Rugby players need a combination of speed, power, endurance, and explosiveness to excel in this most demanding sport. You don’t need great height or a large waistline as in American baseball or football. As much fun as they are to play, you won’t become a top rugby player by playing Grande Vegas Online Pokies. You first need to train; then you can spend your relaxation time playing online games or doing anything else that calms and relaxes you.
Warm Up
Athletes at the highest level understand the importance of a full warm up before strenuous exercise. Many sports injuries come from improper warming up and cooling down. You need to go through a rhythmic set of stretches to warm up. Yoga and Tai Chi are excellent ways to warm up.
Young athletes are often bored during their warm up. You need to develop the strength of mind to continue the slow, methodical warm up routine even though the part you like the most is weight training, running, or some other more intensive exercise.
The discipline involved in the “Standing Like a Tree” exercises called zhan zhuang are excellent for developing the patience you need to train properly. Learning patience is also important for athletic success as many plays in any sport, including rugby, develop over time. Many plays come together in fits and starts and succeed only because the players, as a team, showed the kind of patience that zhan zhuang teaches.
Proper Nutrition
You need to eat before you train and you need to eat afterwards. It’s important to know what to eat and how soon before your training exercise you need to eat. Fruit is an excellent food before training. It has fiber, vitamins, trace minerals, enzymes, and few calories. The sugars will quickly get used as energy during your workout.
Every individual body is slightly different than every other body. Some people metabolize well starches and proteins they eat together whilst others don’t. Some metabolize fruit eaten after a meal well whilst most people don’t. There is actually a very long list of eating combinations that are okay for some but not for others.
If you are even mildly lactose intolerant, you will probably need to eliminate dairy products from your diet. If you have a tendency to joint inflammation, even a mild case of it, you’ll need to eliminate or drastically cut down on foods that cause inflammation. As a young person, your joints are still quite resilient but the effect of inflammatory foods is cumulative. You’ll want to curb or stop eating foods that make your knees sore.
Nutrition is a trial and error aspect of training but you have to take it very seriously.
Aerobic Endurance
Running is by far the best aerobic exercise but it is also the most taxing on your body. Feet and knees don’t like running. In place of running, the next best are swimming and bicycle riding.
There is little in swimming that athletes can overdo. Many athletes try to ride their bicycles too fast. Speed is not the purpose in bicycle training; aerobic strength is and aerobic strength can be gained without speeding down a road way.
Strength Training
As important as aerobic exercise is for endurance, you also need absolute strength and explosive strength. Weight training is good for strength but most people think of weight training as good for absolute strength. It is. Weight training for explosive strength is also god but it requires many more repetitions at lower weight levels.
This is because strength that is developed slowly is held in muscles that are supple. Supple muscles respond much faster than non-supple muscles to sudden demands on them.
The slower type of training needed to develop strong and supple muscles lead again to boredom. Mental training is clearly almost as important as physical training.
Plyometric training is as good as weight training for leg strength. Plyometric exercises involve jumping. They clearly help your legs but they also help your heart. All of your internal organs are stressed to some degree by the act of power jumping. Especially for sports like rugby and football which involve enormous amounts of jumping, plyometric exercises work extremely well.
Scrummaging Exercises
There are five basic areas of the body you need to succeed in scrummages. There are your core, your hands, your upper body, your thighs, and your back. Scrummaging is almost entirely pure strength but you have to develop strength according to your body type.
All forms of Eastern exercise are good for your core. In the East they have known for centuries that developing your inner core is far more than having exterior muscles in the area. Yoga and Tai Chi especially develop the inner core.
Hanging is by far the best exercise to strengthen hands, wrists, and fingers. Hanging is perhaps a Western form of zhan zhuang for hands.
Weight training is great for the upper body as is swimming. Bicycle riding is excellent for the lower body.
Your back is possibly the area of your body that is the hardest to strengthen. Every exercise we’ve mentioned is good for your back but we must repeat the same warning: go slow.
Training for Technique
Perhaps we think that technique is more important in football, basketball, or baseball. But it is also very important in rugby. Proper technique reduces the chances of injury dramatically. Proper technique involves positioning your body for both the most effective athletic activity but also for the safest athletic activity.
Rounding Up
Training for rugby or any other sport is a slow process. To achieve the highest level of success you need patience, resilience, a forward looking mindset, and the willingness to work hard.
