CFN Online Comp

The online comp consists of three WODs between the 17 October and 22 October. You film and perform the WODs, stick them up on the Web and email the link to the folk at CFN.
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The Rep Shed

1. Perform sets of 8 – 10 reps (stimulates hypertrophy)

2. Use gym rings – super efficient and quite cheap. I got mine on eBay for $58 delivered, they’re even cheaper now, see here: http://7h.it.cx/9n201v . Starting with pullups and dips is good. But remember, exercises should mostly be done in sets of 8 – 10 or so.
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My Gym

A year on, this is how it looks.
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gym · lifting platform · weights

Last month, I was in a poor sort of way. I’d wake up after 10 hours of sleep, eat my breakfast, then have to lie on the couch for another couple of hours. My heart was either racing or pounding and I’d lost my appetite. I felt like falling asleep every time I drove my car.

A bit too much of this place...

This was not ideal when the rugby season was just around the corner. I’d been really pushing it with my training, with 13 or 14 sessions a week, including a fair amount of travel. To be honest, I think it was the travel killing me; it was interfering with my recovery, meaning I wasn’t reaching “supercompensation” (adaptation) before my next session. When I allowed this situation to continue for 3 weeks, I was, as they call it, over-reaching, an early stage of overtraining.

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overreaching · recovery

You’re dead-keen on your rugby and are more than happy to beat yourself up in your pursuit of match fitness. But hey, a year is 12 solid months, with maybe an 8 week transition phase, so that’s a hell lot of rugby. Ever feel like a holiday? Well, too bad, you can’t afford one. Try mixing things up instead.

The old adage is that change is as good as a holiday, and this is very true for athletes, too. And let’s be frank, sometimes injury forces a change. This article is about how I’ve used completely non-rugby related training sessions to contribute both to my overall fitness goals and to my very sanity and mental “peaking” for the season ahead.

Most of you know that in a periodised training program, you’ll need a “recovery” or “unloading” week roughly one in every four.This gives your body a chance to recover and adapt in preparation for competition or for the next mesocycle of training. During your off-season and early pre-season, you could also use these recovery weeks to recover mentally by mixing up your sessions a bit, introducing different activities that still train your energy systems appropriately but that also open your mind to the existence of the world outside rugby. I’ll look at some options for both endurance (aerobic and anaerobic) training and for strength/power/core exercises. I’m talking about something more than cross-training, which you’ve already likely factored in: I’m talking about immersing yourself in the culture and history of another discipline and taking what refreshment, insight and pain (read: quality training) you can.

Endurance Training
Endurance training is divided into aerobic endurance and anaerobic endurance. All actual work efforts in rugby – eg, tackling, running the ball, rucking, lineout jumping/lifting, scrummaging etc – use your anaerobic system, but during the periods between these efforts, your body is using your aerobic system to recover. If you have a well developed anaerobic system, you’ll find that you can repeat high intensity efforts, but a well developed aerobic system contributes greatly to your ability to last through a match because you’ll be able to recover more quickly between your work efforts.

Generally, you’ll train your aerobic system in your general preparation phase in the off season. A well trained aerobic system gives you a good base from which to train for anaerobic endurance in the later general prep phase and specific preparation phase because, as discussed above, you’ll be able to recover reasonably quickly between your anaerobic work intervals.

If you want more information on aerobic and anaerobic endurance training (and strength, power, speed and agility training for rugby), take a look at my Resources page [coming soon].

So, that theory out of the way, let’s look at how you can train your aerobic and anaerobic systems in exciting ways.

Over the last 8 months or so, I have been rehabilitating a knee injury, so was pretty much confined to a bike for my training. This forced me to seek out some interval training podcasts that I could use while riding my bike on the indoor trainer. I found, to my great benefit, The Sufferfest.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ7MSJOZmfI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1]

The Sufferfest – killer cycling interval sessions
The Sufferfest produce structured interval training podcasts for competitive cyclists, and I mean competitive both mentally and physically! You need a good base of fitness to even finish these sessions and the videos really bring out that competitive streak in you through merciless on-screen taunts along the lines of “Um, my grandmother just called. She said she can ride harder intervals than you. That isn’t true, is it?” and “You need to think a little harder about why you’re doing this, nancy.” These usually appear at moments when you are almost dying and are, for that simple fact, just merciless, as I said. But I found that The Sufferfest videos have been one of the influences in my considerable fitness gains this offseason, both for the fact of the tough sessions and for teaching me that I actually can push myself higher and harder than I ever have before.

Okay, so to the specifics. I won’t talk about the old prototype versions as they are no longer available.

For Aerobic Endurance in the General Preparation Phase

Nothing beats Fight Club (see promo vid above). Jump on your trainer, turn on your iPod and you’re right in there fighting it out in the UCI World Champioships with Cancellara, Evans and co. You get a warmup, then 5 laps of pain. The first lap is a 6 minute, tempo effort, and the remaining 4 laps consist of 4 minutes at “time trial” pace plus a 2:30 hill climb. Randomly, through all laps, you will be forced to “attack”, ie increase your effort to 10/10 for 15 seconds or so with no recovery. Ouch, it hurts.

But I tell you, on the back of riding one Fight Club and one Billat session once a week for two months, I increased my velocity at VO2MAX (vVO2Max) by 7%. The previous two months, wherein I rode only the Billat sessions, produced a 4% increase. So, there’s a ton of value in Fight Club for me to see those sustained gains.

For Anaerobic Endurance in the Mixed Conditioning and the Specific Conditioning (Pre-season) Phases

Revolver is brutal and effective: 15x 1 min on, 1 min off. This is fairly perfect for conditioning anaerobic endurance and you get to immerse yourself in some really fierce track and road action. You are strongly encouraged to put it all in to each interval.

The Downward Spiral is similarly useful for anaerobic endurance, and like Revolver, employs 1:1 work:rest ratios. Overall, this is a good match for rugby, particularly for forwards, because although the work:rest ratios vary throughout the game, it’s fair to say that overall, the 1:1 work:rest ratio is analogous to game conditions. The Downward Spiral gives you two sets of descending intervals, starting at 2 min on and 2 min off, followed by 1:45 on and 1:45 off, all the way down to 15 secs on and 15 secs off.

A note on more specific training

I love training to The Sufferfest soundtracks for other workout sessions: the music is great, it really gets my amped, and the fact that I’m listening to a Sufferfest means I am constantly reminded to push that bar higher. I use it for my gym sessions and also for more specific endurance stuff. Here are some ideas you might like to try:

1. The Downward Spiral with the Agility T + Burpees

Yup, this is a killer. We all know that one of the most energy sapping things you have to do on the rugby field is to regularly get back to your feet. Why not train this by chucking some burpees into your intervals? Good idea! And then, well, it’s rare that you just run straight lines in rugby, you’re always moving forward, back, sideways and so on, so why not run your intervals with burpees along an Agility T? All to the rhythm of The Downward Spiral — and hey, you’d better not let my grandmother beat you at these ones!

2. Revolver with tackle bags

If you’ve got a bunch of tackle bags, why not set them up and run your Revolver intervals with a few tackles thrown in? Or if you have no tackle bags, a home-made scrum machine is an option. I personally use an old stroller loaded with ballast and drive that for a good few metres. Yay.

Strength/Power Training

I’ll be frank with you: I hate core exercises. There’s nothing more boring than banging out 70 crunches or holding the plank for 3 minutes. Really. So here’s what I do: front lever and planche progressions from gymnastics. Hey, if I have to do core stuff, I may as well be learning cool tricks while I do. And people, these are not easy! The tutorial I use is Building an Olympic Body through Bodyweight Conditioning. I’m up to the tuck planche and the advanced tuck lever and they are both very difficult but effective core and general strength exercises.

For more excellent bodyweight exercises that are fun to do, you can’t beat Beast Skills! My favourite at the moment is the muscle-up, a great upper-body power exercise. There are plenty of awesome exercises there. Power exercises are most suitable for the Specific Conditioning/Pre-season phase.

Summing Up

To save yourself from staleness in your workout program, try briefly immersing yourself in another sport in a way that complements your current training cycle. This article has shown you how to use cross-training in the form of cycling to build aerobic and anaerobic endurance and how to use bodyweight exercises from gymnastics to build your core and general strength and your upper body power.

I love using The Sufferfest videos and the exercises from Beast Skills. I love the variety and I appreciate greatly the exposure to excellence in another domain. This reminds me of the importance of discipline and the great boons that self-belief and effort really are. Through The Sufferfest, I have learned of people like Greg LeMond, who did absolutely everything to win, and I know that my success is in my own hands.

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