There’s fit.
Then there’s rugby fit.
The rough-and-tumble, full-contact sport combining the elements of soccer and football demands a level of fitness ensuring participants are competitive and avoid injury.
Bow Valley Grizzlies men’s head coach, and former Canadian national team player, Ty Hawes was putting his teen and adult club members through their paces Jan. 9 on Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre’s indoor turf field. You can never start training too soon for the spring season, as Grizzlies player/coach Scott Megraw and president Steve Horton were also conducting fitness and skills drills with the Cochrane-based rugby club’s teen and pre-teen age groups.
Rugby fitness covers all the elements of the game; strength, flexibility and endurance.
“Stretching and flexibility is massive for injury prevention,” Hawes insists. “If you want to stay on the pitch for the whole season, you’ve got to be flexible. I definitely implement a stretching routine into my weight program. I’ll probably do one session a week where it’s strictly stretching. I also do static stuff at the end of each of my workouts. Do dynamic stretches at the beginning to get warm and long, static stretches at the end when you’re done.”
Unlike soccer, where a premium is placed on cardiovascular endurance for players who may run as many as 11 kilometres over a 90-minute match, rugby fitness requires greater diversity. With the run of play usually lasting 30 seconds between whistles, and set plays requiring both brute strength (scrums) and vertical leaps (lineouts), rugby fitness is more of a full-meal deal.
You also have to be able to dish out, and absorb, crunching tackles.
“It definitely helps to have a good aerobic base,” Hawes imparts. “But at the same time, you have to be big and powerful to play. You definitely need a balance between that power athlete and that endurance athlete.”
Weight training, running and stretching. If you’re going to be rugby fit, you’re going to have to do it all.
Just like the Bow Valley Grizzlies.
