Ashley’s off-season program uses the conjugate system—focussing on neural, mechanical, and metabolic work. Plus, core accessory rehab exercises.
How can we make rugby players perform better in a very short period of time without a negative impact?
I like to program from a metabolic, strength, or power focus. The three-day-a-week program allows more stimulation for each major area.
Bigger players often suffer from a lack of condition—they need size to execute their skill set yet run the risk of overuse-related injuries.
The key to the program is to never accommodate to movements and exercises. Change some aspects of your training every time you train.
Here’s a Major League Rugby (MLR) perspective on how to set up programming after the last game of the season.
There are six pillars of excellence that every player and staff member should live by. It’ll breed character, culture, and success.
Because it can be a wonderful tool to increase power, muscle mass, and performance in a given sport. That’s why.
Poliquin, Thibadeau, and Schoenfeld, among many other writers and researchers, have popularized this method—performing multiple training sessions within a day. Here’s how I set this up for my players within a three-day split program.
Let me walk you through a new weight room and share my processes for creating an exercise selection chart to best meet the needs of your athletes.
This is the first-week break-in program that I will put in place. I will also keep some players on this three-day-a-week programming based on needs-based discussions with the playing group upon their return and what other work-ons they have from a physical and skills perspective.
Why do strength coaches persist in using the traditional bar now that there are many excellent alternative bars available?
The program within is called One Big, One Small—there is one major movement, and a secondary movement supports this major movement. It can be used by anyone irrespective of sport or training goal to improve performance or get bigger and stronger.
Where do all of the football players go when they are unable to reach their playing goals in college or the National Football League?
Here’s the standard week-long plan with a seven-day turnaround between games, optimizing a balance between recovery both physiologically and psychologically.
It is the one chance each year that sports practices do not take priority or leave players fatigued that they cannot give 100 percent to the physical development program.
Running sports are tangential in nature, so in order to optimize transfer from the weight room to the field, both vertical and horizontal movements need to be considered. To this end, the program I am going to outline will look at elements of training to ensure all bases are covered.
I am currently working as a consultant for a pro rugby team, and I was asked about the type of player I would require moving into a pro team. Fair warning: What I wrote here may be considered heretical in the strength and conditioning world…
In January 2017, Marc Keys and I embarked upon a labor of love to develop a questionnaire investigating what the various groups of people who make up the rugby industry think are the key elements of the physical preparation of the rugby player. Here are the results.
A few years ago, I attempted to bring 4 strength sports together into a training plan for rugby. This time, I want to delve deeper into the framework that makes up the programming of these sports and how we can program them into a usable athletic development plan.
For Ashley Jones, being at the S5 Compound is like being a kid in a candy store, meaning he needs some moderation. Rather than use all of the equipment, Ashley shows off his top-5 pieces of equipment that should be in every strength and conditioning program for rugby.
According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of results come from 20% of your time. Ocham’s Razor states the simplest solution tends to be the best one. Simplicity is the missing ingredient in most training programs. Hence why I return to the famous paradigm of the pull-push-squat.
I believe the most important role of a strength and conditioning coach is to create programs that minimize the risk of injury. Armed with knowledge from a study on rugby injuries, I wrote a program that focuses on strengthening injury-prone areas. Here’s what I came up with.
The people have spoken, and I have answered. After receiving plenty of emails and comments about my last article, I decided to create and share a complete program based on The Simplicity Programming Project.
To paraphrase Ronnie Coleman, “Everybody wanna be strong but nobody wanna lift heavy weights.” Ain’t that the truth. News flash: This is what you need.
The program I am currently running features the CARE program in a new format that I feel better allows the player to get a workout in without going too deep in the RPE continuum, especially if he or she is coming from a unit or a team session.
Doing an extraordinary job in your present position does not guarantee you immunity to the inevitable changes that take place with funding cuts, administration changes, or coaches moving on. Are you prepared to find a new position?
Several incredible presentations from Paul Comfort, Mike McGuigan, and Bryan Mann led me me to make some key adjustments to the programming of my Metabolic Group.
Appearing as special guest for episode 13, Ashley joined the podcast to discuss his career, the knowledge he has gained through his experience in the industry, and the lessons he has found most valuable for training and coaching athletes.
This compilation of training sessions is drawn from the minds of many great coaches, and includes initial and periodic testing to ensure intensity and distance per session challenge the metabolic systems of the athletes.
I have collated a few of my most result-producing programs for you to try, from both a sports performance perspective and also general training for size and strength for the non-sports person.
Rugby is a high intensity intermittent collision sport, which requires a multi-factorial physical training approach to optimize performance.
I have been a huge believer in Intensity Number of Lifts (INOL) to develop programs that are achievable and that follow a sensible loading pattern over time, but I’ve recently made some important changes.
How we are judged is out of our hands in a lot of ways, but if I adhere to my processes and don’t compromise my principles, morals, or values, then I can honestly say that I have been successful in my role as a strength and conditioning coach.
This 12-week program can be utilized by any individual wishing to prioritize the physical elements of speed and power.
A loose forward must be one of the fittest players on the field. This requires a specialized approach to the strength and conditioning program.
You might call this The Grand Unified Training Theory: attempting to combine the training elements of Olympic lifting, powerlifting, strongman, and bodybuilding into one single training program.
Trial and error over time has led me to where my programming is today. This has produced a philosophy that includes a different approach to upper and lower body training.
This four-year journey following the development of a young athlete has finally come to a close, with many lessons learned.
With proper consideration of neural, mechanical, and metabolic elements, this podcast covers the methods used for developing a proper pre-season plan.
A proper weight room strategy provides adequate attention to the development of strength and size — two qualities necessary for your team’s improvement.
Communicating with your athletes and ensuring you have a mutual understanding of goals and systems is vital to improving the physical capabilities of your players.
These strength and performance methods for positions 9, 10, and 12 maximize individual player abilities on the field and produce more capable athletes.
These three velocity-based sessions build the trainable aspects of athletic speed development.
With a variety of unique, specialized equipment, you can program to address a multitude of player strengths and weaknesses.
To help athletes overcome the limiting factor of human performance, an adequate training program must address an individual’s aerobic metabolism.
This program outline gives you the ability to insert the gym-based training, conditioning, and specialized development that addresses your individual pre-season needs.
Implement this exercise variation protocol to keep your athletes training at an optimal loading standard.
The information in this podcast comes from years of rugby training experience on multiple continents.
Preparing for the demands of the field requires this balance of conditioning and weight training.
In this sports performance podcast, Australia's Dan Baker shares a lifetime of strength and conditioning secrets.
Finish your training with one of these three circuits to shed those extra pounds…without sacrificing performance.
Get the jump on next season by showing up bigger, badder, faster and meaner…