Rugby conditioning

Here is a tough Monday morning workout. 4 sets descending reps 20, 15, 10, 5. Sumo squats with 28kg KB, 20kg kettlebell swings, 16kg single arm squat press and 8kg dying frogs with a 50m run between each exercise.

I completed this after a beep test. This workout is great to get the lungs burning and also a great metabolic conditioning session for fat loss.

Gym motivation for a wet Monday

Just because it's wet doesn't mean you can sit on your ass all day doing nothing!

Here is a favorite clip of mine and some big units that need no introduction!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsSC2vx7zFQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Increasing training intensity

Increasing your training load is crucial for continual growth and development of your muscles. You see a lot of idiots out there thinking 4 sets of bench every second day for the next 6 months will make them have a chest like Arnold. Unfortunately your body gets accustomed to the stresses placed on it very quickly hence the need for an increased training intensity. You can achieve this in a number of ways; decreasing rest periods, adding a compound set, including partial reps, the list is endless.

I'm going to be focusing on my personal favorite, negative reps.

Whenever you loft a weight using the contractile force of your muscles you perform a positive movement; when you lower the weight, extending the working muscle, you perform negative movements. Negative reps will actually put more stress on the tendons and supportive structures than on the muscles themselves. This is beneficial particularly for people in contact sports because you want tendon strength to increase along with muscle strength. To get the full benefit of negative reps in your normal workouts, always lower the weights slowly and under control rather than letting them drop. I would suggest going down on a 4 or 5 count. To work harder at negatives, first try cheating the weight up if you don't have a training partner then lower it slowly and deliberately. Your muscles can lower a weight that they could not actually lift in the first place. At the end of a set, when your muscles are very tired, you can have your training partner give you a little assistance lifting the weight and then do strict negatives on your way down.

High Volume Ab Training

Something new i will be adding into my training this week for ab training. This is also similar to how the great bodybuilder Serge Nubret use to train abbs. I will be doing this first thing of a morning before any other training. It involves progressively increasing the amount of reps done for each day of the week, progressively overloading the muscles. Will post a picture after 2 weeks of it and see if there is any noticeable changes.

The exercises are the basic crunch and also reverse crunch. Reps will be split 50/50 for the two exercises
Monday: 100 reps. 50 crunches, 50 reverse crunches
Tuesday: 200
Wednesday: 300
Thursday: 400
Friday: Off to rest for game day
Saturday: Game day
Sunday: 500 reps

Obviously the days you pick to rest can change according to your training plan.

Tips to avoid hamstring injuries

Hamstring injuries are common among athletes who play sports that require powerful accelerations, decelerations or lots of running. The hamstring muscles run down the back of the leg from the pelvis to the bones of the lower leg. The three specific muscles that make up the hamstrings are the biceps femoris, semitendinosus and semimembranosus. Together these powerful knee flexors are known as the hamstring muscle group. An injury to any of these muscles can range from minor strains, a pulled muscle or even a total rupture of the muscle.

Some common causes of hamstring injuries

Hamstring pulls or strains often occur during an eccentric contraction of the hamstring muscle group as an athlete is running. Just before the foot hits the ground, the hamstrings will contract to slow the forward motion of the lower leg (tibia and foot). Some of the factors which may contribute to a hamstring injury include:

• Doing too much, too soon or pushing beyond your limits
• Tight hip flexors
• Weak glutes (butt muscles)
• Poor flexibility
• Poor muscle strength
• Muscle imbalance between the quadriceps and hamstring muscle groups
• Muscle fatigue that leads to over-exertion
• Improper or no warm-up
• History of hamstring injury

3 Top Tips on how to avoid Injury

1) Have a proper warm up and cooldown. This must include a light jog to get the blood flowing and lots of dynamic stretches and full range of motion movements slowly building into bigger strides and some changing of direction running. Light changes of pace are also ideal.
The cooldown should be a light jog turning it into a walk followed by static stretches, pushing deeper with the stretch each time you alternate legs.

2) Having structural imbalances. Charles Poliquin's research into hamstring injury points out that if you are able to front squat 85% of your back squat, then you have a structural imbalance and your quads are overpowering your hamstrings. This is however, comparing squats with an ass to grass technique.

3) Focus on Flexibility:  Focus the bulk of your  flexibility work on the hip flexors.  Initiating every flexibility session with a good hip flexor stretch will not only help you emphasize the importance of the hip flexors to your athletes, but will reset the pelvis in a more neutral position prior to performing other stretches.

Improving sprint performance for sport

Being a fast runner is pretty much essential if you want to excel in most sports. Lets face it there is really no substitute for speed. So here are my top tips to gain an extra few yards of pace and hopefully break some tackles or get on the outside of a defender in any sport.

1) Squat till you drop! Deep, full range of motion, ass to grass squats are best for building lower body strength and are a must for any kind of speed or strength development.

2) Build a big strong ass! Squats, Lunges, Glute-Ham raises all help build your glutes which is the primary muscle needed for explosive speed.

3) Include plyometric exercises! Squat jumps, Jumping lunges and box jumps all help develope power that is essential for off the mark speed.

4) Keep the reps low and focus on exploding out of each rep.

Now for the science!

A new study in the journal of strength and conditioning was done on professional rugby players and showed that increasing maximal squat strength with an 8 week training program will increase sprint speed over 5, 10 and 20 metre sprints. The participants first performed a 4 week maximal lower body strength program that included back squats, clean pulls, deadlifts and hamstring curls all at around 90% of their 1RM. They then performed a 4 week lower body program that included hang cleans, squats jumps, back squats and hamstring curls all at 85% of their 1RM.

After 8 weeks the rugby players increased their 1RM squat strength by an average of 30kg. These dramatic strength gains resulted in significantly faster sprint speed. The players increased their 5m sprint speed the greatest by an average 7.6%. 10m sprints had an average 7.3% improvement and 20m sprints had a 5.9% increase.

The greater improvement in sprint performance in the initial 5m is most likely because of the higher forces required during the initial acceloration phase. The players got stronger and were able to produce more force with each step to generate that explosive acceleration.

One final note is that the researchers stressed the importance of full deep range of motion squats with a barbell not smith machine in conjuction with plyometric training to get best results.

Rugby Conditioning

Here is a great gym in the UK which do some awesome rugby conditioning workouts. I've recently been incorporating some of these sessions into some of my clients training and they have been getting some seriously good results in skin folds and also max lifts. Check out the videos, a must watch for any rugby diehards keen to get in shape. http://www.r4reach.com/reach-tv/

A personal favorite with James Haskall