Okay. This one goes out to older rugby players and because older is a completely relative term, this could mean any of you, if you wish to continue playing rugby in theory forever, this video is for you. These are going to be my top tips to play rugby forever in a strength and conditioning sense. So what you need to consider and what you should be doing as a rugby player as you age. What's going on everyone, my name is TJ, I am the guy behind Rugby Muscle. If you want to work with Rugby Muscle in a programming or coaching sense, I'll put links in the description below. My programming that I will be doing for older rugby players always takes these things into consideration, but then some of them are also, um, mindset on the player's end. So let's get into this video real quick. Um, before I do, I wanna make sure that you understand who this video is for, 'cause I'm not going to, uh, be speaking to as cute as this guy looks, this old fellow here in the, in the pink shorts. Fair play to him. I'm not going to like knock him or anything. I'm just saying that this video isn't for someone like him because he's, he's too far gone. This video is for people that want to continually play rugby and not hold their team back. They want to be a contributing member of their team. They don't want to be that person that is almost uh, being carried by the rest of his team. You don't want to be a spectator on the field. You want to continually make good actions and... Play your best and in theory continue to improve Obviously that means that you don't want to get injured because timeout as you age is a killer and can actually mean the end of Your career. So really the emphasis here is going to be on not getting injured it's also wanting to prioritize your health because as you get older your health becomes more and more a Not necessarily even important, but you become more aware of its importance on your the rest of your years You also want to make sure that you maximize your time and make the most of The time that you've got to play now whether that is maximizing the 80 minutes on the pitch So your use out of those 80 minutes Whether that's maximizing the amount of games that you can play in a month or the training you're doing or whether that's you know Just being able to get more time out of it. It's it's however you interpret it that is for you I've done this several times, in fact that's one of my most common clients to come to me are guys that want to keep playing their best rugby, but they can't prioritize it like they once did when they were younger, and they also expect this aging thing to happen to them, and they get somewhat surprised when they see their performance increase and actually get a lot better. rather than just even hold the decline. So I've got two examples here. My man, Eric, who's boshing a golf in his forties, played some of his best rugby in his forties. And we've also got Louie here who ended up even finishing out his semi professional career. Still going actually, but, um, winning the National Cup. And playing some of it again in the best shape, I would say like, or at least equivalent shape of his twenties where he was, but all at the same time, so not just at his strongest or just at his fittest, like combining those things, which then equate to obviously being at your best. So. If you want these tips and if you're, uh, someone that thinks that this is going to be valuable for you, just hit that thumbs up button right now. If you are new to Rugby Muscle, hit subscribe and, um, let me know what you think about rugby as you are aging, what you're prioritizing, what's changed for you, what stuff you could get away with earlier that you can't do now, or how you're thinking about this whole process in the comments below. But we'll get into, I think I've got seven tips lined up. So first and foremost, it's a bit more of a meta idea, but. It's still really, really important. Don't just accept aging. I see people that, um, always give themselves a negative self talk towards their age and it doesn't matter what their age. I hear people negatively giving themselves, um, a bad time saying, you know, at my age and they're 27. I see people when they're in uni versus at school. I see people when they're in their 30s or in their 40s. It doesn't matter what age you're at. You can always use it as an excuse if you let it be an excuse, right? Otherwise you can always just view the training process as the training process. It doesn't matter what age you start. It doesn't matter like how old you are right now. All that matters is what is on the plate for the next few weeks or what is it that you want to achieve out of your rugby. So when I say don't just accept aging, it's that aging idea of... Uh, you know, as you hit your thirties or as you get past your mid twenties, you're necessarily inevitably going to hit this physical decline. That's why most people retire. Actually, most people stop playing rugby. Particularly as amateurs, but actually no professionals as well because they have other commitments. There are other commitments as in Professionals, you know families businesses, etc People that are amateur players Have more professional lives and therefore their professional lives take up more of their time Their family comes into play and therefore they just don't have the time to commit that they once did and that's just talking about like a rugby sense when you consider As players age, they probably also don't have as much time In theory, to commit to the gym, to stay in fit as they used to do before, then you can see why that physical decline happens. It's not necessarily because of their age as, you know, the actual end of the argument. It's the age that contributes to their lack of free time or their lack of time to be able to, um, commit to rugby and to commit to the improvement process that comes with training. Now... Of course, the fitter you are, um, the easier that is to maintain, but at any age, you can still get better. You can still make improvements and it's not necessarily the same area. So if you look at a training age versus a normal age, if you've been, uh, strength training, just strength training for more than 10 years, yeah, you might not be able to get stronger, but you've got a low training age. Maybe in your aerobic ability, you've seen a lot of people that have taken on this hybrid movement that have got a lot fitter. You can look at so many different areas for that for rugby. So there's always areas that you're able to improve. So don't just accept, Oh, I'm this age. That means I can't improve. Well, if you've never, you know, likewise, if you've got a 40 year old, that's never done any strength training before, they're actually going to get significantly stronger. You know, if they continue to train for the next two years versus someone that doesn't ever train or versus them, you know, in their thirties, even they're going to get a lot stronger. So don't just look at age, look at training age. And also, um, like be a realist. So take into account the things I'm going to say in this video. Take into account your training age, your actual age, your actual recovery needs, and then accept them and move forward. But don't just say, Ah, I'm 40. I guess that's the end of me ever trying to get better. Not the way it works. Okay? And of course, if you do abandon that, if you do have that fateless attitude, Then you're never going to get healthy anyway, you know, so it's actually rugby is always a good way to shoehorn in the training that you should be doing it anyway, getting stronger, getting fitter, getting more mobile, all this stuff for your health. This stuff is really good for your health and playing rugby gives you like a more of a motivational thing rather than I want to not fall over and get sick when I'm really old, you know. So I think not accepting just being old as an excuse is this first, this is my first tip, but it's also the first agent in actually taking on, taking on board all the stuff that I'm going to get into. Tip number two is get really well conditioned. So, we're not talking about, Oh, I just lift my weights faster or I just take a little bit less rest. No, we're talking about actual aerobic conditioning. That is going to help you so much in your pursuit of playing as much rugby as you can, but also training to improve. Because the fitter you are, the more work you can get through, obviously in a game. But on top of that, it's the more work that you can get through in a training session. And it's the more, uh, uh, work that you can actually recover from and continue to improve. Yes, you could potentially, if you're not as fit, get through the same amount of work, but that work beats you up. And then the next day you can't do anything. And then the next day you're aerobically fit can get up, can get moving, can be active. That training doesn't have as big a deleterious effect. Well, that's a big word. Doesn't have such negative effect. on their body, on their,, overall performance the next few days. On top of that, being fit doesn't just affect your training and your games. It affects like your overall recovery ability. So not just how hard those training sessions affect you, but actually your ability to come back and be fine, right? The fitter you are, the more you can deal with all of this stuff. The less deleterious, yeah, I said training, but the less deleterious effects that rugby games have on you. You know, you get those people that aren't fit. They play rugby once every six months. They get smashed and then they're on the couch for like 90 days. That's not what we're looking for here. We're looking for someone that can be fit that can continue to train, even if it's just a couple times a week, which we'll get into, um, it's just that ability to keep showing up and to keep improving and conditioning makes such a huge difference and actually makes you touched on how much work you can get through in a game. But when you take into account that you as an older player, you should have more experience. You should have more street wiseness on the pitch. That's going to allow you to spot those opportunities easier, have more of an impact than you've ever done before, because now you read the game better because of all of that experience, and now that you're fitter, you're able to actually get there, rather than just focusing on how exhausted you are. The appeal of condition to every rugby player, but particularly to older players, focusing on your conditioning can have a profound impact, not just on your training and not just on your games, but actually will add on to this your injury management as well. So a lot of injuries come about because guys are putting themselves in poor positions. Why are they doing that? Because they're exhausted. So when guys are tired, rather than hit a ruck, uh, effectively and efficiently, or rather than make a tackle, they make weak tackles, or they, uh, don't stride out perfectly, they're not conscious of their movement or what they're doing, they're just exhausted. That's when injuries happen, both in training and in games. And so the fitter you are, The less likely you are to get injured, uh, via, you know, your weakness or your poor movement and therefore, again, the longer you're able to train and continue to improve without those injuries affecting you because obviously, as you get older, those injuries do affect you that much more. You don't need me to make a, uh, an extra slide to state this. We all know this, like it's something that everyone experiences, but if you actually avoid those injuries from ever happening, you don't run into this issue. Tip three. This is probably the most important tip in a way because none of the other stuff matters if you don't continually train and you're not consistent with your training. So you've got to be proactive with your time. So like. You know, I think this is something that again, I was touching this already because of the commitments that you have as an older athlete or just as an older person, right? You've got your family commitments, your work might take up more of much more of your time, especially compared to when you're in uni or you're in school. You have to be proactive of your time. So you must schedule this in, you know, if you're above 30 and you're not busy, you're the exception. If you are busy, that's normal. If you've got a family, that's normal. It's not an excuse. It's just something that you have to factor in. So you've got to be really proactive of your time. I advise people to actually schedule it into their calendar when they're going to be able to train so that then they know exactly when they're committed. It's not an afterthought. It's not something that you try and find time for in the moment or go, Okay. I've got home from work early today. Maybe I can go to the gym. It's something that you always planned, uh, or that you've always got planned so that you can arrange your training around that plan. So if you can go to the gym twice a week, great. If you can only run twice a week, fine. If you can make four sessions a week and you have to wake up at 6 a. m., great. But are you going to make sure that you're getting to sleep on time? Or if you have to wake up at 4 a. m., same thing. If you have to be proactive of your lunch hour, make sure that that's what exactly what you're doing, whatever it is, you're not sacrificing everything else to go to the gym. That's not sustainable. You're sacrificing, um, just about five minutes a week or just figuring out exactly when it is. You're going to train, but you could sacrifice five minutes a week to Uh, to look at your calendar to scheduling exactly when you're going to train and that that is a must do so be a realist, figure out exactly when it is that you're going to train and then stick with that. And if you can't keep up with that schedule after two or three weeks of trying, you've got to change it. You've got to be what you've got to stick to whatever you actually can stick to. No worrying about what is in theory the best routine for you. Worry about what is the practicality of what you can make and continue to adhere to that and then adapt as it needs to change but really be Adapting as you change is being proactive. Just being proactive with your time is of utmost importance for you athletes as you get older As is focusing on your maintenance volumes and your minimum effective volume. So we'll deal with minimum effective volumes first. So you're looking at how much work it is you need to get better and not worrying about doing any more, right? So if you do one run a week and you continue to improve week on week on week, why would you need to do more? Like if that's improving you, great. If it's an area that's a massive weakness and you want to make up for a little bit of lost time. You're answering that question. That is why you need to do more, but you're not just doing more out of habit. This is more directed at the guys, either the runners that are already really fit and are running four or five times a week. That's probably not you watching this video. It's probably the other one. If you're watching this video, it's probably the person that's trying to go to the gym four or five times a week, and there's already plenty strong, right? That's when you focus actually not even on your minimum effective volume and worrying about getting better. If you're already really strong, you can just worry about your maintenance volume and maybe that's like not even once a week talking about keeping your strength rather than actually getting stronger. If you're already strong enough, but you're really unfit, you should devote much more of your time towards that conditioning so you could potentially squeeze in a weight session because your minimum effective volume for your aerobic work is, you know, twice a week and then you can actually your availability is three times a week. That would allow you to fit both things in. But that's because you're focused on your maintenance volumes and your minimum effective volumes. Don't do training sessions out of habit. Don't do what you're comfortable with. Don't do what you're necessarily always, always doing and really good at. Focus on how much work you need to maintain a certain fitness aspect that's already enough and how much work it takes. minimum to continue to move forward on other aspects. So most people that's one session a week on weights or one session a week on aerobic work, that's going to be your minute, your maintenance volumes and then your minimum effective could be twice. And we're not even talking about sets. So within every given gym session, do you need to do five sets of squats? Probably not. And this is something that you have to be again, really proactive with because I've seen so many guys just overdo themselves and not allow themselves to improve because they've given themselves so much work to try to recover from. Tip four, we're halfway through and we're going to focus now a lot more on the specifics of training. And with you guys that are getting older, you need to focus on your maintenance volumes and your minimum effective volumes. What I mean by that is your overall work that you need to get better or the overall work that you need to maintain. So when we're looking at minimum effective volumes, how much work as far as sessions, it could be as far as sets, it could be as far as, I don't know, yeah, sessions and sets, overall work, how much work does it take to improve a certain fitness aspect? So if we're looking at lower body strength, or if we're looking at overall conditioning, or if we're looking at speed, how much does it take to improve? And then ask yourself the question, why do you need to do more? And if you don't need to do more, and if you haven't got a compelling reason, then don't stick with your minimum effective volumes. Getting progress as you're aging is like, it's like the goldmine, right? It's, it's fantastic. You know, we're, we're worried about like not getting worse. So if you can get better and if you can get better without doing loads of work. Why would you do more? All you're doing by doing more is eating into your capacity to recover and your precious, precious time. So really focus on that minimum amount you need to do to continually improve. So that's our minimum effective volume. What that's going to be is going to change depending on how, you know, fit, fast, strong you are, how trained you are. The more trained you are, the better you are. Usually the more work it takes to improve. And whether that's up to, you know, it's up to you, whether that's something that you want to do, whether you need to improve that. That's why I always like to focus on our low hanging fruits because we get, make a big difference to our games and our overall health and fitness. without doing a lot of work and bring up our weak points. Now, when we're looking at our areas that we're already strong at, that's when we're looking at our maintenance volumes. Because a lot of you guys that are watching this video might be plenty strong already, and actually, you don't need to do any weights for the next, like, year. Because you're already really strong. Therefore, like, why do, why waste your time on this area, you know, your precious, precious time on getting stronger, when actually you're not going to get stronger, you're just going to maintain anyway. So why don't you maintain? with doing one session a week versus doing four sessions a week and maybe putting, you know, two kilos extra on your squat over the course of like four or five months. That to me doesn't look like a trade off that is worth it for a rugby player. So really be proactive with figuring out what areas of your fitness areas of your game you actually need to improve and what areas of game that you can actually. Put on the back burner and just keep it maintenance because maintenance is super low I've seen this time and time again. I've said it already about guys that are strong Also with guys that are fit there are some guys that fit that don't need to do any extra conditioning work And maybe they're a little bit smaller. So therefore their main focus is going to be On you know actually putting on some size and again It doesn't mean that you have to go five times a week to the gym. It means to focus on what? Do you need to do in order to keep that scale and to keep those weights going and trending upwards? Not as much as you think, don't stress about doing more and more and more. Don't stress about having to do the most amount of work during the week. Stress about exactly what it takes to improve and then don't worry about doing any more. Tip number five along those lines, we must focus on high stimulus to fatigue ratio movement. So being as efficient as possible, getting the most stimulus without causing much fatigue. That's why I'm a bigger fan of zone to work your low level conditioning because it gives you a really good stimulus as far as your aerobic capacity goes, but it doesn't give you much fatigue at all as long as you stay. In that zone two, if you bump it up to zone three, all of a sudden you get a little bit of a extra benefit as far as your conditioning goes, potentially not even that'd be debatable, but you get a lot more fatigue compared to nothing. So it's also a reason I don't like the barbell deadlift because that gives you, it gives you some stimulus, but it gives you a ton of fatigue that if you circumvented deadlifts and did other movements and got the same effective equivalent stimulus, you don't get anywhere near that amount of fatigue. So we're looking at the same point of view as we spoke about in the previous slide, but now rather than looking at minimum effective volumes, we're looking at Minimum effective movements. What movements sit well with us? What movements don't burn us into the ground? What movements are we able to do continually improve, continually get that good stimulus to get stronger, fitter, faster, move better and get all of the benefits of training without you know, not being able to walk up the stairs the next day or just feeling overly fatigued and knackered for training so that we don't train. You know rugby as our best. So we really want to minimize the amount of fatigue So we want to look for those movements, you know We'll see this a lot with single joint movements so we can do heavy strength work with reverse lunges rather than squats We could also do as we spoke about in the previous one just two sets of squats rather than five sets of squats However, your approaches you must put these two things into focus focus on your minimum effective volumes your maintenance volumes and then movements That give you a real high stimulus With little amounts of fatigue. So another reason why I focus on power movements. Actually, we'll talk about that in the next slide because that's coming up. Focusing on speed and power movements are great because they're not as fatigue and it's, you know, big, heavy, higher rep, um, Or high set, high volume, uh, bodybuilding work, but it's going to give you a real good stimulus that you can carry onto the pitch. The other thing with speed, particularly, or speed and power, these two traits are the first to go as you age. So, once you hit your mid twenties, if they remain untrained, you are, you are going to hit that physical decline. You're going to get slower, you're going to get less explosive. However, If you train those things, it doesn't matter if you start training them when you're 40, you are going to get more explosive. You are going to get faster. The thing is, most guys do not train these things. They think that rugby sort of trains it because they run fast, but that's not, that's not training it properly. Giving speed the attention it deserves by That's just 20 minutes. That's all it deserves. 20 minutes of sprint training can be one sprint every two minutes, full recovery. All of a sudden you're recruiting all those muscle fibers and Slightly honing in your natural technique to get faster. Yes, you could do lots of other things You can make that a lot more complex and a lot more specific But the real bare bones that's enough and that's going to get you plenty faster Week on week on week for a good period of a few months and that's going to have a profound impact on your game Then when we're looking at the gym, we're looking at throws, we're looking at, uh, explosive movements. They're going to teach your body to move fast. And then once you get to a rugby game or even just training that fast movement carries over a lot better than those heavy body building type movements that a lot of guys. end up doing as they, as they age. The other thing that I touched on in the previous slide, these power movements are way less fatiguing, um, for the whole body or at least for the musculature than the other stuff. Yes, you, doesn't give you license to do hundreds and hundreds of sets. In fact, you should keep these sets to a minimum because you're looking at that minimum effective volume. It doesn't take that much work to see this. But it doesn't give you the fatigue that, you know, the bodybuilding type movements, the heavyweight movements will give you. And in fact, So much so that I like doing some power work the day before a game because actually the next day you feel a little bit fresher. You go in, you move explosively, you get those, uh, fast twitch fibers firing, you feel better and then you feel even more prepared for your game the next day. So focusing on your speed and power development, especially in the weight room, but also outside is going to have a massive benefit for you and almost is a necessity for rugby players as they age. I say almost, it is a necessity, I said almost because that's just not what most people do. But now you know better, you're going to see huge benefits, not just in your actual physical performance on the pitch and on the training pitch, but also you're going to experience how much easier it is to move better. You're going to continue to feel like an athlete as you age. And you're not getting that fatigue that comes along with doing excess amounts of heavyweights and heavy bodybuilding movements, which have their place, but not in place of speed and power, especially for you older players. And then finally, my final point, again, we'll go to a bit more of a broader point of view. That consistency is shown Right now in you. So if you're in your forties and you're already out of shape, it's not going to take you six weeks to all of a sudden, like, reverse that effect. When you're younger, you've just had less time of being in crap shape, you know? So, the older you get, the harder it is to, or the longer it should take, I'm not going to say harder it is, the longer it will take to get into good shape. But it's not because you're necessarily really old and your body is completely against you. It's more the fact that you've now had extra time in being out of shape. So, the body wants to stay where it's at. So, the longer it's been where it's at, the more it wants to stay there, the harder it is to change. Whereas if you're in your 20s, yeah, it takes two years. Two years is 10 percent of your entire existence. When you're 20, whereas when you're 40, it's 5%. It's significantly smaller. It's half that amount of time, still two years. It's a much less significant proportion of your time. Your body wants to stay the same. Your body wants to stay in homeostasis. That's either working for you or against you. So the time that you put in right now. Is going to contribute to future homeostasis. So if you're 40 and you want to keep working for the next five years, then you're going to be a 45 year old with five years of real consistent training behind your back. That's good, right? So in order to do that, you must just commit yourself. Commit yourself, not just to a training program that fits your life, but to a schedule for the, I guess, rest of your life. Don't wait for motivation. Don't wait for the situation to be perfect. Don't wait for off season. Don't wait for in season. There is no off season or in season when you're older. There is just, you're either training and getting better, or you're not training and getting worse. That's kind of it. So waiting around for any other time is just like it's it's more and more What you're just eating up more and more of your life the older you get it's not that this time is more important than it Was when you're in your 20s is just this time is right now Like the old saying goes the best time to plant the tree is 20 years ago The second best time to plant the tree is right now The exact same thing applies to you, even if you're an older athlete and want to continue playing. You best get training. We're looking at speed and power. We're looking at maintenance and minimum effective volumes by being really selective with what you want to improve. We're looking at high stimulus to fatigue ratio movements so that you're not experiencing loads of fatigue. You're not doing stuff just because you used to do it that beat you into the ground. You're being really proactive of your exercise selection. You're scheduling your stuff. You're scheduling exactly when you're going to train. You're getting yourself really fit so that you can continue to improve. And from there, you're, you're onto a winner, you're onto a good one. Hopefully this video helps you guys. If it did, let me know in the comments below, give it a thumbs up, subscribe if you're new and the ways to work with us at Rubby Muscle will be in the description below. Thank you for watching. See you in the next one.