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TRAINING

Introduction

Every training session should contribute to building a training culture that is condusive to improvement. The basis for this, I think, is gaining the acceptance of the squad - and I mean ALL the squad - that training is actually worthwhile. This may seem simplistic but it is often forgotten. The squad must be convinced that playing better is more enjoyable and that playing better is also a direct result of careful and appropriate preparation -- even if this preparation is not always enjoyable at the time. No amount of cajoling, bribery, flattery or strong words will make the slightest difference unless it does. Thus, every training session must leave the squad with the definite feeling that they have made worthwhile progress. This is not always easy.

As a necessary ingredient to achieve this objective the coach must believe both in the coaching process and in his ability to move it forward and this belief must be obvious to the squad. Half-hearted coaching leads to half-hearted participation. It's easy to say things like, "If I give up all this time and effort I must believe it," but the responsibility always remains to convince the players of your dedication. Evidence of your planning, forethought and enthusiasm is critical.

A second ingredient is providing real evidence that the squad is improving. Coaching dogma suggests that the process of coaching involves, among other things, introduction of the situation, demonstration, participation, feedback, participation under pressure etc. Many coaches intensify and enhance the value of this general process with "standard setting". The demonstration is the first standard to set so be prepared to repeat it until it's right, the second is achievement by one (or one group) of the squad, the third is by all of the squad, the fourth is by one (or one group) under minimal pressure -- and so on. Every time a new standard is set there is concrete evidence of improvement.

The third necessary ingredient is, of course, wholehearted participation by the squad. This requires, among a host of other factors, that they understand the relevance of the exercise. Too often, I believe, we run drills and exercises which seem to have no significance to the overall objective or, perhaps even worse, have lost their significance due to routine. As a result, for example, tackling practice becomes an exercise in hitting the tackle bag rather than a conscious rehearsal of a critical playing skill. In my experience there are many players who hit the tackle bag with great enthusiasm but can't translate the action into a real tackle. I have to add that squads I've coached have complained from time to time that I spend too much time re-emphasising the significance of drills -- particularly on wet and cold February evenings -- and perhaps I do, but I still believe it's important.

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Coaching Points

Other factors and concepts that are important in successful training:

Quality counts
All drills and exercises should be carried out with a conscious striving for quality of execution. A useful analogy is to remind the players of a band rehearsing. The entire point of any rehearsal it to get the piece perfectly right and that means that every player must strive to play his part perfectly every time. Getting the squad to buy into this totally committed approach to training is critical.

Concentration
Apart from learning to concentrate(!) this concept increases the value of all exercises and drills considerably. Be realistic, however, and be ready to move on to the next drill when concentration wanes. A number of skills exercises each done for less than 3 minutes at maximum intensity provides superior conditioning compared to one exercise done "until we get it right"!

Repetition
Repetition of basic skills until they become second nature is the best way to pattern players but this doesn't mean 100 scrums at a single practice -- rather 200 at five practices. Rugby is played on a high emotional plane and it is only this patterning that ensures consistency of action under pressure and as fatigue sets in.

Encouragement
Encouragement and praise lighten the load of hard training and defeats. There is always room for humour and camaraderie but only where it furthers the training activities. At the same time coaches must never be afraid to say the hard word. Players need to know very clearly what went wrong and why. (And they need to know that the coach knows.) They need to know, too, what they are expected to do to rectify the situation and how the coach plans to help them. At the same time criticism should never be used to humiliate anybody so criticise the fault, not the player. If specific individual criticism is required it should always take place in private and always be followed by an offer to help and an expression of confidence that the fault can be overcome.

Continuous reiteration of the your Coaching Commandments e.g. "Communicate", "Pass flat", "Take the ball at pace", "Retain the ball", "Run back to position", "Pop to your feet after a tackle" etc. likewise reinforce good habits.

Awareness
Rugby is littered with examples of players apparently not seeing what is happening under their noses -- or, at least, not responding to things which look so obvious from the touchline. They don't use the wind when they should, they insist on delaying the put-in to scrums already going backward, they kick when they should run and vice versa. These are not failures of technique but failures of awareness and confidence. Thus, one of the coach's most important tasks is to create these qualities in the players.

Successful sports people have an almost supernatural awareness of their surroundings -- coupled, of course, with the ability to concentrate on the crucial details with absolute clarity for critical periods. Every factor is potentially important: the length of the grass, the direction of the sun, to position of the opposing full-back, the slipperyness of the ball, the tendency of the opposing 10 to take a couple of steps before he makes his decision, the injury that is slowing your open-side flanker. Everything.

In a fluid game like rugby looking and understanding are important but awareness (as I use the term) is not just observing, it is making good decisions based on your observation. Successful players observe, interpret, develop a plan to exploit the situation and act. Beginning players, however, are reluctant to make playing decisions based on their observations - they believe, perhaps correctly, at least at first, that their inexperience doesn't allow them to put what they see to good use. In other words inexperienced players have a perfectly natural fear of doing the wrong thing, making asses of themselves and letting the team down. Unfortunately, this reluctance becomes a habit in some players so that even when they see quite clearly what is likely to happen next they don't react - or worse, they react in an inhibited way. Sometimes it seems as if they are consciously refusing to believe their eyes!

Coaches must help these players to overcome this reluctance and to trust themselves to make the correct decision. The best method is to use a questioning approach. "What did you think their out-half would do?" "What might you have done to stop him?" "Yes, both of those ideas might have worked but what about doing this?" "Would that have helped?" "OK, we've come up with three possibilities, now which do you think would have been best?" "What about if he had done x instead?" And so on... This approach helps the player to bring his observations into focus and consider the merits of various plans of action some, at least, of which he or she developed. It also encourages him or her to back their judgement. In the circumstances it does no harm to finish the conversation off with something like: "Well, you certainly read that situation! Seems to me he'll try that again in the second half so I'm looking forward to seeing you..."

Thus, part of coaching is to create the awareness and confidence to observe, evaluate wisely and act in every player.

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Training sessions

Training sessions should be short. An intense 90 minute ( + or -) period with 100% focus on the various drills and exercises being done is usually more than enough. Kicking and throwing sessions where the players need one-on-one feedback are best conducted before the session since these are most effective when players are fresh. (It's essential, of course, that kickers and throwers warm up and stretch properly before they begin.)

Training Objectives and Plans
Before a training plan can be formulated at any level objectives must be defined. These objectives should be continuously and consciously evaluated and the plan modified accordingly. Objectives may be relatively simple e.g. achieve a basic level of skills, or more complicated e.g. develop better understanding and co-operation between backs and forwards.

In the same way training plans may be detailed minute-by-minute schedules or simply half-a-dozen ideas in the coach's mind but they must have been considered before and preferably well before the training. The training plan is often discussed during stretching at which time a discussion of the previous game's successes and failures can be conducted. The training plan should always have two components: activities aimed at the eradication of identified short-term problems and activities aimed at improving overall play.

Tackling the first of these components is an excellent opportunity for the coach to develop drills and exercises which are specific not just to the problem at hand but also to the capabilities of the squad. If this seems to mean don't just buy somebody's drill manual and pick a few, it does! Generic drills have their place, of course, but solving your immediate problem has a higher priority - and the drill you develop is much more likely to drive your message home when the squad recognise the problem you're trying to solve. For example, if your lineout supporters are dropping their man too often (and once is too often!) or are just not skillful practicing lineouts in a conventional manner isn't likely to improve things. You need drill where your supporters make a lot of lifts in an environment where they can get feedback and instruction.

Improving overall play isn't going to be achieved by one or even five drills. Rather this is a process and every aspect of it needs time and careful planning. For example, maybe you want your players to pass out of the tackle more often. Achieving this is going to require better ball skills and, particularly, better support skills. Thus you might want to begin the process with simple passing and fast-hands drills and plyometric support drills. Later support unit drills and small area handling drills can be introduced and so on...

Training Schedule
Alternate individual skills/fitness dominated sessions (Tuesdays, say) with unit and team skill dominated sessions (Thursdays). Once-a-week fitness sessions are often more useful in demonstrating the lack of fitness (or confirming the presence of fitness and hence reinforcing a player's confidence!) than in materially improving it. If the team only practices once a week fitness work should be done at the end of the session so that skills are practiced when the players are fresh.

Warm-up and warm-down
All trainings are preceded by warm-up and stretch. If kicking and throwing sessions take place before the formal training begins kickers and throwers should warm up and stretch before they begin. Consider turning over responsibility for warm-up and stretch to the team captain who can either always lead (no bad thing) or designate a player to lead.
Post-exertion warm-down and stretching is now generally accepted to be a valuable aid to general recovery but imposing it as a rule is difficult. If you can, make it a given: at the very least it provides post-training and post-game opportunities for review of progress, (post-mortem if necessary) and, always, congratulation and praise for achievement.

Not that it will do any good, there is also a general consensus that after exertion players should rehydrate completely before consuming alcohol. "Piss before you Piss" is the Kiwi expression and roughly translated means drink water until you can urinate (a simple way to prove to yourself that you are fully rehydrated) before hitting the bar.

TOUCH RUGBY

Touch rugby is to be avoided at all times.

Touch rugby is simply a convenient opportunity for players to forget the lessons which have been beaten into them at such cost e.g. to take the ball at pace, pressure their own team so they can pressure the opposition etc. Lazy players skive, show-boats show-boat.
In addition, the sight of serious players strung out across a field ignoring these skills is believed to be unhealthy for most coaches.
If players must play a game other than rugby let them play soccer, baseball, water polo -- or indeed virtually any other game -- using a rugby ball!

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Ball skills

When the number of times the ball is handled during a match is considered it would seem to be impossible to over-emphasize the importance of ball handling skills. Strangely, however, these skills are virtually ignored by most coaches. This doesn't mean that they don't regularly use handling drills in their training sessions, of course. The problem is that the drills they use don't work. Handling simply doesn't improve. The reason for this is that these coaches have mistaken standard handling drills for teaching tools.

Drills such as Four Corners or Auckland Squares (or whatever you call them) simply don't teach handling. What they do is allow players to practice the skills they have already learned - but if they've learnt the skill wrong or just badly they get to practice it wrong or badly. (BTW this case of mistaken identity is true for most commonly used drills!)

Handling skills are only developed as the result of careful instruction consisting of demonstration, trial and feedback until the technique is learned and then practice under increasing pressure to develop the technique into a skill. In other words once basic competence is achieved, i.e. when the player can demonstrate the correct use of the technique, practice helps make the skill usable under match conditions.

It is a given that these skills need to be developed but coaches rarely have time to provide the one-on-one coaching in the basics so they'll need to recruit some help. As far as the technique of passing goes most squads have several players who take great pride in their ability to, say, spiral pass 20m with reasonable accuracy. The trick is to use these players in a mentoring role. Pair up each poor passers with a better passer and let them spend five or ten minutes on the absolute basics. Then run the handling drill for say five minutes. Then back to mentoring this time with feedback from the coach going from pair to pair and so on until improvement is achieved.

I'd say that, at a minimum, every player should be able to make a reasonable 10m pass off both hands while running at pace, catch a high ball with 80% to 90% success, make a pop pass from rest in front of a receiver at pace, protect the ball in the tackle and set the ball back properly and control it (with correct body position) once he or she has gone to ground. All of these basic techniques can be taught by 'better' players but it must be remembered that not all of the 'better' passers are necessarily 'better' ball catchers or ball placers so mentors need to be selected carefully. This approach also requires that you have sufficient balls to make sure everyone can participare.

Taking a leaf from the basketball coaches' book I encourage new (and not so new!) players to buy a ball and carry it around everywhere they go. To develop their skills they need to get used to the ball's eccentricity, its feel, the way the seams are arranged, its smell, in short to become totally familiar with it. Pass it, throw it, kick it, dribble it, use it as a pillow!
Great rugby players develop a mystical relationship with the ball. They all know what the ball will do. This is neither second-sight nor luck -- it is total familiarity!

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Unopposed/semiopposed team/unit practice

Unopposed team practice is only useful if it is very carefully supervised. Giving the players a ball and telling them to get on with it is about as much use as letting them play touch and equally debilitating for most coaches. Unfortunately, supervising unopposed play properly is difficult since improvement requires repetition which the players generally dislike.

Instead I recommend:
Rehearsal of a series of carefully planned sequences of moves. This approach has the benefit of:
a) providing the sort of pressured game feel that is important and
b) allowing scrutiny of and discussion of every individual role in each phase.
This approach also provides a players with a much better understanding of their roles in other situations. It is thus a valuable coaching tool.
Rehearsal can be unopposed, semi opposed and, best, opposed.

Ruck and Maul Drills

There is always a question in coaches' minds about how much reality to build into contact drills since there is always a risk of injury -- and this risk is increased when players are being asked to carry out unfamiliar actions.

My strong feeling is that drills have no lasting impact unless the players become convinced that the style of play being coached works in a game situation. The only way to achieve this is to ensure that some full-contact, full-intensity, live opposition work is done. It seems to me, for example, that the only way to learn to roll a maul is to practice against actual opposition and to be sure that every member of the squad learns the skills required -- protecting the ball, peeling and joining on command, etc. -- at least five mauls against opposition are required. (It is assumed that sessions entailing contact are only begun when the squad is well warmed up and properly equipped with protection including gum-shields.)

One way to do this while perhaps minimizing the risk of injury is to intersperse normal jog-through iterations with one or two minute high-intensity periods in which the action being taught is used full-out so that in a 20-minute ruck and maul session there may only be five or so minutes of full contact.

Clearly this approach isn't very useful if the objective is to improve quick-ball/continuity/possession situations which require practice at full speed and I have to admit that under normal circumstances -- i.e. it isn't the Thursday before a critical promotion/relegation fixture -- I believe that full-out intensity at training is crucial and that the risk of injury is just something that must be borne.

Rucks and mauls must be practiced in multiples of at least three. One ruck or maul at a time gives the wrong impression since it is support and continuity you are trying to coach. Note that these drills are for all players. Backs MUST NOT be excluded.

Back play

Slick back moves are no substitute for the recognition and exploitation of opportunity. For every try scored in the backs as a result of a rehearsed move, forty are scored as a result of astute reading of the opposition (TV commentators usually call this pure luck or, worse, genius!) coupled with the determined use of basic back skills (e.g. ability to give and take a pass at pace, make a break or half-break, run a deception vector, etc.).

Having said that concentrated practice of moves does build critical ball skills, particularly "quick hands", as well as straightening. Thus, before backs are given a ball and told to practice their moves they must be told the point of it all.

Semi-opposed or opposed practice should end every backs session since when to make the move i.e. at what distance from the opposition, is much more important than the move itself. A "try" should be scored to end every move -- backs need to be constantly reminded of their objective!

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Back move practice
At training backs usually do whatever it is they do while the forwards are working on scrum and lineout skills and all too often forwards look up gasping from a steaming scrum only to see an untidy gaggle of backs hands on hips and grinning at each other as they apparently exchange pleasantries. If this approach to perfecting back play worked rugby wouldn't be in the situation it is - or at least Northern Hemisphere rugby (excluding the French, comme d'habitude) wouldn't be in the situation it is.

Instead of this casual attitude what is needed in back play practice is our old friend rigour! Like lineouts back moves have far too many things that can go wrong. The slightest error in a delivery pass, for example, can cause the striker to check which effectively destroys the timing of the other backs and the move falls apart. Thus, removal of error is the logical place to start and the best way to do this is to start small with actions that can actually be carried out perfectly every time.

You have a single great passer at 10 (or 12) so the question is, how can he or she be used to set up your strike? The rest of your backs can't pass? Then use moves where they hand-off instead. They can't beat their man either? Then use formations where line breaks are achieved by units rather than individuals making the strike. (I'm not kidding!) Deciding what moves you really need to have is also part of this process. Well, let's see... You'll probably need at least one move that will get the ball to a wing, a couple that will, hopefully, spring 13, an inside crash or two from 12 and at least one strike by 10. Six moves in other words and if six is all you need what's the point of practicing more? (Using you resources (and your time) to best advantage is very much at the heart of successful coaching.)

The second part of this approach - and now I'm in real danger of becoming glib because while this may sound simple it's actually a very difficult process - is to break down each move into its component parts and to be sure that the participants really do understand every one of them and what they have to do to make the move work. If 13 is the designated striker what does he need to be doing while 10 is looping 12? Where does he need to be? What should he watch for to get his timing right? What sort of pass should he expect? What vector should he strike on? Where is the move likely to go wrong? Etc. Etc.

The final and perhaps impossible part of the approach is to build the sort of playing culture where your backs constructively criticise each other's play and work together to improve it. Too often I've seen centres turn away in silent disgust when the ball is passed behind them and 10s hang their heads and bite their lips when thy've made a perfect pass but the intended receiver was daydreaming. I'm not suggesting for a second that they should scream at each other but rather that before the move is rehearsed again blame and credit should be calmly apportioned and suggestions made for improvement.

Don't forget, forwards will forgive anything they see if it is clear that the backs are actually improving!

One last point. If the coach has no experience playing in the backs he or she can confidently expect that their efforts to improve back play will initially be resisted. This must not be taken personally. Backs are simply like that. Just remember that it's your job to improve things and work out a way you can. In this regard see also BACK PLAY Top of Page