Re: training transfer for contact team sports

I’ve been kicking around how to word this and have gotten no where so here goes…

In Strength is Specific from Beardsley he discusses muscle fiber types that change based on the velocity used in training and I’m concerned my training is skewing toward the slow type.

I train for health and amateur rugby so my high end performance isn’t that important but I’m concerned about lack of higher velocity movements and also joint angles used in my training.

I enjoy the BBM approach to training but after several mentions of; jump squat, hip thrusters and Nordic hamstring curls for transfer from training into sprinting and change of direction performance have me thinking I should use some of those movements or perform some lifts with “dynamic effort”.

Something to work in or it’s just club rugby and the difference is negligible?

If it’s something to consider any thoughts on movements to swap or use “dynamic effort” for?

If you train for health and rugby, it sounds like you don’t need to train like a powerlifter. Our bias of course is to maintain at least some training of the “big” lifts (squat, bench/press, deadlift) in your training for various reasons, but there are any number of approaches that can be taken with respect to the rest of your training.

Neither of us are rugby coaches, however, so we can’t have a very high degree of confidence in making very specific recommendations with respect to training for that sport. You might just consider incorporating some of those things into your training and seeing how you respond.

I took a crack at writing a modified Bridge 1.0. I’m calling it the Bridge Velocity bias, hah.

I used the Bridge 1.0 as a guide, keeping the rep/set/RPE schemes because I don’t feel good about messing with that aspect of it. Since the goals are not based around maximum strength, instead of using the rep/set/RPE scheme from weeks 5-8, I am repeating the rep/set/RPE schemes of weeks 2, 3 and 4 in place of 5, 6 and 7, week 1 in place of week 8. The only other changes I made are different movement variations targeting increased contraction velocities, joint angles more specific to sprinting and change of direction, contraction types seen in change of direction and sprinting and a horizontal force vector for sprinting. I kept the pressing the same, kept the squat and deadlift with belt slots but moved them to last in the movement order for their respective days since they are not my main goal.

Day 1
-Rack Pulls → Hip thruster; with weights that I can accelerate quickly enough to almost toss off my hips into the air for horizontal force vector, rapid contraction of hip extensors + chins because I didn’t feel good about not having a pull on this day. I’m a fat guy so I can do some heavy negatives or band assisted chins or pull ups at the end of the work out.
-Close grip Bench → Same.
-Squat x Belt → Same.
-Chins

Day 2
-2ct Pause Squat ->Squat with elastic bands; faster contractions, load at intermediate muscle lengths.
-Press with belt ->Same.
-Barbell rows → 'Dynamic Effort" Rack pulls; seemed like a good idea.
-Nordic Hamstring curls; for eccentric strength to transfer to sprinting.
Day 3
-3-0-3 Squat → Jump squat with elastic band as resistance. Didn’t feel good about jumping with the loaded bar and 8 reps of jumping under elastic resistance at 8 reps felt about right. Slow movement to fast movement.
-Bench Press ->Same.
-Deadlift w/Belt → Same.

In the second 4 weeks;

-Pin Squat → Squat jump with elastic with no load other than light elastic. The idea was instead of lower rep range and heavier weights I’m increasing speed of movement.
-Squat w/o belt → Depth jump from box then onto stairs for a jump that has some horizontal vector too it instead of straight vertical, again increasing speed instead of increasing load.
-Barbell Rows → Power cleans, because power cleans. Maybe hang cleans.
-2ct Pause deadlifts → hex bar jumps
-3ct pause bench press → Bench with elastic bands.

Instead of using variations to increase load in the second 4 weeks I decreased load to increase velocity.

Will keep barbell rows in the GPP days, and add hip flexor movement with elastic bands to the isometric ab work for transfer to running movements.

I have not done them before but want to add some push press in there because lifting a player into the air is a part of rugby and that seems like a good lift for my position.

I went back and forth about using ‘dynamic effort’ versions in place of some of the plyo jump/banded stuff but settled on the band after playing with them this week. Really like the banded squat.

Most of this was based off reading through Beardsley’s work.

This was kind of fun to do, please, criticize away!