New season, a new base

While many of the intercontinental rugby competitions have just finished, the top professionals and fans alike are now warming up for the Rugby World Cup in France, which starts September 7 and ends on October 20. So, in the spirit of William Webb Ellis, the man the World Cup is named after, our resident fitness writer – Mohammed Junaid Azmuth – has written a full off-season fitness plan. Azmuth is one of only three Samurais living outside of Japan, but was also an ultimate fighter and fitness consultant for the Springboks.

It is the end of another hard season of contact sport - time to slow down, collect your thoughts and start your preparation for the new season. Usually the aim is to get bigger and stronger and do a few miles of cardio a week. The intentions are always honourable, the execution of the plan, however, usually leads to disaster.

The biggest problem with off season aims and objectives in amateur rugby players/sportsmen throughout the world is that YOU try to do too much, too soon. We want to get bigger, we want to get fitter and faster. But we rarely achieve one of the three objectives successfully, or we fail miserably at achieving anything. The reason for this lack of improvement and in some cases for the decision to call it quits, is as follows:

1 - If you want to get bigger you will not get as strong: To gain muscle mass one will have to train at moderate weights and do repetitions between 10 and 12. This gets more blood and fluid to the muscles thus giving it an appearance of being larger. But weight is not sufficient enough to improve your strength. This “bodybuilding muscle” will not make you stronger or fitter for rugby.

2 - If you want to get stronger, you will not get as big as you had perceived: When your objective is to get stronger, then the sets are less (+/- 3-4 sets) with repetitions between 4-7 repetitions. With this type of training your muscle fibre will become thicker (from little metal wires to thick strong cables). Your nervous system becomes more efficient thereby enhancing your force outputs. But your strength must be specific. Just think – when are you ever going to lie in the middle of a rugby game and bench press somebody?! Never, so why get stronger on the bench press?

3 - If you want size or strength you cannot run 5-10 km for 2-3 times a week: Have you ever seen marathon runners who are built like rugby players? When you run, especially if it’s for 10 kilometres, you are burning high amounts of calories as well as loosing water. You are using different muscle fibres to those you require for strength. This will eventually have an effect on your strength gains. So you will get fitter but at the expense of strength.

It looks hopeless doesn’t it? But it›s not - here is a program that will enhance all these aspects by 10 per cent in 12 weeks.