All right. So let's talk about size, weight, body fat percentage, what physique you need to produce to be the best rugby player you can be. So what's going on everyone. It's TJ here from Rugby Muscle. Welcome back to the channel or podcast. However you're watching or listening. It's great to have you here. So I got this question and it's one of the questions I get the most Well, I've lumped these together because I get a lot I get asked a lot about what's how much should I weigh? How big should I be or what position should I be for my size? What should my body fat percentage be? Stuff like that, and I wanted to put a video together to explain the best way for you to approach this. So, first and foremost, let's get into why this question gets asked so much. Actually, before I do that, right, I need to ask this stuff early, because otherwise... We will just zone out and we don't do it hit thumbs up on this video because I'm this these are the questions that you guys Are asking so I figured these are the ones that need to be answered this video helps you out Please give it a thumbs up support the channel Let me know in the comments below What other questions that you have or anything else of that nature or what you think about what my guidance is here And if you are new here Be sure to hit subscribe a lot of the people that watch these videos are non subscribers That means that you will miss Important videos that come up. It costs you nothing. If there are videos that you're not interested in, which, either around the World Cup or around strength and conditioning in a particular area, you don't have to watch it, but hit subscribe because it really does help the channel grow. Now, let's get into why this question gets asked. So, I think it gets asked because we are just visual beings. We, like, we can't see someone's strength or someone's ability to pass just by looking at them. And yeah, we can see a pass, but Someone's physique is consistently like staring us in the face, you know, like Eben Etzebeth when you every time you look at him, you're like, Jesus Christ, that guy's a tank or, or just so it's over. Like every time you see him on the pitch, you're like, man, look at that guy's legs. Or at least I am. And probably you are if you're asking these questions. So that's, I think one of the main reasons it gets asked. And then the other reason I think is because as Ronnie Coleman once said, everybody wants to be a body builder. But don't nobody want to lift no heavy ass weight. And because essentially most fitness industry guidance comes from bodybuilding, comes from the idea of us wanting to look better. Again, feeding into the fact that we are sort of visual beings. We want to like that. That's one of the things that's. Easiest to change we're always looking at we're not always looking at ourselves, but we can see ourselves a lot easier Then we can see our ability. Like I say to pass or to tackle or to efficiently Power through a tackle or performing a ruck or or even like lift weights and stuff, you know Our physique is always there. So I think that's one of the biggest reasons this gets us and There is a level of confidence and importance that comes to this and there is a level of importance that this has to your rugby game and so let's get into what I think you should do and how you should approach this situation. I used this quote in the last video and I figured I'd just keep it in because it's again It's really important, right? If the only tool that you have is a hammer Every problem that you see is a nail this goes back to my fit the fact that the most of this information Or most of most people's fitness information comes from some sort of bodybuilding variety in the fitness Industry is mostly geared around making you look better well if you think that that's all there is to fitness Then every problem is, okay, how do I look like this rugby player? And if I look like this rugby player, I will play like this rugby player. Logically, once you think about it, you know that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But that is how most people think about it. They're like, how do I get big and jacked like a rugby player? Whatever you need in order to build a nice, high, physical preparation pyramid that comes from the elements that are listed here. Again, I've covered this physical preparation pyramid in depth. If you'd like me to go once again in depth, let me know in the comments below. But, you can read for yourself what is on deck here and what you should be training. And what's, like, the layers of importance of this stuff. and I've said before, you could spend most, if not all of your training doing, just building the base. And in order to maximize your rugby performance, you would need to, you know, maximize your pyramid that you've got here. And that comes from lots of different things. Some are going to be more important than the other. That's hence the order of this pyramid. But that's, that's what it is. It's not bodybuilding. It's not losing body fat and growing muscle. That's not what we're doing here. So. In general, yes, Lina is going to be better. Look at Will Skelton performing in the World Cup right now. he revolutionized, he, he like got cast off from Australian rugby because he was just so out of shape. And he's, he's an absolute beast. But he let himself just get too big. And then in Saracens, he joined Saracens and he got himself in ridiculous shape. He lost, I think it was like 30 kilos. Which like, I mean. If most people lose 30 kilos, they they disappear, you know, or they have to lose a limb It is ridiculous. There's a ridiculous amount of weight to lose but and then um, You know, he ended up like he's now wallabies captain He completely changed how effective he could be and started to really fulfill his potential And that was due to leanness. Obviously being leaner is going to be better like Um, the less body fat you have, the less weight you have carrying to carry around. If you've ever tried to play rugby with a 5 or 10 pound weighted vest. You haven't because that would be ridiculous. That's essentially what you're doing. If you're carrying five to 10 pounds of excess body fat around with you. So it's the same sort of principle. So it would make sense that being leaner is better. Same thing for being more muscular, being better, the more muscle you have. The more contractile tissue you have the more force you can apply to your opponent in order to you know Tackle them to drive through them in contact to jackal to stay on the ball as they are applying force to you So you can stay in a static position over the ball in scrums in all situations even as far as You have more contractile tissue to push force into the ground and propel you forwards in order to sprint faster or to change Direction, maybe not propel you forwards, but propel you laterally. More muscle is a good thing And we always associate professional rugby players with being big muscular fellas So we think more muscle is going to be better and for the most part that's true But the reality is that performance Is number one professional rugby is really tough on the body and um, like Rugby in general is is quite tough on the body. So performance should take number one. You shouldn't be getting yourself so lean That you are underfed right you have to fuel your performance and particularly the workload that Professional players get into but also as amateurs you're going to get through a lot of work and you're going to Be living your own life with your own stresses Like that adds to the stress. So the more complicated you you are on your diet the more deprived you are of calories You know the more miserable time you're going to have and you've got a question whether the sacrifice is worth it So it's like everything it's a bit of a balance, right? Carbs and calories are obviously going to help you perform not just um in that performance in that moment So your carbohydrate that you take in before your training session can definitely help you through your training session But the carbohydrates that you take in After your training session are going to help you recover from that session because you need to have energy to fuel that recovery And so with that all being said, obviously eating in a caloric deficit, which it takes to lose body fat just makes that process a little bit harder. Now, the bigger you are, the more body fat you've got to lose, the easier that is going to be. But as you get leaner and leaner and leaner, that process gets more and more and more difficult and more and more of a grind. And I'll get into more of like how that situation makes you feel and why it might be detrimental in a little bit. First, I want to round out this, uh, slide or this section by just saying that you should not be performing training for fat loss. Training should always elicit a response from, if I just go back here, the physical preparation pyramid. There's no fat loss in this, uh, guide here. There's no fat loss. That's not a training goal. Your training goal are all these measures of performance that you can improve. All of those things will burn calories. Okay? It's just a case of not fueling so many calories to go back into your body in order to make you gain weight or maintain weight. You want to fuel yourself with just enough calories to help you keep performing, but not so much that you gain fat. And then when we're looking at hypertrophy, um, because I'm bundling these questions together, Again, performance is number one. Hypertrophy is a really tough, arduous process, right? It is, it takes a long time to build muscle. And it does take a certain degree of specificity, but it just takes a lot of work and I think if you train again for the things on a physical preparation pyramid, particularly when we're looking at like, uh, you know, your, your overall performer, your weights work to do in the gym, mostly geared towards strength, some geared towards power, but mostly your strength work, your prehab work, you can even target specific areas that you are weak. Hypertrophy does go into. a certain level of strength work when you're working in like higher rep ranges and stuff That can help you get the potential to get stronger As I say each like the more muscle you have the more contractile tissue you have the more potential you have to apply force so your strength work Goes sort of hand in hand to an extent With your hypertrophy work with your muscle gaining, There are big muscular bodybuilders that are going to be moving terribly that are not going to play terribly on a rubby pitch, but there aren't big muscular bodybuilders that are weak. That just doesn't happen, right? So you're not going to grow muscle, that ends up being weak, but you don't have to focus on growing muscle to gain strength. You just need to focus on. You know, the, the strength components, the physical performance components you need, eating a surplus, and over time that, like, because of how much you have to focus on as a rugby player, it's not worth just dialing in on, on hypertrophy for loads and loads and loads of time, um, particularly with little, um, impact it's going to have on your performance compared to all of the other things that you can train for as a rugby player, um, and when, and when you think about how you want to play as a rugby player, um, That's going to be dictated by how you play and your physique currently you're not going to add 20 pounds and suddenly Revolutionize how you play rugby. You've just got to lean into how you want to play and that's why i've clipped in here The three south african number eights who all have completely different physiques. You've got jasper visa in the middle here Who's about my height like just over six foot, I think really stocky really powerful and explosive Those just an absolute beast in contact really difficult to bring down runs like an absolute cannon uh, but actually I say he runs like a cannon quagga smith here on the left might it be More apt to being called a cannon or he's more of a pinball He just goes and goes again and again another beast but much smaller. He's a good I think he's a good 10 centimeters taller than, uh, Jasper Visa and not as, uh, big and hefty as well. He's, he's definitely muscular and he's, he's really strong, but he's probably more explosive, more dynamic, and again, different player and then also a different player to Dwayne Ver Mullum, who is, and, and another beast. But he's like six four, uh, probably another 10 kilos on the, the other lads, or 20 kilos or so. Onger Smith. Maybe not that much, but he's huge. Point being here is that these three lads are all different rubber players. And if they try to play the game the other players, like, of the other players, like, for example, if Jasper Wiese tried to lose weight and play like Quagga Smith, he'd just be a, he wouldn't be, he wouldn't play like Quagga Smith, he'd just be a poorer, um, he'd just be a poorer version of himself. And Dwayne Vermaelen, same thing. If he tried to lose weight and be dynamic to be, or he tried to, I don't know, how, how do you play it like Jasper Wiese? Anyway, you get my point. Play how you're supposed to play. Now, fuel your performance and gain the muscle as you, as you go, as you put in all this work. And, and again, some areas can be targeted, but you know, eat as much as you can, um, in a surplus and that's going to help you perform. It's going to help you train your best and that's going to obviously going to help you grain gain muscle. Now to get into my experience. I've always been a heavier set lad. Um, as a kid, I was pretty chunky. I was a chubby kid. I was a fat kid. There's, you know, no need to be around the bush here. Um, I was large. Um, ended up playing rugby when I was, because I was too fat to play football. I was playing football and I started to not make my team. I was playing football on a very good team. And uh, and i'm not making them and then end up playing rugby this is like 10 or 12 years old or something like that Um, anyway fast forward. Um, I played some of my best rugby when I was really fueling myself having like Grown up being fat. I end up having I do, you know Have levels of body dysmorphia a little bit of a complex or whatever and so I would always perpetually be trying to diet be trying to um, lose some fat and and do whatever I could to stay in shape and Like, be lean like all the other rugby players I saw around me. So with all that being said, some of my best performances came when I was bigger, because I was still training hard, I was just Not paying as close attention to my diet and I don't say I have a slow metabolism I'd say I have a big appetite and I can eat a lot of food and at the time I could also drink a lot Of beer and so I did and I ended up playing really well. I was bigger and then you know Yeah, I was carrying around excess weight But this match here you can see me in the middle here third from the left with the belly hanging out I got my hand on a match in this game against Ukraine playing for Poland and, uh, played some of my best rugby in that game. I did not feel overly tired or unfit. I did feel big, I did feel heavy, but... Uh, yeah, I still played quite well at that time. I then subsequently lost weight, still was probably a little bit more dynamic, probably a little bit better as far as potential goes because I wasn't carrying around, right, that weighted vest I spoke about before. But I never really got like ridiculously lean and shredded, uh, probably until after I stopped playing rugby. I got, I got very lean, I got comfortable, I got athletic, I was very happy with my body. And I remember I, uh, trained in, when I was in Glendale, uh, Colorado for playing with the Raptors, uh, with Connor Cook. And looking at this guy, I don't know, he was just one of the, the easiest examples I could use. I could use a ton of examples of professional players. This guy seems to be a good example though, because he was a freak. This guy was absolutely carved out of stone. His physique was ridiculous. Like, probably... I'd say if we're looking at body fat numbers It was way it was definitely under 10 and if it wasn't under 10, then it looked under 10 It doesn't really matter what your body fat percentage is If you look like you look you look like you look, you know, it doesn't matter if it's 8 Or 15 like if you are completely shredded with like peeled abs like conor was it's impressive It's impressive to look at it's also uh a lesson to me that like If I have to get that lean and in fact, we'll move on to the next slide there because That's where it comes into your performance if I have to get that lean as I did After I stopped playing rugby as you see in this picture here. I got the most shredded I got was, um, like the worst I ever performed. I got, I stopped playing rugby. So I was like, okay, this is the time I'm going to get as lean as possible. And so that was all of my focus and that this took me months to get to. There was a period of about three months. Once I got below 10 percent body fat. And this is just ballpark figures, right? I got below 10 percent body fat and then all of a sudden, like it, things just got really hard. Like I didn't want to move. I had really little energy. I didn't really have that much of a zest for life. I trained, I could still train quite hard, but probably got a little bit weaker as I etched in and I was really under fueling myself. And I came to the realization after this that I am just not the person that is built to have a six pack year round. That's just not my genetics. And not only that, but that's not a fun way to train for me. It's not an end goal. Even when I was finished playing rugby and I had no athletic goals per se, because this was years before I found Jiu Jitsu, Uh, I still wanted to train for performance. And that's what I do to this day. And I think my philosophy on this stuff is if you really do train for performance. Everything else is gonna come, right? You're gonna gain, uh, 80 90 percent of your muscle that you would have gained in, uh, only focusing on hypertrophy, only being a bodybuilder. You're gonna look 80 90 percent as good as you could do if you really focus on dialing in every macro and being as perfect as you could be. And with all that being said, that's a good deal of the way there. Now, if you're actually trying to step on stage in a bikini or a thong, that's different because you want that extra 10 percent is huge for you. For us, it's not okay. All of the other things that come, particularly when it comes to rugby performance are going to be way more important, right? And in fact, like people think are getting leaner means I'm getting fitter. No. No it doesn't. It's they, they, those two are not one the same. They're not even mentioned how many, how many lean people are there? Are they good at rugby? No. Like how many giant, uh, muscular people? Are they, are they good at rugby? No. It's performance. That's what you're looking for. With that all being said, don't let your physique hold you back because there is a lot of low hanging fruit into getting lean enough into getting muscular enough to fulfill everything, and then you can keep that stuff going, set your body fat a little bit lower each time year on year get your muscular not potential your muscular baseline I guess year on year a little bit more And over time you will add a few pounds of muscle and you will lose a few pounds of fat and that will make a big difference to your physique, but overall you're still working on your rapid performance, which is much more fun, much more of a difference to your game as a player, much more beneficial to you as a human, and yeah, better to attain. So remember why you're doing this, remember why you're here watching the Rugby Muscle YouTube channel. Two quick things before I finish off this video. Firstly, I think again, we're all visual beings. We look at the pros. Like these guys are professional rugby players because they've got the best genetics, right? They are they have great physiques because they've got the best genetics and then they train like professional athletes Like we don't try to train to be as tall as NBA players because we want to be in the NBA We don't need to train to be as muscular As professional rugby players because we want to play rugby, right? Freddie Stewart is a really good fullback because he's tall. Do other fullbacks try and train to be taller? No, they own their own physique. They own their own abilities and they want to improve those. No one's trying to grow as big a neck as Camille Chatt because it's just not possible, right? All you're trying to do is be the best that you can be. When it comes to your physique that is 50 50 genetics and environment so your genetics as far as your physique goes probably set your start and end point right Some people have terrible genetics and do no training and they look terrible. Some people have great genetics and do no training and they look decent. Some people have not great genetics and they train quite a bit, but you wouldn't even know it by looking at them. So that's such a start point, right? And then your end point is also somewhat held back or pushed forward by your genetics. Some people never train, all of a sudden they train, they gain a ton of muscle. Some people, um, can train all they want, and they're never going to be 220 pounds. I don't know, it's been too long in America. 100 kilos. And so your genetics are going to set your start and end point. And then your environment sets the start for when you decide to want to change. So that's where your starting point is. Then you've got to start. Changing your environment. and also if you don't change your environment, then it's going to take you longer and longer to get to your end point, to your end goal. And it's going to take you more of a time commitment, both within every single week, and more effort within every single week, because you're just not in an environment that's conducive to gaining muscle and losing fat, whether you've got snacks around the house, whether you're in a high stress environment, that you don't have the time to go to the gym, all that sort of stuff. feeds into this but there's too much to get into in this video and it's just pointless without the context so just know that your environment is is a dictator for this journey right not not necessarily how your your start point and where your end point could be but it's a a dictator for how you're going to go along that journey and whether you're even going to move Much at all because maybe you've just been brought up with an environment where you don't know how to cook and don't know how To eat healthily and that stuff takes a long time to learn but at the end of the day Your intention takes you through all of this So if you want to build the best physique you can you can absolutely do that And it can come along with the best rugby performance you can do and, and it all builds really well together if you get that balance. For my side of things to put a little bit of a bow on this and my journey I sit between 102 ish kilos and 95 ish kilos depending on my environment and how much I can and want to control. I travel a lot so when I'm traveling I tend to slowly gain weight because I'm enjoying myself and I'm okay with that and I will organize my training around that. I'll be okay with that and I'll be, you know, taking advantage of the extra fuel. And be fine with that when I get on the heavier side of things I notice the body fat creeping up just a little bit higher than i'd like then I just rein it in Control my environment. So like prepare my food quite a lot Don't eat out as much and when I do again be prepared like being really Regimented on my fitness pal doing stuff like that And it takes me a month to two months to rein that back in get back to you know, 95 ish kilos And then move on from there and hopefully that gives you a little bit more context as to how to approach this in the long term That's what I do and that's some ideas for you I hope this video was useful to you guys. I know everyone wants to know what specific body fat percentage they should be. It just doesn't exist. There is no like, it's just about being better you versus you. And again, and I know I said about the professionals that we are not comparing ourselves to professionals. And your intention is what's going to take you through it It's about really like settling down and not just doing what you think you need to do because you've seen what professionals do or what? Professionals look like it's about taking the time to sit down figure out how you want to play How you want to perform like not just oh, I'm a second row or I'm a center I need to play this way what you want what you want out of rugby This is something that you're choosing to do be proactive about it and set yourself with intentions as to how you want to perform In the long term and then slowly get yourself towards that your physique will match that of your training and of your nutrition So that needs to be tweaked and altered over time to match that Um, but you don't need to meet and any sort of arbitrary body fat percentage or arbitrary muscular type goal. So as long as you're realistic, that's my approach. I hope that video helped you guys out. If it did, if you haven't already, give it a thumbs up. If you want to not have to worry about all this stuff and just, uh, focus on the execution, all the ways that you're going to work with Rubby Muscle will be in the links in the description. There's going to be, um, new things coming up, so look out. There's a new app coming out, if it's not out already, and that allows me to give a new level of coaching service, but also programming for all of you guys that are interested in just getting that stuff. So I suggest you look in the description below, or in the, potentially in the pinned comment. I'll put that there as well. Thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one.