elitefts™ Sunday Edition

Over the years, I've had coaches ask me questions like, "Can we get a loadable mannequin set up to increase our line out lifting strength and speed?" and "How about we use a loadable single man scrum pushing device in a horizontal plane to increase 'scrummaging' strength?"

To both questions, I always answered that I would get the athletes as strong and powerful as possible. They—the coaches—could teach them the mechanics and techniques in the rugby coaching setting. Are there any sports-specific exercises? What have you used, if anything, to train specifics? For example, there's evidence of similarly loaded and unloaded movements in field sports with lighter and heavier than standard weight shots or hammers being thrown at various stages of the training year.

I was lucky to talk with a former Australian national weightlifting coach, and he told me that in all the Olympic and commonwealth game training venues for all sports, not just weightlifting, he continually saw one exercise being used by many athletes. I believe CrossFit has discovered this movement and renamed it a thruster, having seen Dmitry Klokov demonstrate it on video recently. To me, it will always be the power clean (or even better, I believe, the hang clean) into a push press. Strength speed, ground based movements, connecting lower and upper body together in one sequentially continuous movement—it has all those bases covered as well as the less tangible but no less important psychological assets of courage, belief, and confidence.

I used the power clean back in 1992 quite a bit with my basketball team because I wanted a movement that would train the entire body as one, especially when I was the last coach to get them, which was often at the end of over two hours of on-court scrimmages. I also used power cleans if I was trying to convince a player that weight training wouldn't affect his jump shot or free-throw shooting percentages. We certainly have come a long way since then.

I'm an advocate of Olympic and modified Olympic movements. I use them because they're ground based, explosive, full body movements, involving a triple extension of the ankle, knee, and hip. I don't like to see players, in an attempt to lift more, catching the bar with extremely wide feet and loss of technique. Ideally, we're using these movements for the potential transfer to the playing field, not just to see how strong we can get using the movements. We aren't weightlifters but rugby players using weightlifting exercises.

I suggest catching the bar with your feet no wider than what you would normally position yourself in to squat. I also like wide stance squatting for hip strength, but I always include a normal width stance (between shoulders and hip width foot placement) for most squatting with the players I train. I ensure that they're doing single leg movements for strength, balance, and mobility. My preference is the sprinter’s squat or the Bulgarian squat with the rear leg elevated on a bench and, of course, a wide range of step-up variations.

I'm trying to get more players away from a flat bench press. I'm pushing them more toward either the football bar bench press with a shoulder width grip and the elbows rotated into the body or an incline or military press. My goal is to have the players complete push presses at what they can now incline press. Hopefully, one day, their push press will equal their former bench press weight.

The reason why I've moved more away from bench pressing is that most players have banged up shoulders to some degree or another and traditional bench pressing seems to exacerbate these issues further whereas the other movements I've mentioned don't. In relation to shoulder health, I've tended over the last few years to use the cambered bar and safety squat bars for squatting with any players who have had shoulder issues. This has been very rewarding and we now have everyone squatting where previously some tended to avoid going heavy, not squatting at all, or, even worse, going to the leg press. As I've always tried to get the players to consider, there are many options available. If one isn't right for you, we'll find something that is.

Please let me know what exercises you've used that may be considered more sports-specific or whether you believe in this or not. It would be great to get a debate going.