Fast-tracking the development of young rugby players in the four "esses" - size, strength, speed and skill

A two-year program of accelerating the physical and skill development of young players at Sydney University has returned big dividends.

Within days of losing the 2006 First Colts Grand Final due to being out-muscled at the breakdown, University coach Nick Ryan met with his team and together they made a pact to never again be pushed off the ball. The players allowed themselves a mere three weeks break before getting back into training for the 2007 season at a level of intensity not seen before in Sydney club rugby. The off-season training regimen consisted of 4 weights sessions and 3 field sessions per week, switching to 3 weights and 2 to 3 field sessions during the playing season plus regular individual video analysis and field sessions with the coach.

The central ingredient of the training has been the strength and conditioning components devised by Martin Harland and administered by him and his assistant, Tim Leahy. "I guess we have two training tenets" Harland explains, "that is to always train hard and to train hard in the right areas. Thus developing the culture of no short cuts and to attend to the things in a prioritized plan from what we lack the most or what will help us the most on the park." Harland's programs for rugby players place a high degree of emphasis on basic strength development, increased bodyweight and speed. At the same time, given the year-round training commitment, great care is taken to guard against player burnout.
"We are consistently monitoring signs of overtraining," says Leahy. "Our in-season training structure does differ from our pre-season regime. The two key factors that help us guard against overtraining and player burnout is to firstly ensure our players are educated and understand the importance of post-game recovery strategies. "Secondly a close working relationship with coaching staff to ensure on field and gym volumes are of an optimal load. All variables as well as player’s subjective observation of energy, fatigue levels and contra indicators to injury are taken into account when prescribing volumes."

With a strong strength and fitness foundation laid, Nick Ryan and his team coaches are free to focus on technical proficiency and team cohesion. "The aim of our training sessions," says Ryan, "is to up-skill and empower the players, so that when they take the field not only can they read the game and make the right decisions, but then execute and finish off the activity with the help of team mates who are on a similar skill level and wave length." The payoff in terms of enhanced performance from the integration of strength and rugby coaching has been dramatic.

In the 2007 season University First Colts lost just one game out of 25 in winning both Minor and Major Premierships. Seconds and Under-19 Colts also won both Minor and Major awards. The dramatic improvement in the physical development of players can be seen from the Table below. As compared with the 2006 First Colts team, the 2007 forward pack's average bodyweight increased 5kg to 104.3kg; the backs 5.8kg to 86.2kg; and the team as a whole 5.3kg to 95.8kg.

The second year of intensive training produced even more impressive results. In the 2008 season all three Colts grades won both Minor and Major Premierships, with First Colts remaining undefeated throughout their 24-game season. Despite the age limit for Colts having dropped from Under-21 to Under-20, players' bodyweights again increased by 0.2kg for the forwards; 2.8kg for the backs; and 1.5kg overall.

"physical domination ... has enabled us to build a very strong defensive wall and to implement a highly structured game plan which we can maintain for the full 80 minutes."

To put the 2008 figures in perspective the Table also shows the bodyweights of the best professional rugby players in Australia, the current Wallabies squad. They outweigh this club-level Under-20 team by just 6kg per man in the forwards and 4.4kg in the backs. And this team of university students is currently on an unbroken 34-game winning streak! It is almost time for the administrators of Australian rugby to recognise and to take seriously the great experiment that is going on in their own backyard.

Colts coach Nick Ryan has the extraordinary record of taking his team to the Grand Final in each of the 7 years he has coached; with his only loss the 4 point defeat in 2006. He says, " A very important outcome from the intensive training regime of the past 2 years has been our ability to achieve physical domination in matches. This has enabled us to build a very strong defensive wall and to implement a highly structured game plan which we can maintain for the full 80 minutes." As with the weight training, Ryan ensures that the field sessions are short and frequently varied, with the emphasis on having his team peak on Grand Final day in September. He certainly achieved this in 2008 with the winning scoreline 39-5.

In the regular season in 2008 Ryan's team averaged a 40-point winning margin and conceded only 8 points per game. Seconds and Thirds Colts also conceded just 8 and 5 points respectively per game.

A distinctive feature of the Sydney University rugby program has been its reliance on the MyoQuip range of strength building equipment. For the past four years the University gymnasium has been the primary development site for these machines. Not surprisingly MyoQuip's ScrumTruk and Hipnee Thrust* have been extensively used for lower body strength development. Martin Harland says, "These two lower limb extensor machines have been integral to training a wide cross-section of athletes in different sports at the University. In rugby they enable us to reduce the deleterious effects of heavy lower leg extensor exercises and on-field running loads. Traditional heavy squats & deadlifts are great for strength and size but are only moderately compatible with higher running loads for field or court sports. and incompatible with a sizeable subset of your player population for various reasons. To be able to de-load players spines while building hip & knee extensor strength through range of motion means more athletes able to train intensely in the gym and front up for intense speed & fitness work in the same week.” "

The combination of an intensive, well-structured and coordinated training regimen and the use of strength apparatus with high specificity for rugby can be seen to have produced accelerated physical development which has enabled players to perform at a consistently high standard.

*In recent months the University gymnasium has replaced its ScrumTruk and HipneeThrust machines with the more advanced and compact MyoTruk and MyoThrusta models.

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Comparative Bodyweight of Australian Professional Rugby Union and Rugby League Players

Over the past few decades Australian Rugby Union and Rugby League players have been getting progressively heavier. Contributing factors have included an increased emphasis on heavy weight training, the use of dietary supplements and the high proportion of Pacific Islanders in teams of both codes. Nevertheless there remains a clear tendency for professional Union players to be heavier than League players as the following table illustrates:

Comparative Bodyweight of Australian Professional Rugby Union and Rugby League Forwards and Backs
Squad/Team (2008)	Av Weight (kg) - Forwards	Av Weight (kg) - Backs	Difference(kg)
Rugby Union Australian Wallabies - Squad	110.5	93.4	17.1
NSW Waratahs - Squad	110.9	93.2	17.7
ACT Brumbies - Squad	110.0	93.8	17.2
Rugby League
Manly Sea Eagles – Grand Final Team	101.1	89.4	11.7
Melbourne Storm – Grand Final Team	103.7	92.6	11.1

Like Soccer and Australian Football, Rugby League is a continuous-flow type game, whereas Rugby Union is characterised by frequent stoppages with a significant time lapse before play restarts. Thus Union players require a lower level of aerobic fitness. Not surprisingly then, Union players whether backs or forwards tend to be heavier than their League counterparts.

The table indicates that the difference between the body weights of professional Union and League backs is not particularly great, whereas it is much more substantial in the case of forwards. One reason for this is the need for tall, heavy lineout forwards in Union, who are often around 200cm in height with corresponding body mass. With their high centre of gravity, such players are generally unsuited for Rugby League.

But the main reason for the weight disparity relates to the fundamentally different dynamics of the modern forms of each code. As I pointed out in a 2006 article, "Rugby - the most strength-oriented code of football":

"Rugby players spend considerably more playing time in physical contact and contest with opponents than players in other forms of football.

"Much of this contact involves extended grappling and wrestling, but what is also characteristic of rugby is the amount of time spent attempting to drive forward under loads considerably heavier than bodyweight. Obviously this is so in the scrum and maul, but also at the tackle. Both ball-carrier and tackler may strive to drive one another backward for an extended time after engagement. American football and rugby league are also primarily collision sports, but their tackles tend to terminate much more quickly."

There is an obvious advantage in having greater body mass where the sport requires extended physical engagement, although this may have a cost in terms of reduced mobility. Thus it can be confidently anticipated that Union forwards will always tend to be heavier than League forwards.

Those who advocate or foresee a merging of the two codes of Rugby fail to comprehend the fundamentally different physical demands placed on forwards in Union and League.

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Building bigger and stronger rugby players - the Sydney University experiment

It is widely acknowledged that the average bodyweight of rugby players has increased considerably over recent years. Less recognised is the extent to which modern defensive alignments and strategies have transformed rugby matches into contests of attrition where bigger and stronger teams tend to wear down their smaller and physically weaker opponents over the course of a game. Perhaps the most notable change has been the increased importance of physical dominance in the backline.

Responding to this, Sydney University's rugby club has been able to demonstrate that with the right combination of coach and infrastructure, it is possible to fast track the physical development of players outside a professional playing environment. In fact within a couple of seasons these players are able to achieve a body mass comparable to that of seasoned professionals together with a solid foundation of basic strength.

In late May, Sydney University announced its team for the first round of the Tooheys New Cup, the premier competition in Sydney club rugby. All of the fifteen players are past or current students who had been developed through the Club's Colts and lower grade teams. None of them are paid to play for the Club, although the eleven who are still students receive modest scholarship assistance. Only three of the players are on professional contracts.

It is instructive to compare their bodyweight and age profiles with those of squads from four major rugby countries:

Comparative Bodyweight and Age Profiles

Team	Average Weight (kg)	Average Age
Wallabies - 2006 Squad	102.6	26.1
All Blacks - 2006 Squad	102.9	25.5
Springboks - 2006 Squad	102.2	26.8
England - 2006 6 Nations Squad	101.2	27.2
Sydney University - 2006 Tooheys New Cup Team	100.5	22.5

It can be seen that the part-time, unpaid Sydney University players, though three to five years younger, weigh only a couple of kilograms less than the world's best players. This is quite extraordinary as normally a much greater weight disparity would be expected.

For the past three years Sydney University Football Club has been operating an Elite Development Squad (EDS) program for its top grade and colts players. Utilising one of the best equipped gymnasiums in Australian rugby, players train for eleven months of the year and undertake four weights sessions per week off-season and a lesser number while playing.

The program's strength and conditioning components have been devised and administered by Martin Harland, a sports scientist who has previously worked with professional rugby league, Australian football and basketball teams. His programs for rugby players place a high degree of emphasis on basic strength development and rugby-specific fitness. A distinguishing feature of his approach is a concentration on heavy lower body work through exercises such as squats, deadlifts and cleans. In addition, both backs and forwards make intensive use of the MyoQuip ScrumTruk, a rugby-specific apparatus that targets the large mass leg extensor muscles, specifically the gluteal and quadriceps groups. Hypertrophy or increased muscle mass is a natural and not unintended by-product of such training.

Exposing backline players to basic strength training

Another distinctive feature of Martin Harland's rugby training regimen is his requirement that backs undertake the same rigorous basic strength routines as forwards. Many strength and conditioning coaches reserve the heavy "grunt" work for forwards, or even restrict it to the tight five.

Exposing backs to very serious weight training has produced a quite extraordinary outcome at Sydney University, as evidenced by the following table comparing body weights of forwards and backs for the Wallabies, the four Australian Super 14 franchises and Sydney University:

Comparative Bodyweight of Forwards and Backs

Squad/Team (2006)	Av Weight (kg) - Forwards	Av Weight (kg) - Backs	Difference
Wallabies - Squad	111.1	91.8	19.3
ACT Brumbies - Squad	110.3	90.9	19.4
NSW Waratahs - Squad	110.8	92.8	18.0
Queensland Reds - Squad	109.7	92.4	17.3
Western Force - Squad	109.1	92.9	16.2
Sydney University - Team	105.3	95.1	10.2

Not surprisingly, the University's young forwards are outweighed by each of the five professional squads. However, in the backs the situation is reversed. The University players outweigh the national and provincial squads by between 2.2 and 4.2 kg per man.

If we look at the column showing the difference in bodyweight between backs and forwards it can be seen that for Sydney University it averages 10.2 kg, against 16.2 to 19.4 kg for Australia's professional squads, a very substantial difference.

The Sydney University experiment seems to be providing clear evidence that the bodyweight of rugby backs can be dramatically increased through serious weight training, but the question arises as to whether this has benefits in terms of playing performance.

One answer is that the other strength-oriented football code, American football, has traditionally used training methods similar to those of Martin Harland. All players, whether linemen or running backs, are required to do heavy gym work. Surely no one would seriously suggest that their quick players have inferior dynamic abilities to rugby players.

Another justification for building heavier backs with superior leg drive lies in the already mentioned importance of physical dominance in the rugby backline. With the modern emphasis on structure and coordination in defensive alignments, bigger and stronger backs are better able to continually repel opposition attacks and also over the course of a game are likely to create physical and mental fatigue in their counterparts.

Having achieved a strong foundation of basic strength and greater body mass, Martin Harland is then able to focus on speed and explosiveness in his players. It is clear that the Sydney University approach yields results on the playing field. 2005 was the Club's most successful year, winning the Sydney Club Championship, the First Grade Premiership and four lower grade Premierships.

Even more importantly, players who graduate from such a program are much better equipped to withstand the rigours of modern rugby.

rugby
backline
Sydney University
Wallabies
All Blacks
Springboks
bodyweight
ScrumTruk
Queensland Reds
Waratahs
Western Force
Brumbies
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