All right. So if you are in season for rugby and you want to know what to do with your strength and conditioning, pay attention to this video. Here are five things that you must do with your strength and conditioning in season. Let's get into it What's going on everyone? I am TJ. I'm the guy behind Rugby Muscle. We specialize in rugby strength and condition and performance. And nutrition as well for amateur rugby athletes. That's 99. 9 percent of people that play rugby are amateurs. So we don't think that you should necessarily be training like the pros. And we'll talk about that as things that you should be doing in season. And how you should be approaching that training in this video and at this stage. I'll already ask you for a quick thumbs up Before we get into the nitty gritty of the video as I click my wrist hit subscribe if you're new Let me know any thoughts that you have or what you do for your in season in the comments below and maybe if you make Any of these potential mistakes that I'm going to cover Let me know in the comments below and hopefully we'll try and correct that. if your new subscriber already said that. But also, if you're interested in one on one coaching, link also in the description below how you can work with me to get a completely tailored program and nutrition approach that works for you, fits around your schedule, and adjusts to exactly what you need. By working with me one on one. I'll put the link to how you can apply for coaching in the description below and also when programs are released They'll also go there as well. So without further ado, we're not going to introduce this or do any overview Let's get straight into it First thing you have to do of number five one number one of five is make improvements You must make improvements in season. This isn't Well, I guess this one is already kind of an overview But it's a point that must be made so many rugby players get to the season and then they go Okay. Well, obviously I can't make any improvements Obviously, I can't get stronger or get bigger or get faster or fitter or I can't really make improvements in a season I'm in season. How does that even make sense? Nah, that's not the approach you need to make you you should be making improvements just because you've got rugby and that's for most amateurs That's twice a week. Sometimes it's once Sometimes it can be three times a week, but for most It's once or twice, plus your games. That does not mean it's impossible to, or even that difficult to make progress. People that are, right now the Rugby World Cup is going on. Those guys are still in the gym. They're not necessarily making groundbreaking progress, but they're putting in work that could lead to future progress. And that's what you should be eyeing up as well. In season at the bare minimum, um, and if like that's what that's an Approach that you must take if you're to maximize uh your ability to play rugby, but also your performance your your strength your uh, all your physical abilities your conditioning your Agility all that stuff your athleticism If you're going to maximise that stuff and you're going to get the most out of yourself and you're going to continue to make progress, you must make progress in season. Because of the amount of time that you're going to spend in season, um, especially for guys that play in like the English leagues and Northern Hemisphere leagues, those are long times. The Americans sometimes get a shorter break, and down south in Australia and New Zealand, get a little bit of a shorter season. But still, That means that if you if you give up in during your season You have to stop and start again. And if you're only allowing your your progress to be made in the offseason You're leaving yourself short change You're leaving yourself with a much bigger restriction on the progress or the time that you have to make the progress that you need to make And you're having to make up for lost ground because you're not making up that ground in season. It doesn't have to be, like, remarkable. And the work that's needed to progress is never going to be groundbreaking. It's not seven to ten strength and conditioning sessions a week. But it needs to be done. You must accept that you should be making progress in season. Number two, in order to do this, you must be proactive with your time. In offseason because you don't have, you know, your rugby training and your games, maybe your weekends are completely free You're allowed to sort of wing it and maybe you get to, you know, you finish work on a Tuesday and you go, okay Maybe I'll go to the gym. Yeah, let's go to the gym and you have a good gym session and whatever like That's like still a crappy approach, but you definitely can't do that in season in season you need to figure out exactly when you're going to be able to train because even if you're training a Two or three times a week. I always recommend like the minimum twice a week is still enough to make progress But if you've got a really hectic schedule and you need to arrange your training around You know your rugby training your work schedule your family life all this extra stuff You have to put it in your schedule You have to put it in so that you've got a session to miss If you're just going to figure out like if you've just got three sessions to make and you don't know when you're going to do them And you just try and figure out them as the week goes by you're never gonna hit it You're not you're gonna miss out on sessions and you're not really you're not really missing out on sessions You're just not doing the sessions. Whereas if they're in your calendar, you've got to go and make them Maybe get yourself an accountability buddy or a coach have yourself sessions to miss so that you suffer the consequence of missing a session when you miss the session rather than Getting to the week and going. Ah Didn't train this week. That's not an approach that's going to work. So maybe you Once you realize and you look at your schedule You realize that you can have to train in the mornings or you have to train in your lunchtime Which might only mean 30 minutes that's still absolutely doable go back and watch through the videos from the rest of the channel In order to see how we can do that Or maybe what I recommend is if the mornings or lunch are out because you work really late or because rugby training is really late And you have to wake up You know a reasonable hour and not too much time before work Potentially post work is always a good option as well for some people that finish a little bit earlier and maybe you have time between Uh work and training or you have time between work and going home I would do that so that you don't go then you don't go home and then get tired and then have to go back out To the gym and then the gym's rammed as well at that point. So Post work is always a good time. Whatever it is. Look at your calendar be prepared I also think uh thursdays and fridays and especially sundays as well like One of those threes if not two of those three days should be filled with a training slot as well You cannot be afraid of being too fatigued if you do like you don't have to trash yourself in the gym You just need to get work done. So if that's like, you know, ten sets of power work, so it's you know, one set of four jump scenarios and then two sets or two different exercises of like Olympic lifts or heavy power work Yeah, that's that's it. That's 10 sets. That's not going to fatigue you for your game It's actually going to prime you for your game again Go back and look on other videos on the channels to see how we train the day before a game Don't be afraid of being too sore when I played I was petrified of uh underperforming and and being under fueled I realized now that I was just not fit enough And not prepared enough in general but One of the biggest things that you can do is, like, use that Friday session not just to pump you up and to get you primed for the Saturday game, but also to make progress, to actually give yourself time to work on your power and then it has the best of both worlds. You improve your power and you're more prepared for your game. You're not feeling stiff. You're not feeling nervous or anxious or Uh, like a little bit tired ahead of your game on that Saturday, you're feeling nice and prepared Sundays. Yes, they could be called recovery workouts, but they're really just conditioning. If you go out and get some zone to work done and you really work on your aerobic capacity, that is going to be huge for your conditioning. And it's also going to get that blood https: otter. ai Like blood flow and quote unquote recovery. I hate calling that recovery because that's people overthinking it But it does allow you to feel a little bit fresher going into the week now Of course, one of these K days could be a rest day. That would absolutely be fine I prefer my rest days on Wednesdays, but sometimes people can't get to Training or to the gym and to get anything done on Thursdays So sometimes that might be the rest day, but it depends I still prefer on Wednesdays because then even if you can't get to the gym on a Thursday You could do a sprint session Or you could do a session on the pitch and remember if you're going to rugby training tuesday and thursday Anyway, potentially utilize that extra time on the pitch rather than having to go all the way to the gym Which is a 15 to 20 minute drive And then go and do some sort of 10 minute warm up and then get ready and do your conditioning session there and then come back Go to rugby a little bit early Do your prep work there and do and do you know 10 minutes of sprints all of a sudden You've had a quality sprint session. You haven't wasted any extra time You've got real quality working and you're already at the rugby club. Anyway, so Really something that you must do if you're gonna make progress in season Which you should all be doing Is being proactive with your time, setting a schedule and sticking as best you can to that schedule and also adjusting that schedule as you go. So if you realize week on week on week that this schedule isn't working, maybe you can't make those Thursday sessions, you divvy that, that workout elsewhere. Number three, train speed and conditioning. this is something that you have to really focus on, as a rugby player because Rugby alone isn't going to take care of your speed needs most especially props, especially forwards I say props picking on props but especially forwards but some backs in general like Your Tuesday and Thursday sessions aren't going to be enough to help you train your speed or get up to top speed. Often in times, games aren't going to be reliable enough. You need to get faster by training your speed, by hitting those top ends. that stuff, like hitting the top end speed, getting faster, is going to make the biggest difference in games. When do you make, big plays in games? Are they made by maintaining a certain speed for a long time? No, they're made by... Real big bursts of speed, either into contact, catching up a player to tackle him, doing that sort of stuff. Speed is, makes a huge difference, so you should be training it in season. It's one of the fastest things to, uh, de train as well, so if you don't touch on it for a few weeks in season, you're getting slower as the season goes on. And that is a huge no no, but it is a huge common occurrence for people that don't train speed. You must be training speed. Again, use that Tuesday or Thursday or before your rugby session is a perfect time to do that, but make sure it's done at some point during the week. It doesn't need a lot of volume, but it does need to be touched upon because it's going to, um, help you have more impact in your game since you're going to see it week to week. And it's also going to help you avoid injuries. Uh, if you pull a hamstring, that's because you're not prepared to run at full speed. You should be building up and then you should be maintaining that top speed. If you then don't train that for, you know, months on end and then all of a sudden you hit it again, guess what? You're underprepared. You're very at risk of getting a hamstring tear. And then being fitter, doing your fitness work. If you are unfit, if you're not conditioned, you're not going to train your conditioning in rugby games and in most training sessions either, like rugby team sessions, then you're just not getting fitter like you think. You're just accommodating, you're just adjusting to the amount of work that you can do, you're spending more time walking, you're not putting in as much effort, you're being a little bit more efficient potentially, which is a good thing, but if you're doing it to, hold you back from the amount of work that you can do because you're unfit, it's a bad thing. So, Condition has a far bigger impact than doing extra bicep curls or doing loads of deadlifts or squats or heavy anything past the first two sets of strength work Being in shape is going to have a huge impact on your game much bigger than the other stuff So give that stuff give you conditioning give your speed work the focus it deserves You're not just by going and showing up to rugby and kind of getting through a Tuesday session or you know Or Wednesday session and getting through a game Like don't kid yourself. You're not getting fair use the time that you have To focus on conditioning if that's something that you need to focus on if you're already really fit and you're putting in the work You only have to touch on it to maintain it same thing as speed And and you're good But if you're unfit and you need to get fitter, don't just rely on games Don't just rely on your rugby training to get your feel because it's not going to do that and it's definitely Not going to make you faster. So you should be training speed as well All right, so moving quickly on, number four of five things that you must do in season as far as your strength and conditioning goes is be flexible. And I'm not talking about being able to do the splits or reach your arms all the way back behind your head. That's mobility. That's a different thing. We're talking about being flexible with your progress. So Yes, you should have a program in place. You should have goals You should be making progress in season and you should have that aim But there are going to be times when your coach decides to put you through the grinder because you lost and he doesn't know Any better he doesn't he thinks that you need to be punished because you lost not that He needs to be punished because actually his fault because he made you unprepared Or because your team isn't good enough and that's just how it is Whatever the case may be and whatever your coach's philosophy is on fitness You have to be flexible because it could also come up in games. It is a very is a very common occurrence where You know one week a an athlete can get through Uh, you know kilometers and kilometers of kilometers of work lots of collisions lots of really high impact work I've played for 80 minutes did loads of stuff and then the next week They got subbed off after five minutes or they got, you know, or that's a bad example. Maybe they got, uh, they didn't get injured because that wouldn't work. Maybe they were just playing full battle. Maybe they just, the game wasn't, didn't go towards them. Maybe they got smashed and they just kept walking behind their post. Or maybe their team was smashing them. Loads of different scenarios can be at play here. But what you've got to understand is... You're in control of your training program and the work that you're putting in Towards that training program to work towards your goals, but you are not in control Of your rugby games or your rugby training session. So when the fatigue comes from those sessions Be okay with maybe switching out the movements, maybe your shoulders feeling a bit niggly from the weekend and so bench press, barbell bench press isn't working for you. Maybe you just do some weighted push ups, maybe you just do some general push work, maybe it's dumbbells, you can switch out the movement, maybe it's a chest press on the machine. Maybe you don't have the time. In your day to wait for the other big bloke and the bodybuilder that's on the bench press instead you have to, you know, you've got 20 minutes to get in and get out instead you go to the machine and you pump out the work there that would still be fine As long as you're close enough to your spot, which we've touched on in another video, your specific physical outcome of your training, then you're going to be fine, right? You don't have to be specific, like, you don't have to go, I have to do 90 percent of 3x3, uh, you know, followed by 85 percent of 3x3. For one times six like that's not how it works and that's a terrible example of the percentage work but you shouldn't be sticking towards percentage work mostly in season unless it's Sometimes i'll do it when it's like fairly backed off enough that you've got loads of room to Keep recovery in the in your back pocket and you're going to be fine But for the most part you have to be flexible You can't have a rigid program where you have to do all this amount of work and you feel bad if you don't do it Sometimes you know, you might have to skip out on sessions sometimes Quite often during the season you're going to have to pull back and that's okay You just got to figure out what you can do So maybe you'll wake up on a Thursday knowing that you've still got a game on Saturday But you've you've been put through the grinder. You had a tough game on Saturday and you lost and then you coach You know put you through the grinder on Tuesday as well and then your girlfriend broke up with you on Wednesday You didn't get any sleep Is it a good idea to go and still lift heavy on Thursday? Probably not. Could you do something else? Probably. Is it the end of the world? If you don't, no. Um, I'm not going to keep on asking myself questions in this hypothetical scenario. I'm going to move on. Okay? Just understand that you have to be flexible and that's okay. As long as you're in the general trend of going into the direction that you want and you're still continually putting in work. You're going to in the long run get the results that you want as long as you're staying there and ideally Yes, you do stick with the same movements and you do stick with progression in that way and you do stay close enough And you're following the program to the t but we don't live in an ideal world particularly when we're in rugby season So you should be okay with? Not every single week and it's not, you know, you're not just throwing it out and you're just figuring out what you do each day, depending on how you feel. You're still sticking with a program. You still got intent there and you, you have that intention for each movement for each session, but you're doing what you can to accommodate when things aren't perfect. Okay. And you're staying flexible. And then finally, number five, staying consistent and showing up because you have to be flexible, this is really important, or this is probably more important than being flexible, or this allows you to be flexible, because you're showing up week on week on week during the season. And because you're showing up, even when you are feeling tired, that's when it's okay to change the movement out every now and again. If you only plan on making, training for the next four weeks, every session all of a sudden becomes that much more important because it's all finished after four weeks because you're going to give up or because, you know, you've reached the promised land and then you don't have to train anymore. Hint, hint, that's not how training works. Instead, what you need to do is consistently show up. So, rather than starting and stopping and you just have no momentum, um, like I said, this is one of the big reasons why it's important to train in season in the first place, keep showing up and keep putting in the work. And as long as your work stays close enough and as long as you're consistently there, you're going to continue to make progress. Not only are you going to continue to make progress, But when the off season comes and when the time comes, like when fatigue dissipates, when maybe you've got some spots in your schedule, some spots with your stress where it's a lot easier to get in a lot of, a lot more work, you've built the capacity, you've built the foundation with your quality training that you've done in season. To really push the boat out to really push the amount of work that you can do because you're fitter because you've got that foundation not only just with your you know, your physical structures within your your aerobic conditioning and your Muscularity and your hypertrophy in order to you know, really Um actualize those gains as far as strength and power goes But also with your habits with the fact that you now associate yourself with going to the gym Three or four times a week or even twice a week when before you never went to the gym Okay, staying consistent and continuing to show up is going to be the thing that makes a, well, it's it. If you don't stay consistent, if you don't show up, the rest of it doesn't really matter. You know, because you're not going to get any results. The graph here on the top indicates, uh, compounding gains or compounding interest. That is what you're getting when you're putting in that work. Now, the progress that you're going to make isn't going to be overly dramatic. You're not going to put 20 kilos on your bench within the four weeks. You're not going to deadlift an extra 40 kilos more in the next two months. You are going to make small improvements, and they might not even show themselves as much, you might even be lifting the same weights week on week on week. But, you're doing that with more fatigue, you're putting in that work, and that work is going to pay off. And probably, you're going to be feeling that work paying off in games, as long as it structures, especially if you're doing the speed work and the conditioning work that you should be doing. You will feel that in games not necessarily week on week, but month to month You will like you'll feel if you're playing in december and you've been doing this work since september You should definitely be feeling better out on the pitch come december than you did Back then and you'll be fit like that will be something that you notice There's no specific measurable outcome that we need. We don't need to measure your 5k time We don't need to measure your 40 yard split with someone holding their thumb on the On the, uh, stopwatch. It's not how it works. You should be feeling better on the pitch. And that's the thing I care about most. As far as my rugby athletes go. Again, not specific dramatic improvements are going to be expected. But you're laying that foundation down you're getting that ball rolling so that when you get time all of a sudden It's rolling downhill or uh as the graph here shows on the top right of of the of the slide here compounding interest you're putting in those first percentages of improvement so you're laying that foundation so that when you've got the time all of a sudden over time Like the amount of work that it needs you to takes you to maintain a level of fitness is nothing because your level of fitness Is that much higher or to maintain a certain level of speed throughout a game because you've done your speed work because you've gotten so much Faster all of a sudden even when you are tired, you're still significantly faster than you were At the beginning of the season or that you were months ago because you've been putting in that quality speed work And then even then because you've been putting in the conditioning work, you're not going to get as tired as often anyway So what you're doing here with training in season isn't about making Dramatic progress that you're seeing in the gym week to week. It's about laying the foundation For quality pushes in the future when you're in the offseason to make to take advantage of those in the gym particularly when it comes to like hypertrophy and Like conditioning as far as like running speed times go but on the pitch you should be seeing this work paying off month to month and that's what matters That's why you're in the gym because you want to be a better rugby player and you're laying some quality Foundation for all of that stuff to come So that's the video guys. Those five things are really important if you are going to Make any progress really in season if you've got and if you are gonna make any progress you can make great progress you can Like revolutionize how you play from the start of the season to the end of the season as long as you have that mindset That you are going to improve and that you can put Improving that you can put in work that is worth doing as long as you stay proactive with your schedule as long as you're nice and flexible with the amount of training that you're doing with the training that you're doing with the features of the training that you're doing as long as you're touching on your conditioning and your speed work as you are going through the season and as long as you are staying consistent as long as you continue to show up even if you're feeling tired you understand that you can still make those improvements if you're tired and actually getting through the warm up you'll feel better You will, experience some huge benefits. I hope that video was used for you, for you guys. Give it a thumbs up. Let me know what you thought in the comments below. Like I say, links for all the ways that you can work with Rugby Muscle will be in the description below. If this is your first time watching Rugby muscle, please consider subscribing. I'm trying to give not just like precise information as to exactly what you should be doing, but overall mindset and overall bigger picture stuff as to what you should be doing as an amateur rugby player to get the best out of yourself. And I hope this one was useful for you guys. Thank you guys so much for watching, and I see you in the next one.