Periodization of Training for Amateur Rugby Coaches
I am writing this article for the benefit of the Amateur Rugby Coach who may be well versed in the tactics and skills training of his Rugby Team but not as up to date on the Conditioning Element of training. This will give you a simple idea of how a team coach should put together a preseason program and how to maintain the gains made throughout the playing season.
Rugby is a complicated sport when it comes to conditioning. It is neither an endurance sport nor a pure power sport. If you were to draw a straight line and put Sprinting at one end of the line and a Marathon at the other end of the line and call it a continuum, then Rugby would fit somewhere in the middle, perhaps approaching the power end.
Before implementing any training program, it is important to carry out what is known as a needs analysis. This means looking at the physical demands of the player and the team that makes the sport. A short list would look something like this.
- skills
- Speed
- Energy
- Strength
- Endurance
- Flexibility and Mobility
Each of the above subheadings shows what the demands of the sport are, however some positions will require more of one aspect than another. That is to say, an outside back would need to concentrate more on Speed work than a front prop, this is because, the front prop requires a lot of strength and good resistance unlike the outside back who needs great speed and power. and not so much the Stamina as the continuous participation of him in the game is less than that of the props.
At the professional level, where the team has conditioning coaches, each playing position can be individually conditioned, however this is often not possible for the amateur coach as there is a lack of coaches trained to offer position based programs not not only that, but also the amount of time the amateur coach is exposed to the team is much less than in the professional game. So the Amateur coach needs to adopt a plan that gets the most out of their team with the time, tools and coaches available, using Training Periodization will be the most effective way to do this.
Training periodization is a fancy name for time management. It was first used in the East Block back in the 1960s. It means that each stage of training is assigned a particular time frame.
Pre-season training will normally last around 12 weeks and the game season, taking into account the weather and game postponements, will last between 30 and 36 weeks. This means that the coach has to prepare the team in 12 weeks and then keep them in a good level of conditioning for another 30-36 weeks, no easy task.
The first is the first.
Before starting and making any plans, the coach should do some basic testing to find out the current conditioning level of the team. From the results of these tests, he will be able to decide where to direct the main effort of conditioning training.
I’m going to assume these days; most hobby clubs have access to a gym that has free weights and also a field that they can train on.
Common tests that can be used and are simple to administer are as follows
- Speed. Speed tests of 10 and 30 meters
- agility The Agility T-Test or the 5-10-5 Pro Agility Test
- Energy. The vertical jump test and the 5 standing wide jump test
- Strength. The 1 repetition maximum bench press. The 1-rep max squat test. The 1-rep max pull-up test
- Resistance. The 5 minute run test
After the test phase and the coach has decided what he needs to train the most, he can sit down and come up with his basic periodization plan.
I have laid out a hypothetical pre-season training schedule below. I decided that the team needed to focus on all aspects of their training equally after seeing the test results. During the pre-season and competition phase, some weeks should have less volume than others; I would suggest that every four weeks is good for this.
We have established that 12 weeks are available for Pre-Season Training. Now we have to divide these 12 weeks into smaller training phases. Each training phase will last for 4 weeks (we will call these Mesocycles) and each week in each training phase is called a Micro cycle. The entire season will be called Macro Cycle. So Periodization has Macro cycles (the entire training period), Meso Cycles (Phases of the training period) and Micro cycles (weeks within the training phases).
Now to split the pre-season you can have the macro cycle 1 = 4 weeks. Macrocycle 2= 4 weeks. Macro Cycle 3 = 4 weeks. The competition period (when you have your games) is divided in a similar way.
Now you will have to assign the type of training that you want to be the main effort of each of the Macro cycles. At the beginning of the preseason, physical training is very important and so is strength training. These two elements are called General Preparation. Then the Macro Cycle 1 will be called; The General Preparation Period (GPP)
During this period, it is suggested that you work on basic strength work, primarily muscle growth (hypertrophy), which means your strength training should revolve around 8-12 reps at 65-80% of your 1-rep max. lifts.
Running should be based on longer distance interval training. For example, 2 x 5 x 400m runs at 80% effort, with 120 seconds recovery between runs and 5 minutes recovery between sets.
I would increase the volume of training over the GPP.
Next is Macro Cycle 2. That will be known as the Sport Specific Preparation Period. At this stage you would start to put your most effort into Skill and Equipment development, physically you would now have a shift towards Basic Strength training, this means your lifting would be 3-6 reps at 75-90% of 1 rep. maximum weight. His conditioning work would still be execution based, but now is the time to close the gap. You should now be looking for more intense interval work. Distances should be 100-200 meter sprints. Up to 5 x 200 and 6 – 8 100. Rest times should be 2-3 minutes between reps. And they should be running at 85-90% of maximum speed. You should also start incorporating some type of Agility training at the beginning of your conditioning sessions; these can be skill-based and can last anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. This phase is abbreviated as SSPP.
The final phase of the pre-season training program is known as the pre-competition phase (PCP), as as a coach, you should now be concentrating much more on team drills and getting all the fixtures in order. Physically, it’s now about getting the team to peak for optimal performance in the first game; most of the physical work should be related to power, high-intensity speed drills with longer rest periods, and much more skill-based agility work. Simply by keeping your fitness gains at their maximum. In the last week before the season opener, training should be intense, but probably only a third of the volume you’ve been doing during preseason.
Now that you are in the competition phase of the season, you need to break the season into more Meso cycles where you can focus on improving your fitness, power, speed and agility etc. Throughout the season, these Meso cycles can be 4-6 weeks long.
Note that the explanation and examples above are exactly that, examples! The model has been written solely so that you, as a trainer, have a basic understanding of a Basic Periodization Model. I hope you found the article informative. For more information on periodization, please visit my website listed in the resource box below.