• CALENDER

Training venue:

Venue: University of Waikato

TEAM TRAINING:

Physical conditioning

Notes:

• Physical conditioning is performed predominantly on Tuesday night, with an option on Thursday night if required
• Time frame for physical conditioning for Tuesday practises goes from 30 minutes - 60 minutes then reduces to 45 minutes of the total practise time (should be ideally 90 minutes).
• Time frame for physical conditioning for Thursday practises should be between 15-30 minutes of the total practise time (should be ideally 60 minutes).
• The individual players can complete aerobic development in their own time, as it (should) require minimal motivation. The predominant physical system conditioned during team training is the anaerobic system (lactate tolerance & production) as high levels of motivation are required for this type of training and can be developed within the team training environment
• The competitive environment is enhanced by adding the B team to the A team practises (creating a senior squad) and by grouping positions together combined with the creation of a competitive environment.
• Ideally the physical conditioning part of practise would be split up to enable position specific training. However, at this level splitting the team up is difficult to manage and I have found the larger the group the more the players feed off each other which further lifts motivation.
• While I aim to develop specific components at particular times the actual team practises develop a spectrum of physical components with the specific component hopefully predominating within this spectrum.
• Monitoring training progression and effectiveness is extremely difficult given the time, equipment, player ability and facility limitations. Remember you can't physically overtrain a senior rugby team however they will quickly get bored with repetition which can make them mentally stale. Therefore changing the nature of the practises regularly and seeking a wide range of feedback from within the team is important.
• In my limited experience senior rugby players are predominantly not highly disciplined, motivated and trained athletes whose performance requires sophisticated training programs and monitoring systems to ensure optimisation of performance for competition. Therefore usually any sort of hard training will suffice as long as it is well managed and the team responds to it. This means that the trainer's role is more one of a motivator (through fair means or foul) and manager of the practise rather than a sport scientist.
• Most importantly the trainer must develop a good rapport with the coaches and support them. Unity of the team management, support staff (including trainer/s) behind the coaches is an important professional practise which is often missing.