Hi All
Just wondering if any one has any hints and tips for putting together an inseason traing program for a team of semi pro athletes.
Its rugby league, but advise for different sports would be good aswell.
Just wondering what peoples views are on training volume? two or three times a week? upper/lower body split or whole body? micro cycles etc.
Hiya Skipie,
We’ve had a lot of success with 45min ‘power-workouts’
Using 3x8/5x5/5,4,3,2,1 with a 10-20 rep warm-up if applicable, 30 second rest period.
Looks like this (in no particular order):
Wide Grip Pull-ups (weighted if req)
Dips (weighted if req)
Front Squat/Deadlift (alternate workouts)
Clean and Press (Barbell or Dumbell)
Close Grip Pull-ups (weighted if req)
Bench Press/Incline/Decline (alternate workouts)
Stiff Leg Deadlifts into shrug/sled drags
Followed by either Half-Moons and Ab-wheel roll-outs or Good Mornings and Plate Swings in a superset.
We then do a 10-20 strecthing session with rollers etc.
Many (many, many) years ago, when I was pro, we did most the barwork on really thick mats (like you find in kids whacky warehouses) to improve stability.
We currently train two-three times per week like this, in addition to two training days and run a recovery session on a sunday (in season).
Personally I’ve found with all the running that this has worked best for me, managed to improve on explosive power. I know a few guys who train more and less. If we come into the gym and you’re carrying knocks you can adjust the workout as required.
Hope you have a good season, chief.
[quote]skipie11 wrote:
Hi All
Just wondering if any one has any hints and tips for putting together an inseason traing program for a team of semi pro athletes.
Its rugby league, but advise for different sports would be good aswell.
Just wondering what peoples views are on training volume? two or three times a week? upper/lower body split or whole body? micro cycles etc.
[/quote]
Check out defrancostraining.com, he’s got an excellent in-season 2 day/week template that I used with great success last season during rugby union. It’s a great place to start and if you feel u need more, and in some smaller workouts (conditioning, core work, etc) throughout the week.
Cheers Guys. I had seen De Francos and was going to stick it in at some point to give the players some variation.
Just trying to get a bit of power work in there now doing complex training once a week.
Favourite of mine for all over development is to have a tackle bag on the try line, player picks it ups, jogs to the first line with it, drops it, sprints back, turns around sprints back to the pad, takes the pad to the next line, sprints back etc all the way to the opposite try line, partner then repeats but in the opposite fashion. Great for Power, Speed, Endurance…
How many times a week are they training? And how long do the sessions last? I’ll assume three sessions for arguments sake in the gym:
Session One (Pulling)
Session Two (Pushing)
Session Three (Power Specific)
If that don’t work out for them, then i’d go upper/lower body split again focusing on power lifts, (Cleans, Deadlift, Squats) and aim for them to max as often as possible.
[quote]TDavis123 wrote:
Favourite of mine for all over development is to have a tackle bag on the try line, player picks it ups, jogs to the first line with it, drops it, sprints back, turns around sprints back to the pad, takes the pad to the next line, sprints back etc all the way to the opposite try line, partner then repeats but in the opposite fashion. Great for Power, Speed, Endurance…
How many times a week are they training? And how long do the sessions last? I’ll assume three sessions for arguments sake in the gym:
Session One (Pulling)
Session Two (Pushing)
Session Three (Power Specific)
If that don’t work out for them, then i’d go upper/lower body split again focusing on power lifts, (Cleans, Deadlift, Squats) and aim for them to max as often as possible.[/quote]
I will have to disagree with you whole heartedly on maxing as often as possible during season. First off, you wouldnt make much progress on your max lifts anyway seeing as one is constantly bruised and battered during the season.
Second, an athlete needs to recover as quickly as possible for the next match, usually the next week, and maxing out in the weight room is not the way to allow for full recuperation.
At most I would say do some heavy doubles or triples on a Max Effort day, but maxing as often as possible IN SEASON is poor advice.
as far as maxing, i doubt that any gains would be made, my plan is just to reach a specific goal every few weeks or so, so lets say i front squat 325 at the end of off season training, during the season every 3-4 weeks id just go to 315 to maintain
Ahhhhh I see what ya mean now. Max efforts are certainly important in any serious athletes program. Cheers!
[quote]missinglink wrote:
[quote]TDavis123 wrote:
Favourite of mine for all over development is to have a tackle bag on the try line, player picks it ups, jogs to the first line with it, drops it, sprints back, turns around sprints back to the pad, takes the pad to the next line, sprints back etc all the way to the opposite try line, partner then repeats but in the opposite fashion. Great for Power, Speed, Endurance…
How many times a week are they training? And how long do the sessions last? I’ll assume three sessions for arguments sake in the gym:
Session One (Pulling)
Session Two (Pushing)
Session Three (Power Specific)
If that don’t work out for them, then i’d go upper/lower body split again focusing on power lifts, (Cleans, Deadlift, Squats) and aim for them to max as often as possible.[/quote]
I will have to disagree with you whole heartedly on maxing as often as possible during season. First off, you wouldnt make much progress on your max lifts anyway seeing as one is constantly bruised and battered during the season.
Second, an athlete needs to recover as quickly as possible for the next match, usually the next week, and maxing out in the weight room is not the way to allow for full recuperation.
At most I would say do some heavy doubles or triples on a Max Effort day, but maxing as often as possible IN SEASON is poor advice.[/quote]
Fair point, and i’ll take it on board. I’m a strong believer in maxing out during the inseason to maintain the levels you achieved during pre-season. I think someone said it here that your not activley looking to progress (as you said it’d be a nightmare as your always carrying a niggle). Then again maybe my outlook on things are wrong, in which case I SERIOUSLY need to rejig my inseason training 
[quote]TDavis123 wrote:
[quote]missinglink wrote:
[quote]TDavis123 wrote:
Favourite of mine for all over development is to have a tackle bag on the try line, player picks it ups, jogs to the first line with it, drops it, sprints back, turns around sprints back to the pad, takes the pad to the next line, sprints back etc all the way to the opposite try line, partner then repeats but in the opposite fashion. Great for Power, Speed, Endurance…
How many times a week are they training? And how long do the sessions last? I’ll assume three sessions for arguments sake in the gym:
Session One (Pulling)
Session Two (Pushing)
Session Three (Power Specific)
If that don’t work out for them, then i’d go upper/lower body split again focusing on power lifts, (Cleans, Deadlift, Squats) and aim for them to max as often as possible.[/quote]
I will have to disagree with you whole heartedly on maxing as often as possible during season. First off, you wouldnt make much progress on your max lifts anyway seeing as one is constantly bruised and battered during the season.
Second, an athlete needs to recover as quickly as possible for the next match, usually the next week, and maxing out in the weight room is not the way to allow for full recuperation.
At most I would say do some heavy doubles or triples on a Max Effort day, but maxing as often as possible IN SEASON is poor advice.[/quote]
Fair point, and i’ll take it on board. I’m a strong believer in maxing out during the inseason to maintain the levels you achieved during pre-season. I think someone said it here that your not activley looking to progress (as you said it’d be a nightmare as your always carrying a niggle). Then again maybe my outlook on things are wrong, in which case I SERIOUSLY need to rejig my inseason training :-([/quote]
I don’t mean to make you rethink your entire philosophies or anything. I’m just of the school of thought that the goal of in-season lifting should be to maintain muscle/conditioning as to assist the athlete in high performance activities (i.e. match days). I don’t think lifting should interfere with the ability to give it everything on Saturdays, but should rather keep the athlete prepared.
[quote]missinglink wrote:
[quote]TDavis123 wrote:
[quote]missinglink wrote:
[quote]TDavis123 wrote:
Favourite of mine for all over development is to have a tackle bag on the try line, player picks it ups, jogs to the first line with it, drops it, sprints back, turns around sprints back to the pad, takes the pad to the next line, sprints back etc all the way to the opposite try line, partner then repeats but in the opposite fashion. Great for Power, Speed, Endurance…
How many times a week are they training? And how long do the sessions last? I’ll assume three sessions for arguments sake in the gym:
Session One (Pulling)
Session Two (Pushing)
Session Three (Power Specific)
If that don’t work out for them, then i’d go upper/lower body split again focusing on power lifts, (Cleans, Deadlift, Squats) and aim for them to max as often as possible.[/quote]
I will have to disagree with you whole heartedly on maxing as often as possible during season. First off, you wouldnt make much progress on your max lifts anyway seeing as one is constantly bruised and battered during the season.
Second, an athlete needs to recover as quickly as possible for the next match, usually the next week, and maxing out in the weight room is not the way to allow for full recuperation.
At most I would say do some heavy doubles or triples on a Max Effort day, but maxing as often as possible IN SEASON is poor advice.[/quote]
Fair point, and i’ll take it on board. I’m a strong believer in maxing out during the inseason to maintain the levels you achieved during pre-season. I think someone said it here that your not activley looking to progress (as you said it’d be a nightmare as your always carrying a niggle). Then again maybe my outlook on things are wrong, in which case I SERIOUSLY need to rejig my inseason training :-([/quote]
I don’t mean to make you rethink your entire philosophies or anything. I’m just of the school of thought that the goal of in-season lifting should be to maintain muscle/conditioning as to assist the athlete in high performance activities (i.e. match days). I don’t think lifting should interfere with the ability to give it everything on Saturdays, but should rather keep the athlete prepared.[/quote]
I suppose you could take the best of both worlds, Maybe do Powerlifting at the beginning of the week, and then ease the tempo as you get closer to match day? I really do think that Powerlifting is worth doing during the season, but theres no point in that style of training unless you are intending to go at least close to your max.
Mate, don’t take it the wrong way, fortunatly i’m not like the majority of douches my age who can’t take critism. Whilst I believe what I do is effective, it’s effective for me, yet i’m more than willing to try other people’s points of views.
[quote]TDavis123 wrote:
[quote]missinglink wrote:
[quote]TDavis123 wrote:
[quote]missinglink wrote:
[quote]TDavis123 wrote:
Favourite of mine for all over development is to have a tackle bag on the try line, player picks it ups, jogs to the first line with it, drops it, sprints back, turns around sprints back to the pad, takes the pad to the next line, sprints back etc all the way to the opposite try line, partner then repeats but in the opposite fashion. Great for Power, Speed, Endurance…
How many times a week are they training? And how long do the sessions last? I’ll assume three sessions for arguments sake in the gym:
Session One (Pulling)
Session Two (Pushing)
Session Three (Power Specific)
If that don’t work out for them, then i’d go upper/lower body split again focusing on power lifts, (Cleans, Deadlift, Squats) and aim for them to max as often as possible.[/quote]
I will have to disagree with you whole heartedly on maxing as often as possible during season. First off, you wouldnt make much progress on your max lifts anyway seeing as one is constantly bruised and battered during the season.
Second, an athlete needs to recover as quickly as possible for the next match, usually the next week, and maxing out in the weight room is not the way to allow for full recuperation.
At most I would say do some heavy doubles or triples on a Max Effort day, but maxing as often as possible IN SEASON is poor advice.[/quote]
Fair point, and i’ll take it on board. I’m a strong believer in maxing out during the inseason to maintain the levels you achieved during pre-season. I think someone said it here that your not activley looking to progress (as you said it’d be a nightmare as your always carrying a niggle). Then again maybe my outlook on things are wrong, in which case I SERIOUSLY need to rejig my inseason training :-([/quote]
I don’t mean to make you rethink your entire philosophies or anything. I’m just of the school of thought that the goal of in-season lifting should be to maintain muscle/conditioning as to assist the athlete in high performance activities (i.e. match days). I don’t think lifting should interfere with the ability to give it everything on Saturdays, but should rather keep the athlete prepared.[/quote]
I suppose you could take the best of both worlds, Maybe do Powerlifting at the beginning of the week, and then ease the tempo as you get closer to match day? I really do think that Powerlifting is worth doing during the season, but theres no point in that style of training unless you are intending to go at least close to your max.
Mate, don’t take it the wrong way, fortunatly i’m not like the majority of douches my age who can’t take critism. Whilst I believe what I do is effective, it’s effective for me, yet i’m more than willing to try other people’s points of views.
[/quote]
Cheers bud, good to know there’s some level heads out there!
I do agree with incorporating powerlifting for the in-season work. I myself usually have 2-3 max effort moves that I use per week and work to a heavy triple and/or double. But for true max efforts and heavy singles, I wait until the off-season.
It may just be me…being a bit over cautious in not wanting to burn out, but I’d much rather have a bit extra rest going into a match than be dead from pushing too much iron!
I have worked with rugby in the past and football as well. These sports are hard to do much inseason work in the gym because of games and practice. Both sports are very physical and that takes a toll on the players. So between practice and games all that contact makes in season lifting a challenge.
What I’ve done in the past with the sports has been to work on power and strength. In addition to that more recovery style applications are included too. There is absolutely no mass building work conducted in season, that type of training is saved for off-season.
You can feel free to contact me and I can use and detailed training programs.
I’m training for rugby, and now during the pre-season I’ve been doing the 5/3/1 program (powerlifting) three days per week with team sessions of sprints or conditioning three other days. However, I still feel that I could develop my endurance more.
Do you think that team sessions are enough conditioning-wise, or would it be preferable to cut the strength training to two days per week and add an interval session on my own on that day? Alternatively, could I do both strength and running training at the same gym session (obviously not after squats, but for example on bench press days) or would that be worse than separating them? A question in the same vein would be - could I do strength training on the same day as rugby practice or is, again, separation to be preferred.
Finally, I wonder how often and what to train (strength/conditioning) during the season, rugby sessions obviously excepted.
in season conditioning is much more important, also football and rugby are hardly comparable since rugby requires a lot more conditioning,
do max out, but not as often, i.e. deadlift week one, week three front squat, week 5, power clean and then add the assistance lifts. You will NOT make gains in anything but fitness in season, it is just too physically draining. Just maintain
you shouldn’t been conditioning in season. your conditioning should be spot on by the start of season. unless youre doing 7’s and you need to maintain a high level of conditioning all season. practice should be intense enough to maintain your conditioning. windsprints after practice or somthing in that line i can see, but an entire workout devoted to conditioning no.
and you really shoulnt be going very close to your 1rep max. 3rep maybe, 5rep is probably best. unless youre doing no actual tackling in your in season practices, a fatigued back is asking for a spine injury, fatigued traps is asking for a AC sprain, fatigued quads/hammys is gonna impact your practice, fatigued chest/shoulders youre going to miss tackles. its hard to stay low in an athletic stance if you spent the previous day blasting your legs in heavy squats.
off season is where you rebound your weight/strength/conditioning.
in season should be all about mobility and injury prevention since injury rates are obscenely high. working hard to put 10lb on your squat in season is meaningless if it impacts your practice and matches or gets you hurt.
i did 5/3/1 last season and felt like i could not recover fast enough for practice the next day.
defrancos in season program looks good. a lot of bilateral leg work and stuff like WTYL for shoulders is good as well.
maybe i should rephrase, as opposed to maxing out trying to improve max out to a previous best, like i stated before
so lets say i front squat 325 at the end of off season training, during the season every 3-4 weeks id just go to 315 to maintain
for conditioning you need at least one conditioning workout a week during the season at the very least. Obviously it depends on you’re practice too if you do a lot of conditioning during practice then you don’t need to work on it as much. If you do more skills as opposed to conditioning then you need to add conditioning. Being able to keep going at 100% longer is more important than being mose explosive/stronger for a shorter amount of time because no matter how strong you are if you are gassed you are useless
I used Defranco’s WS4SB3 in season template until last fall season. Last summer I had started 5/3/1, so I just transitioned to the 2 day template once actual contact practices started.
Here is the basic idea:
week 1
Mon - TBDL
Tue - Practice
Wed - Bench
Thu - Practice
Fri - OFF
Sat - Game
Week 2
Mon - Squat
Tue - Practice
Wed - Military
Thu - Practice
Fri - OFF
Sat - Game
Repeat
I usually only did prescribed reps.
Assistance was more along the lines of WS4SB3, making each day basically full body. I often utilized the Wendler “Jack Shit” assistance template as well, depending on how I felt.
I’m still on 5/3/1 and will use the same basic plan this spring season but use more bodyweight exercises for assistance.
I’d say most people would be unlikely to gain strength during a competetive rugby season. You’ll be doing very well to maintain. My rep maxes went down in all lifts, but I knew exactly where I stood once the season was over and it was time to get back after it. The first couple of cycles after the season I was barely getting prescibed reps, but I was still making overall progress within the plan. The third cycle post season I was back to exceeding prescribed reps by similar numbers, with more weight.
As far as conditioning goes… well I have been playing since fall 07, and my conditioning still isn’t where I want it to be. Previous off seasons, I did little to work on it. I did a ton more this off season. Hills, prowler, C2 rower, elliptical, bleacher steps… I’ll probably do intervals on the elliptical or the C2 rower on lifting days in-season this year. Our practices don’t have a lot of specific conditioning, but the drills often have a conditioning element or pace.
Anyone going to Savannah or Nash Bash?
LA
the rowing machine is great for conditioning, 500 metre sprints are very effective and replicate game like situations. There has to be a balance of cardio endurance and velocity, It’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of security with your endurance on long runs, and less focus on the sprint work.
Doing a power based program during the season with your heaviest day on the monday is a good idea, it will be hard to get any p.b lifts due to soreness, injuries etc. and hypertrophy is out of the question.
stick to big exercises, relevant to the position you play.
I can vouch for De Franco’s in season template, works well and its simple to program/follow.