am I gonna say? It's underrated? It's underrated. Cause I just don't see people doing it anywhere near as much as they should be doing it. And when they do, they do it for, you know, sets of 10 because they're already good at pull-ups or they do the street workout stuff where they're like doing like they're calisthenic people. I'm talking about you guys as rugby players using the pull up as a main strength movement. In fact, in team rugby muscle. And in most rubbing muscle programs, the pull-up will feature regularly as a strength movement. That means we're doing it for three to five repetitions. That means if you are good at pull-ups, you're gonna have to either hold a dumbbell between your legs or get a, a belt with, you know, adding weight to it. Because it's a strength movement, you want to be able to pull yourself up and pull some extra weight with you up because pulling, um, You know, being really strong in those pulling motions. I. Either with or without straps, but just those pulling muscles in the back. That is massive for contact skills. That is massive for when you're being your in a rock, someone who's got a really strong back, they're difficult to move out the way. Or if you are the person, Jacqueline, and they just can just. Throw you a lot of the time, it's because they've got a strong back or someone that can rip a rugby ball from you when you're, you're holding it. And they can, they can rip that ball up, they can grab above and below and they just rip it through. A lot of the time that comes from strong back and one of the best and most efficient ways to build a strong back is by doing the pull-ups. And the pull-ups also can help you with shoulder issues because you're going, you're taking the shoulder for a full range of motion. Yes, some people will have shoulder and elbow issues from doing pull-ups, but again, that's because same thing like the squats, they've done it poorly. They're adding weights, they're trying to keep up and, and like sort of swim up to the bar because they've added too much weight. You're not treating it like that. If you're doing these well, they are magic for your shoulders. They're also really good for your elbows. They're good for your back, they're good for your pulling muscles. They're good for your ability to play rugby. If you're avoiding them pullups, cuz you're not that great at doing them, slowly start to do them. Think of them as a strength movement, just working that three to five rep range without adding any weight. And then over time you'll get more confident, you'll, you'll knock out more reps of, or more sets of five reps. And then you're able to start to add weight and, and really utilize this as a strength movement, especially for you heavier fellas. Yeah. Even if you can only muscle three at a time, or even if you need a band to help you, use these as strength movements. Get really strong, and that is gonna give you a massive benefit when it comes to the contact situations that you're gonna find yourself in Rugby now. What have you guys got? What are your favorite exercises that you think are underrated? What don't you see people do in the gym that you think they should be doing? Did any of these exercises surprise you or do you disagree? Do you think maybe they're not underrated because you see a bunch of people doing them or maybe they're not as beneficial as I am saying here? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you haven't hit that thumbs up button. Do that now. If you are new here, hit that subscribe button and that notification bell so that you get the, the three new videos that we are uploading every single week. Let me know what you think. respond to these questions in the comments. Thank you guys so much for watching, and I think with that, I'll see you in the next one.