Team rugby fitness training

If you are a coach your main concern is; How can I get my players to perform at their best on match day? I will attempt here to explain how you can use some key techniques which will transform your teams performance.

Team fitness

Team training is the time when you have all your players together in one place. This is the ideal time to perform group fitness training yet I rarely see a structured fitness training programme put in place during the in-season.

I find this baffling. I know that any team who focused on their fitness twice a week throughout the year using the advanced techniques I teach would almost ensure they got promotion without even adding in the coaching, technique and skill work.

Team training needs to make sure that the sessions focus on what many people have difficulty doing in their own time. Incorporating sprint training, agility training, plyometrics and more is crucial to the development of the player regardless of current standard or ability.

Some of the reasons cited for not doing fitness is that the lads will not come to training as they do not like fitness. If this is the case it shows that the fitness drills you are choosing are lacking in imagination and design and probably revert back to the army type floggings so often mis perceived to be fitness training.

Team Psychology

The mind is the critical factor at the elite level and so too at the lower levels. The traditional team talk is of limited value to most players and in fact can worsen many a players performance.

A traditional team talk rests on the fact that your player is not motivated and does not want to perform, so by shouting at them they will be inspired to achieve new levels. In reality this method is not appealing to how the mind works.

If you were to be asked to do something would you respond best by being barked at to do it or by someone picturing the benefits of you doing this task? People are interested in how something will benefit them. This must be portrayed to them before the game.

To be successful though even the above issue is secondary. The real influences on your behavior will come from your subconscious beliefs rather than your conscious thoughts. The player who holds in his subconscious that tackling hurts and he may get hurt will never prove to be a tackler however hard you try to motivate him.

Subconscious beliefs need to be developed throughout team practices and can be hurried along by the use of emotional freedom technique (EFT) and other psychological techniques.

Skill acquisition.

The development of player skill is the responsibility of the coach. However skill and fitness are inter related. The more fatigued a player becomes the more the lower the skill levels and execution efficiency becomes. Using this fact you can modify your training to teach your players how to execute skill movements while under fatigue as encountered in every match situation.

The mind also accepts information in a certain way and if you use these techniques to create mental cues for your players they will automatically choose the right decisions in a game and not blow the 'that over lap' as so often is seen week in week out.

The individual approach.

Getting team training right for your players will definitely enhance their abilities and generate new levels of success for your club but it must be used as part of an individual approach to training. This will allow your players to dramatically improve their personal fitness, mental preparation and thus standard of on filed performance.This is all covered on my rugby courses.

Be a Rugby fitness training.com club and contact me to learn about the services I provide to ensure your team training is maximizing it's team performance each staurday.