Q&A - Are Mile Times Good for Rugby? Hypertrophy vs strength AND MORE!

🎥 LIVE Q&A February Edition!
Join us for a live Q&A session in February where we'll be answering ALL your questions...

In Today's Episode:

00:00 Intro
02:44 Do my old times have any meaningful translation to rugby performance?
07:20 If done at the correct intensity, should you be able to do aerobic sessions on consecutive days or even on the same days as a strength session without the, that being detrimental to the entire process?
13:34 What split do you recommend on a weekly basis, crossfit, cardio, weight training?
15:35 For H I C T. Could you do walking up and down stairs in the house? Just thinking of adaptations if I have a limited kit.
20:49 Could you just briefly go over movement quality and what it means in terms of training?
21:06 Athleticism is basically movement control


(comment bellow and you will be answered in the next live!)


Rugby Muscle Elite 1on1 Coaching
https://rugby-muscle.com/elite/


For The Rugby Athlete Blueprint
https://rugby-muscle.com/14DRAB


Team Rugby Muscle
https://rugbymuscle.programs.app/

Transcript

0:00

Yes. What is going on everybody? Welcome back to another rugby muscle podcast. as always TJ. And in today's edition, we are going to try and have a stab at doing this live on Instagram as well as YouTube. But we are doing our second podcast of the week, which means of course it is going to be a Q and a edition. So we've got some questions already. Lined up, ready to go, um, and I'm excited to see if we get any comments from that guy who went past my apartment as loud as humanly possible. Now, I want to see if we, if this does work on Instagram. I'm not entirely sure how well it works. But we will, we will figure this all out as we go. But we've got some questions already lined up. Of course, if you have any questions for any future editions, if you're watching this past the fact, put them in the comments below. I answer these questions from the YouTube comments, from Instagram sometimes, and also from the Spotify comments. Every single podcast now on Spotify should have an area where you get to ask your questions. And then, ideally Um, probably at least every two weeks we'll do one of these Q and a additions. And this is your chance to get a little bit more in depth answers to the questions. Um, your specific questions that is, um, and answers that apply to you. So obviously during the week or regular weekly episodes describe the process of strength and conditioning, the different things that you can do ideas, but it's always going to be somewhat. generic. But with these live Q& A's or with the Q& A's should I say, this is just going to allow you to get some specific answers for you. So I hope you enjoy these episodes. If you do of course give it a thumbs up and another way that you can leave a question but otherwise just do a good thing help us out and leave us a five star review either on Spotify Or on, uh, Apple podcasts really does help out. And if you want to continue watching the show, get reminded of every new show that we produce so that you make sure that you, your training is like the most efficient possible. Uh, hit subscribe and potentially check out how to work with us in the description below. All right. So, like I said, we've got a few questions already lined up. So that's what we're going to do. We're just going to run through these questions. Uh, it looks like because I never put any sort of post out or pre warning, we ain't got too many people joining us on the live and no one asking questions just as of yet. But it doesn't matter. We'll get the question here from Daniel Buckwater who says, Do my old times have any meaningful translation to rugby performance? Uh, yes and no, right? So, mostly no. Because if you're a good rugby player, This is the yes part. If you're a good rubber player, you're going to have a decent mile time. You're going to have a good mile time. If you're unfit, you're going to have a bad mile time. If you go from less fit to more fit, there's a very good chance that your mile time is going to improve. But apart from that There's very little in, like, there's very, it's a very loose correlation, right? And I would not suggest that this is something to work towards as a rugby player at all. Um, and that's just because it's just not, it's not in alignment with the way that you want to train as a rugby player. As a rugby player, right, in the game of rugby, it's It's 100 percent intense, aggressive, explosive action, whether that's a carry, tackle, whatever. And then you reset. And it basically is both ends of the spectrum. That's why I always talk about, uh, aerobic work and then the most aggressive work that you can do. High end power work, strength work, etc. That's where rugby is played, right? There's some stuff in the middle here, but mostly, the better you get at both ends of the spectrum, the fitter you're going to be, right? Never is a play, how long does it take to do a mile? 5, if you're amazing, 6, 7, 8 minutes, right? Getting progressively less and less fit. Never is a play of rugby going to last that amount of time. And never are you challenged to work as hard as you can for that period of time. Never are you needed to, you know, have some sort of pacing or keep that same running speed like never are you going to really effectively use that running speed that it takes for you to, um, to like sprint or not even sprint, right? Just go do a mile as fast as you can. And never is that, that speed going to really come into in handy as a rugby player. And therefore. It's just not a worthwhile pursuit. Um, again, as you get fitter, your mile time will improve. Is it worthwhile? No. Um, and obviously you can also look at the, the mile and say, how much longer is a, how much longer is a Bronco than a mile? I think it is like, there's a little bit more than a mile, a little bit less than a mile. I don't care. Bronco is a shit test and it's just a good way to, for me to shit on it. The perfect example here is me doing it. And you think. Okay, but if I'm only doing sprint work, and I'm only doing, uh, my low aerobic work, how is that going to improve my mile time? It will. It will massively improve your er, your, your mile time, because you'll just be that much fitter, and you'll be that much more capable of sustaining a fast pace. I learned this when I did my 5k every day. Never did I finish a 5k any faster than like 29 minutes ish. And that was that was like my faster ones most of the time when I was running my 5ks I ran just for the record. I did it for dottie 8. I ran 34 different 5ks every single day from january to the start of six nations and um, yeah, most of it were was more than 30 minutes long some of it was a lot even slower than like 35 minutes I then did one test at the end just to see how fast I could and I got less than 23 minutes. So that should just go to show how that zone 2 stuff, that low level aerobic stuff that I continually harp on about is really effective even for that middle end range, right? Because you're getting, because you're just that much more comfortable in all positions. And if you get faster, obviously it's still going to translate. Now, if you're trying to get the fastest specific mile possible. That would be different. You'd then have to do some level of speed work. Same for me. If I was to try and get the fastest 5k possible, it would be better for me to do more sprint work, or not even sprint work, like tempo type work, right? Where I'm trying to get as, uh, as fast as possible, um, like, and get used to running like sub 20 minute 5k splits and then combine that all together. You're not trying to do that for rugby. You're just trying to get really fast. Cool. Um, next question we have is from Tyler who asks if done at the correct intensity, should you be able to do aerobic sessions on consecutive days or even on the same days as a strength session without the, that being detrimental to the entire process? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Um, I think. Especially if you're going to say detrimental to the entire process because like you're not a powerlifter detrimental to the entire process does not mean potentially losing or not even losing any strength just lifting slightly less weight, right? Um, too many people get wrapped up in, in the numbers when it comes to their, their strength work. And I think that's something that, uh, we miss a lot. Um, So yeah, I don't, I don't agree with that. So I don't, sorry, I don't think that it's going to be detrimental to the entire process whatsoever. Um, In practice, it's still going to take some time to get used to. Um, right? So, because it's a Because you're not used to doing this there's going to be potential for you to have like heavier legs there's going to be potential for You to be a little bit stiff. I would even potentially suggest that that means that you're going too fast But it is what it is. I still think it's a much worthwhile pursuit and that's where I guess nuances come in and like A coach comes in where you're told to stay the course and you're told to not worry about necessarily getting, um, uh, overly, like, fatigued and actually just stay with that process. Because the problem with like a lot of rugby players strength and conditioning is that they're so petrified of getting weaker and getting, um, losing muscle that they don't ever try to do this stuff. And that's why most rugby players are unfit. Um, because they're just petrified of getting weaker and that, and then they forget that the fact that rugby is played over 80 minutes and it needs a significant amount of aerobic conditioning to do. So, yeah, yeah, I think it's absolutely worthwhile doing that. Um, and if you're someone that is already strong enough, I would absolutely consider also doing your conditioning work before your strength work. Because that's what you need to, that's what you need to work on. So, go work on it. Um. So, yeah, and if you sacrifice a little bit of strength, that's fine. You don't need to focus on strength because your, your, your, your conditioning is your weakness. Um, and yeah, eventually, if you're continually using your, the same muscles, yes, ideally, you're going to need a break. In theory, you never need a break. Uh, you could go on without ever needing a rest day. Um, in practice, that, like, I like rest days for the mind. In, like, in theory, You could break up a body and lower body stuff as well. So you could do running and an upper body session. And technically that's a rest day for your lower body or for the muscles. I just like, Oh, like organizing it so that we get high and low days, but then also one rest day a week. Let me see if I can turn on this light real quick. That didn't make any difference. Let's see if it made any difference. Uh, ever so slightly, but not much. We're going to keep going in the dark for the, for the rest of this episode. Brandon asks, um, so can we equate athleticism to an extent with our ability to manipulate, coordinate our bodily movements in order to physically, in order to solve physical problems, perform sports specific movements successfully. Very well put, mate. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. So, athleticism, in my mind, I've previously called it movement control. I like the idea of calling it athleticism. It's your problem solving with your body. Now, in the previous video, I discussed how to train to improve this. And let me be here, clear here, because this, this is at the end of the video. So, a lot of you might have missed it. Um, you want to get better at sports specific movements. You need to do those sports specific movements. You, you, like, if you want to get better at passing, go pass. If you want to get better at jackling, go practice jackling. Uh, don't try to replicate those movements in the gym. Yes, getting better at general movement is going to have a minimal but significant enough amount of assistance in that. And it would be better than adding like an extra tiny percentage to a lift. but it's not going to be better than actually going and doing the sport. Right? So make no mistake. If you continually practice snatches, it's not going to magically make you faster or better at exploding, like carrying, you know, it's going to help, but practice carrying. Okay. And obviously the other elephant in the room with when it comes to athleticism is the genetic component that there is to us, right? There's. It's clearly some level of talent that comes with athleticism. You see guys who just cannot move for shit and, you know, they don't have too much of a hope of becoming, uh, you know, the most athletic rugby players and that's just the way it is. This is the same. And then there's other people who are ridiculously talented that can become really strong, um, and with that. Right. Or sorry, there's people that are talented in the strength realm that can already first, the first time they step in the gym can already bench press a hundred kilos. That's just the way it is. And that's just the way of life. So, you know, the, some people will have to start on a lower end of the spectrum compared to other people. And that's just, that's just how it is. And that's if anything, does that mean that you should not bother training it? No, you should still train to be athletic and that's going to be fine. We've got a question coming in on the live feed on the YouTube. Uh, what's up Ayanda? He says, what split do you recommend on a weekly basis, i. e. crossfit, cardio, weight training? I wouldn't do crossfit. Crossfit is not rugby. Uh, cardio, weight training, um, there's so many different ways to organize it. In fact, I teach you how to organize it in the Rugby Athlete Blueprint, which you can join for free. using the links that will be in the description below this podcast and below, uh, no, below this podcast on Spotify and in the description on YouTube when we repost when it's no longer live. Um, but there's so many different ways. You just have to organize what days that you can train and then you can filter in high days and low days. The only thing I just basically say is don't do a bro split, right? So don't do chest up, whatever. And don't do two consecutive hard days. You just cannot recover from that. You want to do hard day, lighter day, hard day, lighter day, or hard day, medium day. And you want to condense all your high intensity work together so that. Um, so that you can then use the lighter days to recover from all of that stress. If you go a little bit of hard, a little bit of hard, a little bit of hard on three consecutive days, that third day is just, you're not going to reach the intensity that you need to. You're then not going to be able to recover. That's why I don't like doing it. I like doing full body workouts. So thank you for the comment. I under, that's, uh, the most comprehensive answer I can give you for free still, which will be using the Rugby Athlete Blueprint. Uh, next. question as we keep going. I only want to go for 20 minutes here. Where, how far are we? Uh, it looks like we are, uh, less than, way less than 20 minutes. So we've got five minutes to go. Uh, we've got two questions. If any more come in the live, I'll answer those as well. Uh, we have, dum dum dum, Thomas Palmer who says, so for H I C T. Could you do walking up and down stairs in the house? Just thinking of adaptations if I have a limited kit. I wouldn't walk up and, like, I wouldn't walk up and down. I would just walk up. I would basically go two steps at a time and just go up and do step ups on the stairs. In fact, actually, I wouldn't use stairs. I would use a stool or, um, some other, like, some other implement that's like, fairly sturdy. So I was going to say a sofa but that probably wouldn't work. A stair, the problem is you've got to go like quite laterally and then backward it's kind of awkward. But I would just do step ups. I would use a chair and do step ups as long as that chair is not too far high up on your thigh you should be fine and just do step ups. If that isn't an option I would then look at doing lunges. You could do walking lunges or you could do continual reverse lunges. you essentially just want an eccentric contraction every two to three seconds if you if you go up and down the stairs you're just going to lose that time when you're going down the stairs and like it doesn't seem like much but it is going to it's going to have a negative effect on it's not going to produce the effect that hict will if you just get a rep done continually every two to three seconds and go for 10 to 30 minutes And again, it won't feel like much, particularly at the beginning, but towards the end you'll start to sweat, and again, it's aerobic work, so it shouldn't be pushing you way too hard, you shouldn't be gassed at the end, it should just be enough that you know you're working, you'll feel the sweat, and you'll feel good. Um, well, you'll feel, feel like you accomplished something at the end. Last quest, the last quest of the Q& A edition. We've got Dave who says, TJ, if I'm in the 20 percent giving 80 percent result zone with weight training, go back and watch my video on 80 20 principles of how it applies to rugby strength and conditioning, how you shouldn't train like a powerlifter or bodybuilder, um, and We'll actually talk about this on the next podcast where we'll talk about hypertrophy and strength Is there really appreciate is there any real appreciable difference between hypertrophy? Versus strength for me. I'm guessing keeping everything simple and showing up wins. Yeah, absolutely. So like Remember again, you're not a strength athlete. So you're not trying to get the last 5 percent of your strength. You're going to try and get strong enough. So as long as you're adding weight to the bar every week, or as long as you're adding weight to your lifts every week or over the course of time, that seems fine to me. As long as you notice that you're getting stronger and you're recovering, then you're going to be adding muscle. The thing with adding muscle like training for hypertrophy is it's so, so slow. that it's just, I mean, outside of your first few years of training or your first few years of actually training properly, it can become so slow that it's just really difficult to monitor. So instead you just monitor the strength going up and if the strength going up, there's a good chance that your muscle is coming up. Cause you think about it like after the first few years of training, like if you're still trying to gain muscle, you're going to put on one to two kilos a year at most. Right. Otherwise you would see all these wingers that do so much that rugby professionals, right? That would be as jacked as the props. Why would they not be jacked as a prop if they could gain five kilos a year? Which means they gain 20 kilos in four years. They'd be huge, right? It's just not the way it works. You just muscle gaining is a real slow process. I wouldn't really focus on it. I just focus on getting more weight. Uh, lifting more weight over time, I'd then potentially go through some level of, uh, hypertrophy sprints just to allow for some period of time in the off season to, like, not be using heavy weight all the time. But, outside of that, maybe even then it becomes a conditioning focus. Outside of that, you're pretty much good to go. Alright, um, Um, I wouldn't do loads of volume. I would just lift enough, like two to three sets of some heavy work in the, you know, three to six, uh, rep range twice a week. You're ticking the boxes enough. You're getting that's what you're putting in a 20 percent of what that's giving you the most results. I, unless you're completely undersized, I wouldn't worry about it. Um, and then even if you are potentially, then you just add a little bit more, but it's, there's still no difference between hypertrophy and strength, right? You're still getting stronger. Um, in order to get bigger. Right. So yeah, cool. I'll get in more detail on that on the, um, strength versus strength and hypertrophy, um, strength and size podcast. It will be going up next week, but other than that, thank you very much everyone for joining. If you made it all the way to the end. Oh. Tom's just asked a question. Can I get it in? Yeah, we'll, we'll answer this one real quick, mate. He says, Morning TJ, I've been watching your principle videos on the five principles of S& C. Could you just briefly go over movement quality and what it means in terms of training? Go watch the most previous podcast. At the beginning of this, this Q& A, I actually, uh, um, was it a beginning? I think it was a third question. Uh, the question from Brandon who athleticism is basically movement control. So when I say athleticism, that's my new name for movement control because people don't want to hear that they're improving at movement control. It's much cooler to hear that you're improving your athleticism and essentially it's just your, your body's ability to solve problems, right? So it's your ability to solve physical problems. It's very much, it can be a sport specific, but so. You know athletic in one sport is not the same as athletic in another sport but essentially your movement control is trained by Go back and watch the previous podcast that will Absolutely comprehensively answer that question for you If you have any more questions, of course You hit that spotify three dots and ask a question there or actually because you're watching on youtube Just got a question below in the youtube comments. Um Cool. All right. Thank you everyone for joining me. If you've made it all the way to the end and you haven't given it a thumbs up, please do so on the YouTube. If you are listening on Spotify and you haven't, uh, given us a five star rating, please do so. It really does help. My God, we just went really dark. And on that note, we'll go. Links for working with Rugby Muscle will be in the description below. Cheers, everyone. See you in the next one.