Waratahs 2011

[Bruce Ross]

i remember hearing about the NSW strongest man test last year including some of those mentioned exercises Bruce, Farmers Walk at least, its possible they havent included all the exercises in the article.

You are right, TOCC, but I don't think it significantly affects the contrast between the two approaches.

In 2009 the exercises were Bodyweight Bench Press, Overhead Log Press, Farmer's Walk, Two-minute Row, Chin Ups and Iron Cross.

 

[Moses]

I just dug up the few Tahs' strongman reports I could found and stuck them in the wiki for posterity

 

[Newter]

Am I the only one who sees an imbalance here? A "strongman competition" for rugby players and which exercises are mentioned?

"Chin-ups, bodyweight bench-presses and working on a grinding machine" plus "holding two 7.5kg dumbbells straight out to the side of the body".

All of them upper body exercises.

Meanwhile the Crusaders' fitness trainer, Ashley Jones, has a very different view of strongman training:

"Some of my favorites for training rugby players in this style of training are:

"Fingals Finger - where you have to lift a post off the ground and then with your hands above your head walk it forward until it is vertical.

"Conan's Wheel - where you zercher lift a bar, which is connected to a load, in the crook of your elbows and proceed to walk in a circular path until you can no longer continue.

"Farmers Walk - where you pick up two implements, one in each hand, and walk till the implements fall from your hands as your grip gives out.

"Tyre Flip - position yourself in a good dead lift position and lift the edge of the tyre off the ground and continue lifting and pushing with your knee until it flips over, continue for time and/or distance.

"Chain Drag - simply grab hold of a length of anchor chain and walk backwards as you drag the chain, ours weighs 150kg, and we picked it up at a fishing fleet store shed.

"Yoke Walk - Take a squat bar out of the rack or have a yoke make specifically for the purpose and walk for as far as you can, a real challenge.

"Keg or stone or buoy or any heavy odd shaped object Lift and carry - pick the object up and take it for a walk, the more awkward the better as this will challenge your stabilizer muscles.

"Same as the above but instead of carrying for distance you press it above your head, a great use for the swiss ball as suggested by Alex is to fill a swiss ball with sand or water to the desired weight and then proceed to push this "live" weight overhead a real challenge.

"Steel Log - clean and press for reps or time, the log being quite a wide diameter makes it awkward to lift and also puts extra emphasis on lower back stabilization, which is a bonus.

"Sled Drag - use a sprint sled and load it up and proceed to walk towing this behind you, again for time and/or distance."

Each and every one of Jones's exercises has substantial lower body involvement.

The strength coach at one of these franchises talks a lot about exercise functionality. The other practises it.

Bruce, I love your knowledge dumps on strength conditioning. Keep it coming! It's fascinating to see a player like Al Baxter bulging upper body muscle like a condom stuffed with walnuts, but flop and bend so feebily in the scrum and offer no leg drive in his tackling or clean outs. The man has no natural core body strength.

I love the revelation of lower body/core strength in sport. I play a bit of tennis and when it was pointed out to me that the power of each shot comes from your legs and hips, not your upper body, my game was transformed. It's so counter-intuitive, but it works.

 

[RugbyReg]

I just dug up the few Tahs' strongman reports I could found and stuck them in the wiki for posterity

great stuff!

 

[inthestands]

You are right, TOCC, but I don't think it significantly affects the contrast between the two approaches.

What are the two approaches then? As mentioned by enforcer, I'd imagine it's a bit of late season fun in the gym that would create a great competitive session in the countdown to Xmas generally create a nice little news story. I thoroughly doubt the strong man competition represents a true measure of everyone's work in the gym over the course of the pre-season. In fact maybe the concentration on upper body in the comp represents more of what they planned to do in the gym that day. Even social gym-goers concentrate on different parts of their bodies on different days (legs, core, chest, arms, etc) so I'd imagine it's done over a small number of disciplines which doesn't effect the overall program.

Didn't Berrick win last year with a bung ankle?

At the end of the day, it gave us a photo of big Cliff flexing his guns which is good for everyone, I'd say.

 

[Lee Grant]

Next year I want to see more big arses but developed in the right way.

 

[observer]

The Tahs take their gym seriously and the record for each lift/exercise is displayed on the gym wall. Matt Dunning still holds some records there - I think for bench press (185 kg) and power clean. Records are also held for athletic prowess, eg 10, 30 and 40m sprints. I understand the 30m is held by Lachie and Lote still holds the 40m. I believe the 10m was broken just a couple of weeks ago. I'll try and find out who it was.

 

[Langthorne]

For anyone who hasn't seen the blog, I wrote a little article that looks at the Waratahs' draw and suggests a rotation policy:

http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/waratahs-2011-–-rotate-or-stagnate/

 

[Lee Grant]

Nice blog Langthorne. I put in my 5 cents worth.

 

[Hawko]

I think there are three possible alternatives for the rotation policy:

1. The Hickey 2009 approach which is to use the best team until they are injured and then either bring in reserves who haven't played for weeks or bring back top players while still injured. This approach is so stupid its laughable, but that's what we did last year.
2. Langthorne's approach, which is to select the best team for the local derbies and to choose several matches at strategic times where we would play a full reserve team to rest first team players. There are three problems with this: It runs the risk of boosting the Sharks, Bulls and Crusaders and thereby losing a top two finish (unless the reserves play out of their skin to try and force themselves into the top team), you'd probably get moaning and groaning from the other teams and the ARU about using "understrength teams" and then there's the "Bob Dwyer" effect when we famously played an understrength team against the Crusaders one year and got flogged unmercifully.
3, Work a rotation system where groups of players are rotated. Three of the five props for example would be scheduled for each game, with Baxter, Ben and Kepu selected for those games where the other team had a really strong scrum. You'd have to do this schedule pre-season and then make running adjustments for injuries and form as you went along, but with the overall plan of no player playing more than three full games or two full and two bench games in every four. This would help with team bonding - no one sitting on the bench for week after week wondering what they had to do to get a chance - and if it was carefully done you would take the whole squad into the finals rested but tuned up and ready to go. But you'd have to have a plan, written down and argued out by the selectors - otherwise it would just end up being a jumble. It does have the advantage of everyone being familiar with their part of the gameplan and ready to fit into the plan whatever team was selected.

My expectation based on last year is that we'll go with the first plan; last year was a total balls-up from a selection viewpoint but Hickey's like Thatcher - "the lady's not for changing". I'd love to be proved wrong though because this team has the ability to go all the way and the only known weaknesses in the squad are Anesi, the centres and the head coach.

 

[Gnostic]

I think Hawko point three is the most sensible. Its going to be a long season and having a lot of players up to speed and knowing they will be playing and not just making up the numbers will IMO highten the competition for spots come finals time.

Is it 6 weeks to go now?

 

[#1 Tah]

#1 Tah must have some very good inside info because the players don't know anything about this. Foley is still very much the scrum coach and is very highly regarded by all at the tahs. Can't imagine them shifting him. On the contrary, they think he gives them a competitive edge.

My bad, he starts this year

 

[Lee Grant]

I've heard some good things about the Tahs pre-season training from some folks involved. It was full-on, two sessions a day, and varied with a balance for strength, speed (for rugby not straight line), body control, explosiveness, combativeness, rugby skills and recovery. The guys were checked daily, and more extensively once a week, to make sure they were getting the most out of the programme without breaking down physically.

The strong man competition mentioned earlier in the thread was just a fun way of finishing the pre-season and there was no focus on it any other day of the pre-season.

It was probably not a lot different from what the other Super outfits are doing but two of the lads had a unique experience after the Shute Shield was over. Chris Alcock and Greg Peterson from the Tahs Super Rugby Training Squad got the opportunity to have a custom tailored three-week programme with TCBoost, a Chicago based integrated strength, speed and explosion specialist group.

The programme was approved by Tahs assistant coach Michael Foley and he arranged for Tahs S&C honcho, Peter McDonald, to attend for a week also. TCBoost and MacDonald had a productive exchange of ideas and some of the Chicago procedures were incorporated into the Tahs pre-season.

The 3 principals of TCB have all played college football and one was a long time NFL fullback. That is the sport they first catered to but they have branched out to others since. They've done a lot of work with Northwestern University whose football team plays in the Big Ten Conference. They were impressed with the attitude and work ethic of Alcock and Peterson and it could be the start of a beautiful friendship with the Tahs.

Click here for details of TCBoost:

http://www.tcboost.com/

Here's a UTube video of Alcock and Peterson (unfortunately you can't hear what the two lads are saying.) The 7 minute clip I have is more comprehensive but it's not on UTube and it's too long for a post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH0WGorLBnQ

It may be of interest to watch the clip of TCB working with the USA Bobsledder also.

 

[tranquility]

I can see why you all rave about Greg Peterson. He is a very imposing figure for a bloke if his age, seemed reasonably athletic from that video as well. Most importantly it appears as if he has a good head on him. To stating the bleeding obvious it is very much a case of watch this space I think.

 

[DPK]

To get into the Manly 1st Grade team and hold his place as TH lock all season was a bloody good effort yet he's young enough to have another year with the Oz U/20 team next year.

Didn't he captain Manly at some point this year as well?

 

[Lee Grant]

Yeah - he's athletic for a guy of his dimensions (204cms and 120kgs), but he was still at school last year so, as you say, watch this space.

To get into the Manly 1st Grade team and hold his place as TH lock all season was a bloody good effort yet he's young enough to have another year with the Oz U/20 team next year.

He already has the skills and agility but like Simmons and Douglas at the same age: he will have to work on core strength and convert that into on-field physicality. It will be good for him to have exposure to Vickerman when he arrives. The first thing I thought of when I heard that Vickers was returning was how he could mentor Douglas and Peterson. I've seen him bossing lineout sessions at the Tahs and IMO he's a natural coach.

I can't recall a year like 2009 for Oz Schools forwards and how likely they were going to be good senior players. Luke Jones, PAE, Gill and Peterson - Scott Sio could be a sleeper too. Watch the space for the 2009 crop of Oz Schools forwards.

 

[Lee Grant]

Didn't he captain Manly at some point this year as well?

At age 18, or 19 after March? I doubt it.

 

[DPK]

At age 18, or 19 after March? I doubt it.

Now I remember, the ABC coverage had a (C) next to his name one game but he wasn't actually captain.

Still, very impressive to play in the 1st Grade team for so long this year.

 

[Gnostic]

I think Peterson outplayed many of the locks he was up against in the Shute Shield, including some who had S14 experience. He didn't just hold his place.

He actually reminded me of one J. Eales in early 1991 in his physique and how he played.

 

[Lee Grant]

He does remind one of young Eales in type but let's not put the Eales label on him even thought the great man never made Oz Schools.

But type? Yes.