Okay. Yes. So if you're here listening to this rugby muscle podcast, there's a good chance that you want to be a little bit better than what I would say most rugby players are like, who sort of start strong, lose momentum, inevitably get banged up and sort of end up surviving through the season. And that happens year after year after year, and they end up just sort of surviving through their rugby career. You're the sort of rugby player who wants to be proactive with both your training, your rugby to not just maximize your ability to perform and try to get glory or whatever, but also just to maximize your performance because it's more fun to play like that. And you want to see yourself progress as an athlete for as long as possible. And for that, I've got 10 tips for you that will make a difference with your rugby performance. It's mostly sort of. S& C stuff and it's mostly sort of basics and maybe what I'm going to do with this sort of series is Progress them throughout. So we'll start here with the 10 most basics and then we'll sort of start to get into some really nitty gritty sort of programming ones nutrition ones even potentially rugby specific ones And if you're keen for that, let me know in the comments below What is going on everyone? Welcome back to another brand new Rugby Muscle Podcast. I'm your host, as always, TJ. Look forward to seeing you, saying hi in the comments below if you're watching on YouTube or hitting the three dots and asking the questions on Spotify. Give us five stars like it makes all the difference and it really does help your boy out now If you give me five stars right now, I will never do that accent again Either way say hi in the comments below or hit the three dots and ask a question or just say which of these ten Game changing tips are going to be the most applicable for you. I Know they're kind of basic, but I do think you'll get the big benefit, not only from sort of reaffirming things that you kind of already know, but potentially also there'll be one or two of these 10 that you didn't even think of, and could make a world of difference. And that's why I'm going to call them The Game Changing Tips. Of course, if you haven't already, Hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss one. I am doing these podcasts every single week of 2025 and coming soon we'll also be getting guests on. And final plug, if you want to work with me with Rugby Muscle, you want to, it's all offloaded so you don't have to think about it at all. Links for how to apply to work with Rugby Muscle will be in the description below. So let's get on with it. 10 game changing tips. Number one. Make time for the gym rather than sort of, I'll just fit it in whenever. Like, this can happen when you first start to go and you start feeling really motivated. You'll always find the time, but as life happens, because life inevitably does, You'll end up never going and that's probably the main reason most people aren't really consistent. It's not that they don't have the time. It's just that they can't find the time. There's a big difference. So what you have to do is be proactive of it. Put it in your schedule. Make it kind of non negotiable, but of course if life does happen and things come in the way of that schedule, you can always rearrange. But because it's in your schedule, You have to then rearrange it. Um, it could be also something sort of ritualistic. So it could be first thing in the morning, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it could be ritualistic like before you get home from work, you go on the way home. However you do it, like you make a way for you to stay consistent and put it in your schedule. Schedule is really important because sometimes people schedule things in. for their normal gym time and they completely forget and then all of a sudden they skip two weeks of gym and then they've got to sort of get it back and then that becomes a grind. Always, always, always put it in a schedule and if you don't have a schedule Make one. A big part of rugby strength and condition, or strength and condition, being fit in general, is logistics. It's organizing yourself to be able to go to the gym, to eat really well, to do all this stuff. So, first and foremost, make sure you make time and you schedule your sessions in. Number two, follow a plan. Again, for most of you, this is going to be really obvious, but there are a good chunk of people that just show up to the gym and then sort of figure out what to do. If you're doing that, you're not making the most of your training. You're getting something, but you're probably getting maybe at most 30 percent out of your total potential results for that time. All you need to do is get some sort of plan that you stick to. The whole point of training is to create an adaptation and continually push the body so that it adapts and gets stronger. If you're doing random stuff over time, your body is just going to have so many different stimuluses that it's trying to adapt to that it just over time. Doesn't make progress as much because it just keeps going back to the baseline where it was because it's not being pushed by a smart specific program to, continue to develop one error, right? So say you go for a 30 minute run one time, you're going to get a little bit of a stimulus from that run. If you then follow that up week after week after week with more runs, you're going to get properly fit. If you then do that 30 minute run and then don't do anything for two months, You'll then go back to being exactly as you were before you did that 30 minute run. And two months is an exaggeration. It could even be like two weeks. So you've got to stick to a plan rather than random training. I'll put in a quick plug here. Team Rubbing Muscle in the links below. Easiest plan that you can do. I'm developing it right now. By the time we get to March, it's going to be the best, like, year round programming that you could possibly do. It already is, but it's going to take on a new level. Team Rugby Muscle in the links, in the description below. Number three, something that we also do in Team Rugby Muscle, I do as big part of the Rugby Muscle method is to account for your rugby within your training. So many people sort of know their training. They know their, their S and C. And they don't ever consider that those two things really cross over. So if you're, doing things like, medium tempo sprints, like that sort of stuff, like 15 minutes of touch, right? That's going to challenge an energy system very similar to if you're just doing a 15 minute high intensity circuit or 15 minute high intensity interval training. That's one of, not the Main reason, but it's one of the big reasons why we don't do that sort of stuff within our SEC. We're already getting that stimulus from our rugby. There's no need to repeat it. Like you want to train the qualities that aren't trained within your rugby. That's why I love , pushing the ends of the spectrum. Max strength work, low intensity aerobic work. That sort of things or those sort of things are not challenged at all within rugby. Right? You don't get enough time of a consistent low heart rate to really push yourself aerobically. You don't get enough of a stimulus strength wise to really grow muscle. You wouldn't go to rugby to grow muscle, so you have to go to the gym, right? Same thing. So you want to make sure that you are accounting for the stimulus that you get within. Another big thing that people don't quite realize is a lot of core work. If you're doing lots of contact during the week, right? If you're doing two rugby sessions, quite a bit of contact, quite a lot of rotation. It's very trendy at the minute to see S& C programs incorporating a lot of that sort of stuff like the rotation work, the sports specific work, lots of core work, and again, I love doing my core work, but you can then consider that is already a stimulus there, right? If you're doing lots of scrum training and you're a prop, there's probably not a huge need to do lots of, isometric training within your S& C because you're already getting that stimulus from your rugby. That's about as technical as we're going to get for these tips. We'll move straight on to number four, which is take Wednesdays off. This is assuming that you've got a Tuesday, Thursday rugby session, as most people do. If you don't, adjust this for however you train. But if you're training on Tuesday, I'm going to Just, I'm going to stick with using the analogy of Tuesday, Thursday, if you're training other days, just swap those days out, right? So, if you're training Tuesday and Thursday, and then you're hitting the gym Monday and Wednesday, you're getting four consecutive days of a decent amount of fatigue builder. And that means by Thursday, which is probably your team moment, which is when you want to be pretty sharp, you're beaten to the ground. By the time Friday rolls around, you're just about to survive. You take that day off and then you sort of roll into rugby. A better idea would be to take Wednesdays really easy, if not off, and Push it quite hard on Tuesday and Thursday so that then your whole body can recover on that Wednesday. Be ready for that Thursday. Hit a power session Friday and go straight into your rugby feeling firing on all cylinders by the time Saturday rolls around. If you've, and I know it makes sense for a lot of people just logistically again to sort of train Monday and Wednesday because they're hitting Tuesday and Thursday for rugby and then they don't really want to do too much on a Friday. You've done, what you've then got is a situation where you've just got one big, bolus of fatigue just getting smashed at you from Monday to Thursday or even Monday to Wednesday. And then you've got the game, but nothing else really pushing the envelope as far as your physical adaptation goes. We want to sort of spread that out. So what I'd rather you do, if you cannot train on the days that you do rugby in this Tuesday, Thursday example, I would rather you just train Monday and Friday. You push real hard on that Monday, you do your rugby session on Tuesday, take Wednesday nice and light, or off. Thursdays your rugby session where you're going to be short, sharp and firing, usually like the team run sort of stuff. And then Friday you're going to get a real good power stimulus, which is not going to give you any fatigue. It's going to prepare you, it's going to prime you, it's going to have you performing it on your Saturday as best possible. So take Wednesdays easy. Moving on to number five, and that is showing up to your rugby training sessions with things to work on. So many rugby players, and this is just normal, I'm not, if this is you, like I'm kind of calling you out, but it's not because you're a bad person or you're not committed or you don't want it bad enough. It's because this is what is treated as normal. So many rugby players just show up to rugby and then go, okay, coach, what are we doing? What's the plan for this session? You have to take personal responsibility for your own development as a player. Yes, your coach's job is to improve the team and improving you is part of that. But you've got to think how many people that person is, responsible to develop. You're just one of those few people. It's really hard. No coach is ever going to care About your results about how you progress as a rugby player as much as you do So it's on you to show up to rugby with things to work on It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to take charge of your own drills or do something like that but it could be like You have things that you want to work on just so that when the opportunities for those things arise you can then really take advantage of them you can see them because if you didn't Go into your rugby training with this intent, you wouldn't have seen them before, you'd just gone through the motions. Again, so many rugby players just go through their whole life just going through the motions. Whereas if you're someone, and this is a big regret of mine, if you're someone that wants to develop a left hand pass, like a really good left hand pass, it's a weakness. When you're playing touch, when you're doing drills, put yourself in a position to keep practicing those. Or even 5 minutes, 10 minutes before training, just spend that time passing, drilling that pass. Or drill, a sort of tackling technique, or a counter rucking technique, or something like that. There's so many different areas, so many different areas. Rugby's so hard because of the amount of things that you're expected to be good at in order to play rugby well. you're going to have to be responsible to develop these things, right? So if you're, if you're trying to work on a different type of tackling, when it comes for contact time, all right, I'm going to focus on these types of tackles. I'm going to focus on getting in a jacket position. We'll look for that. And it doesn't necessarily work out that you're going to get loads. You, you're going to go through some weeks where you don't get an opportunity to touch on the thing that you wanted to work on at all. But that awareness just allows you for more increased, exposures of that opportunity. It's something that you absolutely should. do number six do some speed work before trading if you can show up to rugby early This makes things so much easier, right? Not only do you, start your rugby training session nice and warm up, but you get a quality opportunity to get some speed work done. Logistically, it's just a ball like to go and do some speed work on the days that you're not doing rugby training. You've already got a pitch there. You're already there to show up. It doesn't take long. A quality speed session can be done in less than 15 minutes easily. So you just show up, get your speed work done. Um, That's it. And then you start the rugby training like you're already accounting for a high level of fatigue within your rugby sessions. So why not go and do some sprints before you get that quality work you can then worry about like. Using the gym to get stronger, not necessarily faster. Make sense. Do sprints before you rub your training. Okay, next one. And this is a great one. This one might be the best one of the whole podcast. Talk to your rugby coaches. They are there to help you. That is their job. I mentioned this earlier, they've got loads of people to take care of, right? Too many rugby players, and I know this from experience, both experience as a rugby coach myself, and experience from the athletes that I've worked with, being unsure of what the coach is thinking, and my advice being this tip, right? Go and talk to them. It always helps. The better you can communicate with your coach, the better relationship you're going to develop. Too many players are scared to ask for feedback. If your coach isn't selecting you, you want to know why. You don't want to just guess why and just go, Ah, he doesn't know anything. Like, they don't know anything. They haven't got a clue. Or you don't want to just say, Ah, I'm rubbish or whatever. Always talk to your coach. They're there to give you feedback. They're watching you play rugby continually. They're going to give you the best advice, but especially if you want to play for that coach, right? And the vast majority of coaches, there are some that, you know, egomaniacs and, and think NOS just will not like you asking for feedback because they're selfish with their time. But in which case I'd even say like, leave that team. Why are you playing for that coach? Or You just learn to develop any sort of relationship. Even if they're getting annoyed with you, at least they're then aware that you are there. Who cares if they're annoyed at you, you are there to improve as a player if you're a player that's playing really well, even if you are annoying your coach by asking the questions. They're more aware of you and you're a better player as a result. You're more likely to, get the roles that you want. The amount of players that I've seen that have progressed their rugby opportunities playing. Just from talking to coaches, is crazy, it's crazy that it's not done more. It's such a good tip. Talk to coaches, open up that communication channel. Not only can they help you be a better rugby player, but you're then more aware within their, their sort of, uh, universe. Then they can, see that you're trying to improve, because you are trying to improve. It's not a tactic just to say, ah, look. Now he's now on brown nose and he thinks I'm getting better. No, you are getting better. You're listening to this podcast. So what more can you do? You know, you're, this is a podcast, you're training. You're someone that is proactive. You deserve to be recognized for that. And just hiding away from a coach is never, it's just never productive. Number eight. Injuries are going to happen so just learn to work around them. Rugby is brutal. At some point within the game, if you play it for years, you're going to get injured. Don't let small injuries stop you from training, stop you from doing, I'm not saying rugby training, but doing whatever you can. You have to find ways to train around those injuries. Obviously over time you want to make sure that you are making those injuries stronger and therefore lowering your chance of getting injured in the future. But, It's still going to happen with a sport where you're constantly colliding, with opposition at high speeds, in high force. It just is, it's just unfortunately inevitable. It's like, runners get injured, you know? Like, you're playing rugby, you're probably going to get injured at some point. That's okay, that's normal, you have to continue to train. Because if you just stop training, number one, you're slowering, you're slowering? You're, uh, delaying your path back to the pitch because it's just, you know, by going to the gym, you're going to be getting fitter, you're going to be repairing your body faster, you're going to be able to not have to sort of start a whole new return to play process because you're going to stay ready even though you got injured or even if that injury isn't actually completely sidelining you, you're still continuing to progress. Injuries should never be an excuse to skip the gym and even worse, You should not be getting injured doing your S& C. Never. Okay? So, yeah. Injuries are going to happen as part of being a rubber player. You have to learn to work around them. Number nine. Don't stress about your teammates. Focus on you. Way too many rubber players will get injured. Sort of, not necessarily just have a bit of a moan, but they'll waste their own mental energy on teammates, which is completely just not productive, right? Maybe the teammate's taking your spot and you don't feel like they deserve it, or maybe they do and you feel intimidated. Or maybe they're making mistakes and they're letting your team down. Maybe they aren't as fit as they should be and they should be as dedicated as you. However the case is, like, Negative energy is just not going to help the situation. You have to focus on what you can control. As I've said already in this podcast, this is your journey. So your training, your preparation, your execution is what matters the most. And if you, if you are spending time worrying about what your teammates are doing, you're taking the eye off your own balls. That's, that's not what the phrase is. Whatever it is, right? You're not, if you're focused on anyone else, you're not focusing fully on yourself and you're not doing what you can. Yes. It's way easier said than done. I get it. But constantly reaffirming that to yourself is something that is very important and Also, if you're the person that starts bossing it and leads by example, you're more likely to get your teammates to follow you doing that than you are if you just moan at them, eventually, they'll be more receptive. If you're someone that is absolutely in control of your own stuff, you're training really hard, you're doing everything that you can, they're going to be more receptive to listen to that. Whereas if you're just bitching and taking your own focus off yourself, and then you say, what are you doing? And they'll say, listen, mate, what are you doing? But yeah, you listen to the podcast, but you really training. No. No, so yeah, open up that communication potentially once you've got all of your stuff sorted or maybe just get yourself sorted first and Don't even worry about it because this is a never ending process Actually number 10 That would be my final tip instead of putting your arm around them and saying listen mate This is what you got to do. Just send this podcast say hey I know you want to improve your rugby. I know you want to play better. I know that you want to, really enjoy your rugby, and I know that your fitness or your strength and conditioning or whatever is not necessarily even holding you back, but you know it could be better, you want it the best, and you want to, be dominant on the pitch, send them this podcast. You get better teammates, which means that you win more games, which means that you can then enjoy the training process together, enjoy winning together, and yeah. Win, win, win, win. Ah, also coincidentally helps me out. All right, that's the end of the podcast. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you made it to the end and you haven't hit the thumbs up on YouTube or commented below your favorite tip, do so and do that last tip. Send this podcast to a mate. It really will help. Make sure you apply these tips also, right? So maybe one or two of these tips really did like sort of resonate with you and you think, yeah, I should do that. Write it down, write it down somewhere. Or take a screenshot of this so that when you go through your photos you remember. Oh, yeah Yeah, that's what i've got to do. And also once you've taken that screenshot post it on instagram tag me at rugby muscle if you're not already following me This has been a good one. Sorry. It's a little bit late, but thank you guys so much for listening I'll catch you in the next one