Q: John, I am looking to get fit for the rugby season. I have 3 days a week to do this, sometimes more? How can I do this?
A: You have opened a whole can of worms with this one! I would ask first - what is your meaning of ‘get fit for the rugby season’ - what is your position? Where are you starting out?
Are you going to be stuck in here?
Or are you going to be fooling around with these fellas?
You need to take this into consideration as you set about with your training and nutrition regime.
Forwards - front row, you need your armour. For these guys getting too lean is not a great idea. I would want my front row to actually be a little bit ‘unhealthy’, sitting around the 16-18% mark for body fat levels but carrying huge levels of relative strength and power. For the back 5, atheletcism is the name of the game here. Look at the modern day back 5. There is little difference. Usually there is one or both mutants sitting pretty in the second row, but by and large they are indistinguishable beteween themselves and the back row. In addition the skill level has become blurred between the two divisions.
Backs - they need to be cut, pretty, fake tanned and powerful. Their relative strength levels should be high allowing them to transfer their beautifully cut physiques into the opposition at a faster level. in essence get lean as possible and get as strong as possible.
You have three days a week. I would focus on this split:
Day 1 - usually a monday - Lower Body Quad Dominant Movement such as a Squat combined with a Upper Body Pull Movement such as a chin or pull up. You would look to keep the reps low and the sets quite high so over the 12 week period of training (ideal really) use between 3 and 8 reps and for sets between 4 and 10. the two share an inverse relationship so the lower the rep the higher the number of sets e.g 10 x 3 or 8 x 3 and 4 x 8…not hard to figure out really. You would look to perform some assistace work with this too so at the beginning AND end of the workout crank out some of the annoying rehab or prehab programmes that your physio told you to do but you haven’t bothered your arse in doing. Well…get to them because they will come back to bite you on the arse.
Day 2 - Usually a Weds - Hip Dominant Movement such as Deadlift combined with a Push movement such as a Bench Press. A sample workout would be
Warm up - Mobility and Rehab Work for 5-10 minutes then
Deadlift for 8 sets of 3 combined with a DB Bench Press for 8 sets of 3-5, alternating between the two and taking up to 180 seconds of rest as you get near the heavier sets (you can do your other bench press set during this rest interval)
More mobility work then another hip dominant movement such as a reverse hyperextension or glute ham raise for 4 sets of 8-10 combined with a press up with blast straps for 4 sets of 12-15. Finish the session off with another 5-10 minutes of your red zone injury concerns.
Day 3 - Usually a conditioning day to get you ‘uber’ rugby fit ( i don’t know why I just used that odd german, yet pseudo trendy adjective at the moment). I like to work in blocks of work OR sets and reps of this. So a 10 minute block of rowing intervals (30 on, 30 off for 10 reps) followed by some kettle bell work, followed by some sprint intervals, followed by another 10 minute block of dumbbell complexes. This is all laid out in my manual Get Fit for Rugby (shameless plug).
Have the weekend off and decide how fat or fit you want to be and eat really clean for 90 per cent of the week.
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