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Dear Coach,
For a typical club training twice a week the need to practise skills, techniques and tactics
all too frequently overrides the drive to develop fitness.
Getting your players fitter
will probably enhance your game more than any other single improvement
There’s probably a number of reasons why don’t you don’t do more fitness work, not least…
Enthusiasm – Let’s face it, fitness training can be boring for players and the coach. You’re there to play rugby, not run around the training pitch.
Opportunity – Your rugby club probably doesn’t have a fitness trainer or a well-equipped gym. How can you get the players fit?
Focus – If your players do fitness work on their own, it’s probably a couple of miles jogging round the local park or “pumping iron” in the gym. Is this really going to help their rugby?
Knowledge – You probably had to undergo a thorough accreditation process before you could coach rugby. Except in one crucial area, fitness.
Where are you meant to find expert advice from trustworthy sources?
The new Rocket Rugby manual has been designed to overcome these barriers, with the objective of supercharging every rugby player’s fitness.
Get fit, stay fit through the season
Rocket Rugby is the ultimate rugby fitness manual, containing training programmes to take you through the whole season:
- Getting fit
- Pre-season fitness
- Early season fitness
- Mid season fitness
- End of season fitness
… as well as simple exercises for the players to do at home or at work to boost conditioning between sessions.
General fitness is good, but it’s not enough to play rugby. Maybe you can sprint 100m in 11 seconds or run a marathon in under 2½ hours or bench press 75kgs, but that doesn’t mean you can run, ruck and pass well for 80 minutes.
Rocket Rugby addresses the areas crucial to the development of the player, regardless of their current standard or ability.
139 pages
of practical,
rugby focused fitness advice
Contents
Warming up to sharpen minds and bodies
Warming up, stretching and core stability routines:
- Two dynamic warm up programmes to ensure your fitness training runs smoothly
- Focused stretching exercises for the neck, shoulders, upper arms, lower back, backside, thighs, hamstrings, lower leg.
- Simple exercises to improve core stability.
- Practical stretching schedule guidelines – off-season, in-season, pre-game, post game, for backs, for forwards.
(Click here to download a sample page from the “Warming
up” chapter.)
Fit for rugby
Assessing and monitoring your players’ rugby fitness, with specific training programmes to boost endurance, speed and strength:
- Assessing rugby fitness, covering endurance, leg power, leg strength, upper body strength endurance.
Includes the Beep / Bleep Test, Cooper’s 12 Minute Run Test, 40/20 test, Sargent Jump Test, squat test, continuous press ups test.
- 43 fitness techniques covering speed, agility, mobility, jumping, power, strength endurance, reactions and balance.
- 17 exercises for the home and office – great ways to train anywhere, every day.
- Endurance training – avoiding boredom, fartlek speed intervals, indoor and outdoor training, hill running variations, resistance running options.
- Speed and agility training – methods to turbo-charge acceleration, run faster with less effort.
Featuring a 6-week plan to boost every player’s running speed and a 5 station circuit to work acceleration and agility.
- Strength training – managing your weights programme (load and intensity), featuring a 6-week plan to boost strength and power.
- Plyometrics training – improving speed and power.
With the correct fitness
training you will enhance your players’ skills and generate new levels of success
Eat and drink yourself fit
Nutritional advice to optimise your training and keep your players healthy:
- What to eat and, crucially, when.
- 9 pre-game and post game meal plans to maximise energy and aid recovery.
- Stimulants and supplements – protein, caffeine, creatine. Stay safe, stay legal.
- Taking on liquids – what types, how much, how often?
Preventing injuries
Managing injuries and aiding recuperation:
- Managing common rugby injuries and causes of pain – stingers and burners, cramp, muscle soreness, dead legs, muscle strain, muscle spasms.
- Overcoming ankle, knee and shoulder injuries, rehabilitation and muscle strengthening to avoid repeated injury.
- Dealing with head and facial injuries, fractures, wounds and lower back pain.
(Click here to download a sample page from the “Preventing injuries” chapter.)
Under 16s and women
Specific fitness training advice for coaches of women and children aged under 16s:
- Special considerations for children’s fitness training.
- Children’s nutritional requirements.
- Specific childhood injuries to watch for.
- Dietary needs for women in training.
- Strength exercises particular to women.
- Specific injuries to watch for when coaching women.
Fitness and conditioning programmes
In-depth training programmes to get players ready to train and play rugby:
- Getting started – pre-season training / training from a low fitness base, 17 “no weights” rugby focused strength exercises.
Featuring a 6-week programme for improved endurance, speed, agility, strength and power.
- Powering on – pre-season training for reasonably fit players.
Featuring a 6-week training cycle for the entire season, covering conditioning, endurance, intermittent fitness, speed, plyometrics and strength.
In-season fitness
Structured fitness training through the year, based on 3-week training cycles:
- Fitness programmes covering early season, mid season and end of season
- Specific training covering endurance, intermittent fitness, speed, agility and strength.
(Click here to download a sample page from the “In-season
fitness” chapter.)
Glossary of terms
A jargon busting guide, cutting through fitness training terminology.
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15 fitness and conditioning training programmes
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2 x warming up programmes |
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5 x fitness assessments to monitor speed, strength and endurance |
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1 x 6-week training programme to kick-start all-round fitness |
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1 x 6-week training programme to improve fitness |
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1 x 6-week training programme to boost speed |
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1 x 6-week training programme to develop strength |
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1 x 6-week training programme to enhance endurance |
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3 x 6-week in-season training programmes covering your early, mid and late season fitness needs |
Plus 8 stretching guidelines for in-season, off-season, pre-game, post-game, backs, forwards. |
Proven performance boosting training methods
Supercharged
training programmes
Rocket Rugby contains practical training to boost all your players:
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Explosive acceleration, agility and quickness |
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Balance, coordination and flexibility |
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Core stability and body control |
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Ability to change direction and reaction times |
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Stamina development and improved endurance |
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Strength and power generation. |
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* Snippet from the
Rocket Rugby manual *
Worried about where to start?
Set small targets for each week's training. If your players find it hard to meet these targets, then reduce the targets. If the targets are too easy, extend the targets.
Don't overdo the first few sessions.
Make training a hard habit to break.
Balance your training between speed, strength, endurance, agility.
Pick a fitness programme from Rocket Rugby and adapt it to your needs. |
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Rocket Rugby will supercharge every rugby player’s fitness
Slashing through the
jargon to get to
the heart of the matter
With a glossary of terms so you can understand the benefits (or otherwise) of terms like:
- sub maximal workout
- GI foods
- concentric work
- 1RM with a 90% load
- VO2 Max
- isotonic, hypotonic and hypertonic sports drinks
- mixed aerobic-anaerobic exercises…
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* Snippet from the
Rocket Rugby manual *
Building muscle
Increasing muscle is a wise goal for many rugby players. It allows you to attain a higher maximum strength while protecting you from injury. However, most rugby players use inefficient techniques to build muscle.
To build muscle you must do two things:
1. Provide the body with a stimulus to build muscle.
2. Give the body the nutrients it needs to build muscle.
Rocket Rugby covers the key area of nutrition, including meal plans to aid training and match performances.
It features supplement guidelines to keep you players healthy, safe and legal. |
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Providing you with the fitness plan to boost your all-round performance
Rugby fitness – train to play rugby
Rugby involves lifting, pulling and pushing at frequent intervals, short sprints
with and without recovery, and an occasional longer run. It involves six key
fitness elements, each related to the others:
1. Stamina and aerobic fitness – so players can operate at raised levels of activity for longer.
2. Strength – designed for the needs of rugby, not the gym.
3. Posture – to reduce training soreness and injury, and improve running speed.
4. Speed and anaerobic fitness – not just the ability to run faster, but to accelerate more quickly too.
5. Agility – the ability to change direction at will, quickly and in control.
6. Skills – all rugby skills require specific rugby fitness and agility to perform them. The more fatigued a player becomes the worse the performance of their skills.
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