One of the reasons (read excuses) we are hearing from more and more international coaches is about fatigue, either through long seasons, crazy travel requirements or even ‘hotel fatigue’.
It is not a new topic and contrary to popular belief, it is not only limited to top, professional athletes either.
The purpose of the this column is to share experiences and studies I have done or attended in the past – not only to help you understand issues better, but also possibly to help you with your own training schedule and performance even if it is just with social groups or teams you are involved with, or perhaps a team or athletes you are coaching, or even if it is your son you are trying to help reach optimum levels of fitness and conditioning.
There are many things which contributes to burn-out or athletes not performing at their peak when it really counts. Also it is quite important in a contact sport like rugby where injuries are part and parcel of the sport.
The idea for any athlete or coach, at any level to adopt strategies and methods to limit risk, and in this case the risk of player burn-out, underperformance and injury.
Traditional training principles usually covers things we all already know. Things like intensity, frequency, periodisation and overload are all common in these theories and applications, but the one I want to discuss is ‘Dose-Response’ training.
It is best described in an analogy where when someone is sick, he will go to a doctor, the doctor will prescribe him medicine and the medicine will come with instructions on how to use and for how long.
The ‘Dose’ will be; ”Take 2 tablets twice a day for 5 days”. Now just in this you already have intensity, frequency and duration (some training principles). Now assuming the diagnosis and ‘Dose’ is right, the response (result) is you are cured from whatever you suffered from.
If you however deviate from the dose, only partial treatment is achieved and similarly, if you overdose there are other dangers that come into play – the ‘Dose-Response’ theory works in the same way.
The athlete is unfit, that is the ‘illness’. Training is the dose and performing at their or your potential is the response.
Now of course practically you need to assess your fitness and performance levels to ensure you are not ‘overdosing’ or training too little to achieve your desired results. This is more difficult to assess and will also differ from athlete to athlete as some might take longer to recover or rest than others, but can easily be judged or assessed if you keep a complete record of your training schedule and improvements as you go along.
Certain athletes will also put more emphasis on certain aspects of their body in respect to their position or characteristics of their sport and/or role in a team like a rugby team, so it is vital that you set benchmarks for yourself which is achievable, but also challenging.
(Position specific benchmarks for pro-rugby players is available on request)
Most importantly however is that you keep a detailed record of your training and performance over the period of your program.
Of course in setting goals you will need to ask yourself a couple of questions before you work out your schedule. Questions like these might include;
• If this is my training schedule over the next couple of months, what level of performance could I expect to achieve at that time?
• What training do I need to undertake to achieve a certain level of performance by a certain time?
• I need to peak on a certain date in the future. How should I plan my training to achieve this result?
• I have several competitions on various dates, how should I plan my training so as not to unduly compromise performance at any one of them?
• This has been my training schedule over the last several months. What will happen if I begin tapering now?
• In order to obtain optimum performance on a certain future date, when would be the best time to train hard, and when would it be wasteful?
Of course knowing what to do is quite difficult. Just saying I want to run 20km or be able to do 20 pull-up’s is not good enough – you need a more scientific approach and specific measure that has been devised is something called TRIMP (TRaining IMPulse). Here is some of the essential features to implement and follow the ‘Dose-Response’ theory;
• Regular training induces both fitness (which is good for performance) and fatigue (which is bad for performance). Of course, periods of no training cause both fitness and fatigue to decline.
• Good performance occurs when fitness is high and fatigue is low relative to each other.
• Fitness reacts more slowly than fatigue both when you train regularly and when you take a rest period. This, therefore, is the central principle around which an athlete’s training schedule is managed. Different athletes have different rates, which make things awkward for team training.
• To discern these rates for any individual requires a period of closely monitoring their training dosages and their performance levels. Analysis of the resultant data will yield these rates, but specialist software is required.
• Starting from an unfit state, heavy training initially produces a short-term decline in performance before improvements are seen.
• The time course for thorough adaptation stretches over several months, and a saturation level can be detected in many individuals after about five months.
• For optimal performance, a short period of abstaining from heavy training is essential. We know this as tapering and the resulting improvement we call peaking.
• Bouts of heavy training with longer rest periods between them seem to be better than training a lesser amount every day. Optimal performance is improved and the overtraining risk seems lessened.
• These ideas have been researched and proven in practice, but the effort required is not trivial. They have yet to produce a world champion!
To reach your peak at your desired time requires intense monitoring of training loads to ensure you are not under-prepared or unfit or that you over-extended yourself. The above however will give you a scientific base for monitoring and implementation.
The practical aspects of this should also be very clear. This means that you should;
• Develop a more scientific means of recording the volume of training that you undertake. (Position specific in-season, pre-season and off-season programs can also be requested)
• Keep this accurate and up-to-date.
• Use this to know when it’s been (or needs to be) heavy and know when it’s been (or needs to be) light. (You would usually have two different alternative training sequences or sessions which you could follow each day and depending on how your body recovered you can switch between the two.)
• Use it to plan both training sessions and rest intervals.
• Recognise that you cannot perform optimally week-in week-out.
• Recognise the importance of rest: between training sessions, just prior to competition events, and on occasions through the season.
So there you have it, maybe the ‘Dose-Response’ training method will help you, your team (or son) or just a social team you support, train and perform better – hey one of you might just become the next Bok coach and it’s my duty to help you prepare!
**The original theory and studies were tested and published by Prof R. Hugh Morton of the Massey University. The ‘Dose-Response’ theory was initially studied for individual athletes but through the courses I attended and materials now available it has been adapted to work in team sports like rugby. Additional references or material available on request.
JANee Morne, this is a good Article.
Would be interesting to see how many react here and over how many’s heads this Article flies past, not taking in a word.
Training is a fine balance…. but that is NOTHING NEW in our lives… life in general is about balance of proportions…
@grootblousmile –
I tried to keep it as simple as possible basically touching on the basics of the theory or method of training.
This of course means nothing if you do not have a good training program!!!
Like I mentioned in the article, if anyone is interested (coaches, players or dad’s) let me know if you require position specific training material not only for pro’s, but for youngsters and beginners and even social teams…
dagse almal hoe lyk julle dinge
Also, just perhaps an eye-opener for some as to how ‘difficult’ coaching actually is!
môre mense en môre bulls supporters
2@Morné – I worked through your Training Programmes for BonzaiGBS…. the Pre-season, In-season ect…..
Quite specific, and it’s been very beneficial to him as a very young loosehead prop.
The boy is now so serious, it has become a religion…. that and GIRLS of course… hehehe
het hom!! het hom!! het hom!!
3@smallies72 – Hello…. alles piekfyn hier, geen klagtes nie !
En daar in smallieland ?
7@ashley – Hello
Wat het jy, wat het jy, wat het jy???
for those who dont know what #7 is about,
i’ve just managed to post on the 09/09/09 at 09:09
unfortunately
i share that honour with a bulls supporter!!
yes gbs, hoe hang hulle, broetsie?
9@grootblousmile –
refer #10
@grootblousmile – neewat als loop sag in smallieland as bok re kind nou sat wen sal dit sommer bokbeflok wees
@ashley – have to wait 1000 years to do it again a 1 in a 1000 event
10@ashley – O, die nommertjies…. nogal interressant…. allie 9’s in ‘n ry…
Met hierdie broetsie gaan dit pyle (heelwat skerper as pielle)… gister was befok… vandag gaan befok wees.
Die lewe is mos wat jy self van hom maak !
Hardloop die negosiewinkel mooi ??
13@smallies72 –
ag, theres always the next 3 years to do something similar …. after that, well then its another story!!
@ashley – Ja but 0909090909 is gone done and dusted
16@smallies72 – The 1010101010 one will be cool….. for me as an IT guy….. everything we see and do on computers is a 1 or a 0
@Morné –
Morning PA.
You have reminded me once again how the coaching and management of professional rugby is all about the most intelligent approach.
I am a great believer in the modern day coach understanding the analyitical science and technique required to be a professional who succeeds.
Which brings me to the scary subject of the hot debate about our scrum and John Smit.
It concerns me that Gary Gold talks about scrum stats during the last 2 games, Bakkies talks about how hard he can push and PDV talks about the ref getting it wrong at scrum time.
Yet nobody talks about rectifying the technical problems with our scrum.
I am starting to believe that they are not technically knowledgable about scrumming.
Which gets back to the message in your article.
Surely highly paid professional coaches of the number one ranked team in the world cannot be seen to be in the dark about a most important facet of the game!!
@grootblousmile – Dit gaan koel wees wonder wat my pc van dit sal dink
@tight head – As the front row are regarded as specialist positions does this not seem as logical that they have a specialist coach for them
18@tight head – One gets the impression that certain coaches are technically and scientiffically very astute, whereas other coaches run everything by “gut feel” and “intuition”.
My feelings is that even here there needs to be balance…. measures of both need to apply, after all, rugby players are humans, not humanoids.
However, I agree with your sentiments that fault is being sought from all outside sources, rather than intraspection of where the Bokke should actually improve technique at scrumtime.
The Bokke should lead the way in many aspects, of which scrumming technique is right up there on the list of important things.
Great snuff, Morne and good morning folks,
Morne, what is your opinion on the theory that the exertions of the BIL tour is now catching up with the Boks? Is this a case of not being able to plan their fitness for two different peaks i.e. BIL and Tri- Nations?
And then to complicate matters, you have a different coach expecting his players to peak for the S14 finals prior to all of this. Must be damn difficult for Snor and management to plan and maintain the required fitness/fatigue levels?
Sorry for all these questions, but hey – you wanted to go and write an excellent article! 😉
@tight head –
The problem I encountered most through coaching and approaches to coaching is that rugby players and coaches by large rely on what they perceive to be ‘proven methods of success’.
The problem with this however is they implement, coach or play the way they have been taught by their dad, teacher, varsity or club coach, etc. And more often than not it is a case of teaching only what you have been taught ‘because it worked for you’ (20 years ago).
There is a saying, a good player (even test player) will not always make a good coach, and this is proven practically in the world today.
Which means, you as a player cannot only rely on tips from a tighthead prop who has played 30 tests as a tighthead prop and think you will be great because of it and that his tips and suggestions will make you great.
I am also not saying rugby needs to be totally scientific of course, but to deny or think that the modern game does not require players to be conditioned and trained to perform at levels never before demanded in the game of rugby is naive.
Also, the reliance and dependence of a) Physical conditioning and how it affects b) Your mental conditioning has been studied and proven. Gone are the days of the fat kid being selected for prop, the tall one at lock and the fast one at wing.
Scary thing is, in my experience THIS (the above selection process) is still practiced today not just at school, but also at club level!!!
There is very little to chose between top athletes in elite sports today, whatever edge you can get will be the 0.2% edge you have over your opponent, which will mean the difference between being successful or unsuccessful, good or the best, and the winner and the loser.
I have an extensive background in gymnastics, and I am flabbergasted at the difference in discipline towards the sport in the application and appreciation of technicalities and training/conditioning – they are light years apart.
Both are just sports, but rugby has a long way to go to instill this level of discipline and professionalism than what you would find in a sport like gymnastics – and gymnasts are not even that highly paid!!!
I can go on for hours on this…
@smallies72 –
Exactly Smallies.
But it goes even deeper, because you first have to recognize the importance of the scrums and then accept your lack of understanding and call in the expert.
@grootblousmile –
Absolutely right. Balance is key.
I can use the example of Jake White – technically very astute and he instilled the type of discipline to a small degree I refer to.
However, and I still maintain this. The level he got the Boks to (winning the WC in 2007) was his ceiling as to his ability as a coach. The Boks would not have evolved under White post 2007 in my view, because the technical/scientific approach has its restrictions and you have to marry that, with a Villepreux concept to improve the dynamics.
@Morné –
Exactly. Well said.
I am on your wavelength and that is why I get so frustrated with the lack of approach to scrumming technically correctly.
@grootblousmile –
Exactly GBS.
@fender –
Absoletely right.
Failing to plan means you plan to fail, and it all came down to planning where the great teams will not be affected by any jet-lag, hotel fatigue or any kak coaches come up with these days.
But again you are right in mentioning the different structures at play, which is why I have been shouting from the terraces for years now that we need a director of rugby in SA Rugby who manages not only the Baby u/19 and u/21 Boks, but also manages all Super 14 coaches and structures/teams, emerging Boks (or A Team) and then of course, the Springbok senior team.
It is not so much controlling the whole process, but managing the structures of all these levels to ensure continuity and that everyone, coaches and players at all levels are on the same page and work towards a common goal.
@tight head – imho skrums line outs and rucks are the start all end all of a rugby match if you dont get them right you can forget about the game.the saying that the game is won or lost by the tight 5 is so true
Ja, a director of rugby makes a lot of sense to me.
Of course, creating that post and getting agreement on its scope and then finding and appointing the most suitable candidate for the job will be a journey frought with all sorts of dangers, hehe!!
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