[quote]frontrow12 wrote:
Good to see more and more Americans playing rugby! I played a summer season in Colorado a few years ago between my club season over here.
Good to see the 5/3/1 producing more and more results, I like using it with my training and the team I coach.
I’d echo a previous posters comments about dynamism and athleticism being key for your position, the best forwards are those who dominate the contact area and ball carry hard.
Few things to consider for your training. I’d change Press to Push Press to add another angle of dynamic training. I’d also focus more on short sprints (50m or less) for your conditioning, but adding in hitting and getting off the deck as quickly as possible.
Look at adding bear crawls into your warm up, these have revolutionized the way my team and I hit rucks as the lower you can get a keep moving the better!
Keep up the good work dude, happy to answer any questions as well![/quote]
Thanks for stopping in, us rugby guys are few and far between in the states (90,000 players as compared to 1.2 million high school football players alone), but thankfully it’s growing and gaining more visibility. It was the fastest growing sport in the states over the past 5 years.
As far as training, I gave the push press a go, but it didn’t work too well for me. I kept getting stuck at the same point over and over again. When I switched back to a strict press, I saw my numbers continue to rise.
I’ve always been a pretty good ball carrier since I picked up the game, as well as faster then most of the fowards I play against. I’ve been told I could be a back if there wasn’t a shortage of big guys. My problem has been needing more size and strength to hang with the big teams, so that’s where my focus is.
As far as conditioning, this has been my biggest weakness since I picked up the game. When I played high school football, our conditioning focus was based around short sprints, and I got pretty decent at them. When I came to rugby, I had horrible aerobic shape. I couldn’t run continously for 5 minutes!
Now I can actually run a mile faster then a snail, and it showed in my last season. I scored twice, including a 60m run straight up the gut untouched. I never even scored in high school football. Also, when my team starts practice, we do a ridiculous amount of sprints, so I know I can get my “sprinting condition” back pretty quickly.
Just curious, what kind of level do you play over there? When you came to the states, did you just dominate? I’ve heard that us americans have good physicality, but we seriously lack in ball handling and strategy. Do you have an opinion on that, since you played here?