All right, should we talk about some big conditioning mistakes that amateur rugby players make? Yeah, I think we need to. I think this video needs to be done. What's going on everyone? TJ here from Rugby Muscle and today I'm going to talk about the conditioning mistakes that I see all the time with amateur rugby players. I don't know if they happen as much with the professionals. They might do, but they can probably get away with it. But I'm, you know, if you're watching this video, there's a good chance, if not a worse certainty that you're an amateur rugby player of some sort. And if that's the case, this video has been made for you. I think this is incredibly important to understand these mistakes and not continue to repeat those mistakes because. They're so impactful and they make such a big difference that everything can change if you understand these mistakes, you correct them and you apply yourself like the rugby world in a sense, or at least in your sense, your rugby world is going to be your oyster. So I think this video is going to be really impactful for the guys that pay attention and watch all the way through because we're going to discuss some important points. Now if you're already watching this video, let's do some things right up front for nice and first if you're watching The rubby muscle youtube channel for the first time make sure to subscribe because we release every week videos that discuss the gym, discuss your nutrition, discuss the training that you can do as a rugby player to become your best. We also discuss, and we've started discussing things that happen around the Rugby World Cup and in the greater rugby world. Videos that you will find interesting, but also videos that you can find useful. And as is in this description here, or here. Don't know which way my camera is pointing, but you can apply to your training. I think that's really important. Of course if you want to Just support the channel thumbs up comments in the comment section below what you found interesting What you understood about this video or just a comment to help the algorithm all of those things are massively Appreciated and if you want to work and not have to work with us At ruby muscle not have to think about any of this stuff Links will be in the description below. So Firstly probably the biggest mistake that I see with amateur rugby players is just not understanding the benefits of fitness and When we're talking about fitness, we're not talking about just cardio We're talking about fitness being fit getting fit has a profound impact On your rugby performance, think about like the vast majority of top players in any team, any team, and we're talking at the very top, all the way down to every level, the fitter players are almost always the best players, and that's just the way it is, and there's some players that you think in teams around the world, in every team, in every level, that you think, oh, they could be good if they got fitter, and it's just their fitness is holding them back. Well, There you go, right? Whereas, the teams, or the players are consistently performing for their teams. Almost always the fittest, right? Even if you look at like, the Bowdoin Barrett, right? He, for the longest time, had the Bronco World Record. Crap test. Not a good way of doing it as far as testing, but as far as like, showing the results. This guy won it. This guy is one of the fittest on the, in the squad. And he had the record for the longest time. He also happened to be, at the time that he set that world record, like, the best player in the world and continues to replicate that. So, there's something to be said with that, right? You look at Richie McCaw. You look at, like, all these players that you think of as the best players in the world. Nearly 99% of the time, they're the fittest. So it allows you to do everything. And also not only allows you to do everything on the pitch, right? Like the fitter you are, the better you can think when you're playing the better you can do every single action because you're just that much more of a cruising level. Not only all of that stuff, but actually every other training process that you do is improved by fitness. And so that in itself has a profound impact because if you can now practice You know, you're, you're catching, you can practice your passing, you can practice your scrummaging, you can practice your rucking, your tackling, you can do all of these things better if you're fitter because you're able to continue to work at a high quality level and improve your skills because you are fit. That's, that's a huge benefit that some people just do not see and they're constantly held back. If you're unfit. That's going to hold back your rate of improvement and your ability to continue to train, you know, not just skills, but just rugby training in general. You're an amateur rugby player and you're training twice a week for two hours at most, right, and you're spending an hour plus of that just gasping for air and, you know, lots of those, lots of that training is spent playing games and you're just not fit enough to keep those games, you're not going to improve tactically or technically or, you know, be a more proficient rugby player because you're just treading water and just breathing. So think about all the other elements of rugby that you can improve just by being fitter. Not only like do you have these profound effects and that's not the only benefit of being fitter, but actually there's also more room to improve. So there's more room to improve with your fitness. I think we get caught up. In the fitness culture, which is not the fitness culture, it's the aesthetics culture of going to the gym and people trying to look good and maybe that's just what social media shows us. But I think it's a trap that we can easily get caught into where we spend, you know, hours and hours a week just trying to add a little bit of strength or even a tiny bit of muscle. I've spoken about this quite a lot recently on the channel. Whereas, you spend that, those hours on your aerobic system, you've just got that much more potential to improve. Right? You look across the board like most people have a realistic chance of running a sub 20 minute 5k, which is a really good aerobic performance and that would have a profound effect on your rubber performance. If you're running sub 20 minutes for a 5k, you are really fit and that like you're probably going to be one of your better players on your team because of that. Whereas to just to be a hundred kilos, some like, I'd say at least 50%, if not more, like, I don't know how to pluck numbers out of thin air on this, but there are a lot of people that are watching this that will never, no matter what they do, be able to get to that level of, of muscularity. So, like, the benefit of training your aerobic potential is just, it constantly is giving, whereas with your muscular and your strength. You have a couple years where that really works out well for you and then you sort of taper off. Whereas your aerobic system, you can just continue to improve and with those, with both your aerobic system and your muscular system, you get a, you know, you establish a good base of, a good trained base and you'll be able to maintain that so much easier as well. And so with that being said, I just think like everyone knows that they should be fit, but no one understands the huge benefits that having a really good aerobic system, being really, really fit can benefit you as a rugby player, as an athlete in general. Probably similar to like sleep in that instance, right? It's something that everyone knows that they should be doing. Even though the benefits are well known, they're still probably undersold. And for that reason, if I move on to the next one, people don't prioritize it. I just, like I say, everyone knows that they need to get fitter. But even then, I just don't see it being prioritized. Again, mostly because when they go to the gym, when they do strength and conditioning, they're focusing on their strength work They're focusing on yeah bodybuilding work because it's kind of more sexy and it's just more mainstream and it's what I see done more and more and more by the Gym culture that has like sort of got into society these days is a lot more. Pervasive and, and out there than the, the fitness culture, which is there, but I just don't see it as much. And particularly with rugby lads, I think most rugby lads are much happier spending their time focusing on their weights They're focusing on their bodybuilding stuff and they spend most of their time doing that. And then at the end they say, yeah, I'll do some cardio and they do it like a 10 minute finisher. That is not prioritizing your fitness. I'm sorry. That's it's just not. Okay, if you're doing that, you're not prioritizing your fitness You're you're you're throwing it in at the end kind of as an afterthought, you know Maybe if we're talking bodybuilding language, it's those people that say that their Calves never grow, but they do two sets at the end of a workout every couple weeks. Yeah Yeah, of course, it's not great. And of course, you're not getting fit because you're not giving it the prioritization and the time it deserves And not even just in individual gym sessions, but in your periodization. There should legitimately be times where conditioning becomes the focal point of your training. And people will acknowledge this, but they'll also still not taper down the other stuff. They'll still keep in as, and they'll still, they'll say, yeah, I really want to focus on my fitness. But I also still want to get stronger and bigger and do all of my other stuff. That's just not the way it works. If you're prioritizing your fitness, you probably want to dial back a couple of the other things that you're trying to aim for. So maybe you are trying to get stronger, but you're not, but you're trying to do it on minimal amounts of sets. Same with your putting on size or power or getting faster. There should be times in your year and By the time when this video comes out, it's pre season This is probably the time where you're deprioritizing the other stuff. That's not to say you're accepting getting smaller That's just to say that you're going to prioritize fitness over other stuff I see this with my own clientele when I have my athletes i'm training one on one Links in the description to apply for that if you want me to coach you Where, say we've, for example, we've programmed in two days of lifting and two days of fitness. The athlete can only get in three days this week because of work or stress or whatever. What do they get in? They get in the two weight sessions and they get in one of the conditions. The condition's always the first to go. That can't be the case if it's your focal point of your training. If it's something that you really want to bring up and it's, if, like I said, it's going to pay dividends down the line because you're getting fitter, which means you can do more productive training down the line. There needs to be points where this is the priority. And with that being said, I also see it not being a priority where they, you know, I think people don't actually plan out their sessions and plan out their weeks of prioritizing their conditioning. They just think, okay, today is my off day from my weights, and maybe I'm going to do some conditioning, or today is my conditioning day. What am I going to do? That leads me into my next point Conditioning for rugby is not just about getting tired It's not just about doing some work and then hoping that that means that you get fitter It's not just like if you want to just do cardio Like go and see karen and go do her fucking zumba classes because that's what we're not talking. That's not What we're talking about here. We are talking about effective energy system training that is going to get your Energy systems more trained to be more competent when it comes to your rugby game so that you perform better This is this is really really important. It's not just running some sprints and figuring out some random Interval session that you think sounds cool or sounds good. No, we're talking about Targeted specific systems in the body and the energy pathways that you use to perform on your best. And for us as rugby players, that means a few things. It means we need to look at the game of rugby and understand what we're trying to improve. It means we can't just be happy with getting tired and doing some sort of cardio and thinking, Yeah, that means we're gonna get fitter on the rugby pitch. We don't do that for getting bigger. We don't do that if we're trying to prioritize our strength. If we're going to get really strong on our squat, what are we doing? We're specifically targeting the rep ranges that are needed for the squat to get stronger. We are specifically targeting exercises that are going to help us. We don't say, Oh, I want to get a stronger squat. And then do lunges and bench press and expect that to help. No, we're just generally weight train at that point. And we're not specifically targeting what we're doing to get stronger. Same thing for your fitness. That was a terrible analogy, but we'll stick with it. Okay. Sorry. We're going to, I can't think of any better, anything better off my head other than actually specifically talking about what we want for rugby, which is we want harder. And more frequent actions. We don't want to sustain a high output for, you know, 30 seconds to a minute. That's not the way rugby works. You don't, you don't carry for more than 30 seconds in a game. That's just not how it happens. Like, a really long carry in rugby, count it out in your head. It doesn't happen for, like, 5 seconds is like the maximum it happens. It doesn't go on for longer. So why are we doing conditioning sessions where We're doing 20 to 30 to 40 seconds of hard all out effort or even a minute of all out effort. That's just not It's not how rugby works. You can't extend out a tackle or a ruck you do your one action You do it as impactfully as possible and then you move on and you you get into position for your next action you do that Over and over and over again And so what you're trying to do to be a better rugby player is to reduce the time between the actions So you make a tackle you? Get to your feet, you get back into the line and be in position to go again and again and again and again. And you also want that intensity of those actions when you go again and again and again to maintain. You don't want it to drop off. You don't, what normally happens is if you're listening to this podcast, you'll have to go into the YouTube to see what I've done here. I've drawn out the X's. So what normally happens is we'll have one big action followed by a period of rest. And then we'll have a slightly lower Power action, right? So our ability has already dropped a little bit because we're tired still from that first action. Maybe we then get a longer period of sustained rest where we're holding our line is doing two or three phases where we're not quite needed. We reposition in our line. And then we go again. And so we're able to perform a slightly higher action, but then we don't have as long to recover. And then our action drops significantly. And then by then we've hit our wall. And all of our actions following that are still going to be tired and tired and tired. And we just need a longer break in play for us to be able to recover. Because our aerobic system isn't robust enough to recover us. And to get us ready to repeat another high intensity action. And so with that being said. The systems that we want to target as rugby players are mostly going to be the aerobic system where we're going to see, like I said already before, a lot of gains. We're going to see a lot of ability to improve with our conditioning and with our ability to play rugby because we're allowed to recover faster and faster and faster. And that, therefore, we're able to do more and more and more actions within a game and not have those actions completely grind us out and have us knackered. We're also going to be able to recover faster between those actions. So we're going to do more of those actions and sustain that level. We're also going to be able to recover faster between. So where some people that are unfit will take, you know, five minutes between carries or even longer between carries because they're so gassed. If you're really fit, you're up and you're ready to go again in 20, 30 seconds. You're able to do that repeatedly because of your aerobic system that is robust. You're also targeting potentially your a lactic system. So this isn't your lactic acid system. This is your a lactic system. This is a basically your ATP PC. I'm not going to explain biology. I'm just going to say your max intensity work. So we're talking five to seven seconds of absolute maximum effort like you were doing a carry like you do when you're trying to win a tackle like you do when you're trying to win a ruck or a turnover. All our effort. That's it. And then you recover between that. You take a minute or so to recover. I'm not going to get into the exactly the sessions themselves in this video. It's just understanding what is required of you. If you understand that that's what's required of you as a rugby player, then you're going to understand the next mistake that I see a lot of amateurs make. And that is just going too long and too hard. And so what happens when you go too long and too hard in your intervals is you're, you're going to miss out on all the benefits that I've spoke about. You're going to miss out on the energy systems. That i've spoken about that actually improve your rapid performance Not only that but you're going to teach yourself to run and to, perform actions with poor form right if we're doing i've seen people where they do like a minute on non stop tackling or a minute of hitting the bags non stop or Like we've said before five minutes of running like you're doing a bronco That's not going to teach your top end speed to be faster. Likewise, it's not going to teach your coasting speed to be better and improve your aerobic system. It's just going to teach you poor form. You're going to be, you know, reinforce the motor patterns that are labored, that are tired, because you're used to being tired when you're doing these sessions. They also increase the fatigue, not just throughout the session, which means again, you're not going to improve the aerobic system because you're too fatigued and you end up moving poorly because you're too fatigued, but they also increase your fatigue throughout the week. That means as the week goes on, you're getting tired and you're not able to make improvements during the subsequent session. So you do a killer session on the Monday and then you've got rugby on the Tuesday and you try and do another killer session on the Wednesday. All conditioning by the time thursday and friday rolls around you're fucked and if you've got a game on a saturday You're not going to improve and you're not going to sustain that and actually as the weeks go by That fatigue adds up to the point where again, you're not going to sustain it I just don't see people sustaining these high intensity efforts like conditioning sessions week after week after week And that's why we don't see people getting fitter because they aren't even if they do And they figure out that, okay, I've got to do, I've got to do something to sort out my fitness and this is what they target. They don't sustain it. It doesn't improve them. They get too much fatigue and as the weeks go by, they end up dropping it. Also, and fundamentally probably the most important thing, training this way doesn't improve the aerobic system. There's too much lactic acid going on. There's too much intensity in there for the aerobic system to significantly improve. The heart is working too hard. Doesn't target the aerobic system. We're out of that easy aerobic capacity building zone. And therefore, we're not improving our aerobic system, which is actually, when we look at what we need for rugby, probably our primary thing that we should be improving. Yes, you will experience some level if you're training this way of anaerobic improvement, but that has a cap real quick. So you'll benefit from anaerobic work for about three weeks. I still question how much that benefit is going to bleed into your rugby. It will potentially benefit and I, you know, I'll sort of counter argue myself here, which is not. allowing for a real strong message, but this is the reality of nuanced strength and conditioning. There are times, there are small times in rugby that are fairly rare, but they happen every few games where the ball stays in play for five, six minutes. Potentially having a strong lactic system can help you there. Potentially, but that's the only times it's really going to have a benefit of you or for you in a game. And there's a minimal amount of improvement that can happen that can be had from your anaerobic system. You can't improve for more than like four to eight weeks doing the style of training. Energy system wise, you're just going to grind yourself to dust doing this type of training. Instead, you need to be looking at aerobic training by not going as long, by not going as hard with your intervals. I think this is something that really annoys me with the way I see a lot of people doing their conditioning. It's similar to weight training, right? If you were to try and get bigger and stronger, you're not just going to do one rep as hard as you can, and rest a little bit and go again, or train as hard as you, like, do the most amount of weight. And then say, okay, that's it, I'm done now. No, that's not how it works. You're actually going to target what you want to improve. So people talk about how to get stronger. There's different rep ranges to get stronger. There's different modalities. There's different programs to get stronger. Just doing this and working as hard as you can, like for X amount of intervals, is not the way to do it. I move on like the same can happen like I said here going too long or too hard with your intervals but it could also be a case of not resting enough actually most people still push themselves for too long or too hard I think they're 20 seconds 30 seconds you could potentially mediate some of that like with sprint intervals by resting a little bit longer and that might benefit you, but even then I think the fatigue that builds up working too hard, working too long in an unsustainable manner with resting too little, it's a recipe for a disaster. One final point here I want to make sure that is clear is that this isn't just from pushing your working intervals for too long or pushing yourself too hard when you're going for 20 or 30 seconds it could also happen from resting too little so You know, I see where people will sprint the the length of the field and then they'll jog the width and then they'll sprint the length again That's resting too little that could be a decent enough either a lactic session or a decent enough Aerobic session if you rested a little bit longer there could be some efficacy for that but If your, if your rest period is too low, then you're not, you're going to again encounter all of these extra fatigue symptoms. You're going to encounter poor form. You're going to kick yourself out of the aerobic capacity building zone and therefore experience minimal benefit. And so that's when you don't include enough rest time when you don't include enough total time when you're trying to improve. That's a different thing and that's another mistake that I see amateur rugby players make. Fitness is a long term process that needs to be worked year round. It's not something that you do for four weeks of preseason and you get yourself fit. So like I mentioned at the start of this video, you've got so much room to improve with your conditioning, with your fitness, that giving yourself 4 to 8 weeks to 12 weeks. It's just not enough. It's something that if you continue to work, year round you're going to continue to see benefits Strength you probably want to work year round because you don't want to lose it and it takes so long to continue to improve And there's some like you want to keep touching on that stuff Conditioning you're just going to continue to make improvements You should be continually getting fitter year after year and that benefit is going to be huge for you As you go into your games now You cannot, like, I see it a lot with people that were fit when they were younger, they just maintain that. A lot of people that are unfit, it's just gonna have to, it's one of those things where it's gonna take time to, to get fit. Now, if you've got a season coming up very shortly, You can't make up for that lost time. You can't get into a time machine and go back last year and decide that's when you're gonna get fitter and then you'd be ready. But you can do the other things that I've said. You don't have to wait two years to start to get fit. You still have to start, right? But you can get fit by actually giving yourself the best chance of playing your best and being at your fittest when this season rolls around by prioritizing your fitness. And I think the best way to do that is what I've put together for you here. The Game Ready Fitness Fast Track is a program that prioritizes your conditioning to be ready for the upcoming season in four to eight weeks. You're going to be at your absolute best shape possible from where you are now to where you could be in four to eight weeks by doing this program. Every session is specifically laid out and scheduled for you to complete. There's two, you can choose from two to six sessions, targeting the specific energy systems that we've spoken about in this video. It's all absolutely laid out for you. You don't have to think about what to do. You just prioritize your conditioning by purchasing this program and running through it week to week. Either the four week program or the eight week program. If you're on a time crunch and you've got, you know, less than six weeks to be ready. You have no choice do the four week program if you have more time The eight week program is just going to be able to accommodate you a little bit better and that's just something I recommend because I laid this out as most convenient and efficient to fit amateur rugby player schedules and get in all of the areas they need to improve as a rugby player for the upcoming season. That is the Game Ready Fitness Fast Track. If you really want to prioritize. Your conditioning and be ready for this upcoming season If you want to work with me one on one the link will also be in description below if you want to just get year round Rugby specific strength and conditioning. So we're not just talking about we will Absolutely have periods of the time where we're focusing on conditioning, but it's also going to be continued running throughout the background, but we're also going to be working your strength, power athleticism, mobility, speed, everything that you need to be the best performing rugby player that you can be. That's in team rugby muscle in the description below. But this video is about conditioning. If you really want to get fit for the season, the game ready fitness fast track could absolutely be for you. But you're also in good hands as long as you don't fall for any of these mistakes. If any of those things that are interest you there'll be in the description below. Thank you guys so much for watching Don't be unfit this season. Like come on. Let's be fit rugby players Let's respect the physicality Like this video if you enjoyed it and found it useful recommend it to a friend who you think could also find it useful That really does help out and i've left it to the end But sharing this video with a teammate that also needs to get fit is something that costs you absolutely nothing Gives that good vibes helps them out helps me out helps the channel out Win win win win, right? If you have any questions or thoughts, let me know in the comments below subscribe If you haven't done so already and i'll see you in the next one I'm going to be talking about the