I am training for the next sprint season (starting in Nov.) but during the off season are also playing social Rugby and touch rugby.
What impact would this have on my training - can I treat them as recovery, or are they an extra burden on the CNS.
At the moment I play touch Wed night, have a team training session for rugby on Thu and play on Sat.
Thanks Brad
I try to treat touch and Thu training as tempo.
Sat is a different story and recovering from the contact and knocks always seems to take a while.
As my old coach used to say “Athletics is great for rugby but rugby is **** for athletics”
They have the potential to be both.
If you reduce your sprint work volume outside of this and remain fresh for speed workouts and concntrate on med ball core stuff and tempo running you will be in a good position to increase the speedwork when those demands on your CNS no longer remain.
I have an athlete that plays rugby in season and we decrease the amount of cns loading on their system and dont expect as much improvement over this time. When the season is over and he concentrates on running we see him leap forward (in comparison to training during the season).
Contact sports are a difficult one as its hard for an athlete to be fresh with bumps and bruises so you really have to watch and monitor them and make sure they get ontop of any soft tissue injury they get straight after the game and get regular treatment and monitoring as little corks that are left unchecked can have a large impact on a players ability to perform fast reps.
hth