Hey {{First_Name|mate}},
I used to think I had to smash myself every session for it to be worth it.
Legs gone.
Lungs burning.
Sweating everywhere.
Crawling out the gym.
I thought that meant I’d done something productive and don’t get me wrong, there’s a time to work hard, but I used to confuse being tired with getting better. That’s where a lot of players go wrong at the start of the off-season.
You finish the season, take a short break and then come back to try make up for lost time.
Heavy lifts.
Hard conditioning.
Random circuits.
Sprints you’re not ready for.
Everything turned up to 100 straight away. It feels productive but half the time, you’re just burying yourself. The first few weeks of the off-season shouldn’t be about proving how hard you can train. They should be about rebuilding the base.
You’ve just come out of a long rugby season.
Your body has taken hits.
Your joints are probably stiff.
Your recovery probably hasn’t been perfect.
Your strength work might have been inconsistent.
Your speed work probably hasn’t been touched properly for months.
So jumping straight into beast mode doesn’t always make sense.
What I’d do now is much simpler:
Move better.
Hips, ankles, shoulders, trunk.Rebuild strength.
Good positions, controlled reps, steady progress.Build your engine.
Not every conditioning session needs to be a punishment.Do the boring bits.
Calves, hamstrings, groins, shoulders, neck, trunk.
Most players skip that stuff because it doesn’t look exciting but it’s usually the stuff that keeps you training consistently and consistency beats one hero session every time. That’s the bit I wish I understood earlier. The goal in the first 4 weeks isn’t to destroy yourself. It’s to put yourself in a position where you can train harder later, You need to build first, so you can push hard later.
Next week, I’ll talk about the biggest mistake I made in the gym:
‘Training like a bodybuilder before I trained like a player.’
Train like a player,
Craig Jones
Rugby Performance Coach
Ready to take the next step? → Complete Rugby Performance
