Conditioning for Rugby league - Part 2

December 9, 2015

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Nathan Waters

In my article conditioning for rugby league – part 1, I spoke about how I like to condition my players to be ready for competition. I also said that there are times that old school flog sessions are needed, and that is what I will speak about in part 2.

The reason why I say there are times that old school sessions without the ball are needed is that if an athlete is unable or unwilling to push himself to his absolute maximum physical effort then none of the conditioning games with the ball or short sprint intervals will work because they will pace themselves and not work at maximal intensity which is required to achieve the gains from that type of training.

Many young players and older blokes that have never been fit have never experienced what it feels like to take their body to a place where you just feel like you cannot continue to take another step. Your legs are on fire, you can’t breathe, you feel crook in the gut, you’re dizzy as hell, but somehow you manage to finish the session. That type of work builds a mental toughness in you that no matter what happens “I will get the job done and it will all be ok, I will not die”. The more times you go to that place the more comfortable you get with it and you actually start to thrive on the challenge. When it comes to game day you have already been through ugly situations so you are not rattled and you know you will be able to keep going no matter how bad it gets.

I believe this is why trainers like Ronnie Palmer, Billy Johnstone, and Steve Folkes have success in their first year at a club. They breed a culture of mental toughness and an attitude of hard work. The problem is after a year or two the results tend to diminish and the injury rate is also high.

To counter the overtraining and the resultant injury issues, when using old school methods in an off season plan I would not do them every session and I would even consider only doing them fortnightly depending on the athlete. A combination of conditioning games and endurance type work would be better suited. Using undulating type periodisation is also a good way as one form of intensity isn’t being used for too long with the stimulus changing regularly so that overuse injuries, poor motivation, and burn out don’t become a major issue.

There is never just one way to achieve your desired outcome in training. This is why individualising a training plan is the fastest and most time efficient way to get results. The unfortunate thing in a team environment and with part time athletes is that you often don’t get enough time with them to fully individualise the plan. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try though. It just takes some creativity and some planning. From team testing you can at least get a picture of two different types of energy systems work your players need and put them in their respective groups. Some may need more anaerobic a-lactic power and others may need more lactic capacity work as an example. You can them modify your drills, games, and forms of conditioning work to suit the individual better. This will also reduce your rate of injury.

If a player comes to off season already fit, he doesn’t need to do excessive amounts of conditioning work, he is ready to do skill, defensive drills, and conditioning games. If you give him endurance based old school work, by Christmas he will most likely be injured and would have plateaued. I know this from experience. I have seen it with many teammates and have experienced it personally. I came back with a 13.1 on the beep test one year, crushed all the fitness for 6 weeks, and got a 12.1 when we retested. I went down a whole level. Why is this? I was overtrained, carrying a groin injury (that progressed into osteitis pubis that needed surgery), and just burnt out. As they say “fatigue masks fitness”.

On the other hand if an athlete turns up and they are way behind then I would incorporate some old school work and some lactate work. I wouldn’t just crush them every night though as I mentioned above. It would be planned out so that they still got ample recovery between the really tough sessions to avoid injury and burn out.

So from all of this I can say everything has its place. They way to know which place that is, well you have to have effective testing methods, know what you are testing, and most of all know the athlete you are training.

Conditioning for Rugby League - Part 1

November 27, 2015

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Nathan Waters

Over the years I have been subjected to many different theories and programs designed to improve the conditioning of rugby league players. Many times we would get hammered with long endurance efforts in the offseason or sessions that involved repeat 400m sprints and other lactate threshold type sessions. While the lactate work has its place I would say that it is generally over used and still manages to break players down.

Below are some of my thoughts about conditioning for a seasoned player, someone who has done a few off seasons and has a good base to work from. I say this as too many young players are unable to push themselves hard enough to get the full benefits of this type of work and need to do a little bit of old school to learn what it feels like to take your body to the brink and know you won’t die. I will go more into this another time.

The best results I obtained were from an off season of conditioning based games that involved the ball. The test we used at the time was the Yo-Yo test. The season in which we done 800m and 400m sprints I achieved 18.6 on this test, the next year when we done a lot of conditioning games, I achieved a 19.8 or so. I put this down to the “fatigue masks fitness” saying, as after doing high amounts of lactate work you are so burnt out that you are unable to display your true fitness levels.

The other reason I prefer conditioning games is that it is more specific to our sport. A lot of the time we are walking or jogging at a low intensity during a game. When it comes time to explode that’s when it counts and I feel working on repeat sprints of 7 seconds or less is more optimal than the longer type lactate work. So in my programs you won’t see us run more than 7 seconds all out very often. The times we do it is for mental toughness, to build a base, and just to see who can hang in when it gets ugly, that’s not to say the repeat efforts of 7 seconds or less are easy.

I also like to use wrestling as a form of conditioning.  Many times you get very fit during an off season but the minute you have to make double or triple tackles during a trial game all of that work seems to be a waste as you feel just as busted as the blokes who were way behind during running drills. Having the ability to repeat efforts involving your body weight and that of your opponents is something that must be trained to be conditioned for the season.

There is a big difference between endurance and conditioning. Conditioning is specific to your sport, whereas endurance is more general preparation. For example you could improve your rowing time of a 1500m effort which would increase endurance but as a rugby league player it won’t necessarily improve your on field conditioning or performance.

This is just a brief view of some of my ideas on conditioning for rugby league. If you want some more in depth views on conditioning v endurance please read this article by Wolfgang Unsold :

http://www.strengthsensei.com/endurance-vs-conditioning-the-biggest-misconception-in-sports-specific-training/

Why I Like to Use Phases of High Volume in Training

January 19, 2017

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Nathan Waters - Total Health Performance

A lot of strength coaches are concerned about overtraining these days and tend to stick to a moderate training volume to be on the safe side. While I think having a conservative approach and taking care of your athletes is a good idea I feel there are definitely times when a cycle of high training volume can be of benefit. You just have to know when to apply it and to which type of athlete.

When someone needs to put on some muscle mass quickly then a high volume of training can be very beneficial. By exposing the muscle fibres to the same movement for a high volume, it forces the muscle fibres to grow. It is good to use if you have hit a plateau in muscle mass gains, it shocks the body and forces it into adaptation.

You can also use a high volume of training to get leaner. By using big compound lifts, a high number of sets and reps, and using shorter rest periods you are able to generate a lot of lactic acid in the blood which can in turn help accelerate fat loss. This is due to the release of growth hormone and also the impact this type of training has on heat shock proteins (another great tip I learnt from Charles Poliquin). William Kraemer has done research on the best protocols for the release of growth hormone and showed that high reps and short rests of 30 to 60 seconds produced the greatest increases.   

Increased fitness levels are another benefit you see with a high volume of training. As mentioned above the lactate you produce is very high with this type of training. By training this way your body gets used to the high levels of lactate and also gets better at clearing it from the blood. When you go back to your sport, you are much fitter from these benefits. My favourite thing about it is you don’t have to do any additional interval work when you are training with a high volume, the amount of work you do is more than enough. So you have the benefit of added muscle mass and increased levels of work capacity.

Mental toughness is another benefit of an increased training volume. If I ever feel as though I am being, or starting to get lazy in my training, I tend to increase the volume. It is the fastest way for me to get my mind back into a state of focused training. You can’t get through some of the workouts if you don’t have that burning desire inside yourself. It’s a great way to bring it back out if you have been sitting in a comfort zone. It tests how bad you really want something and how hard you are willing to push to achieve it. Also, once you go back to lower volume with increased intensity it feels a lot easier, your work capacity is better, and you can repeat more sets and reps at a given load.

As mentioned above it is important to time these cycles correctly and apply them correctly for maximum benefits.

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Volume

overtraining

charles poliquin

William Kraemer

muscle mass

Lactic acid

Growth hormone

Lactate

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hardwork

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