A quote stolen off an amazing performance coach Jeremy Sheppard, but just follows up on my last blog, explaining how important strength development is at this time of year.
Now more so than ever, when considering covid and how it has disrupted structured training and training specifically for competition. This paper that Sarah Hall shared on our AC Slack channel with clients is a vital read for athletes returning to competition:
So what exactly is “meeting the demon”?
Well it’s a time of the year, (typically 6-8 weeks) where you expose yourself to progressively heavier weights and some added volume that challenge you both mentally and physically. The reason, or 2 main reasons, soft tissue tolerance to load, which has the secondary benefit of building resilience through added work capacity and strength reserve!
Strength reserve will allow you to complete sub maximal efforts repeatedly with greater efficiency than those who have not “met the demon”
Case study:
Player A has a 2 x body weight leg strength score
Player B has a 1.5 x body weight leg strength score
Ok so what does that actually mean in context? Every sub maximal task (Hitting a ruck for example) for player B will be 25% more fatiguing than for player A. Raise your capacity, raise your ceiling to fatigue and repeated explosive efforts.
Similarly, the research tells us that maximum power production occurs at approximately 50% of max for the majority of athletes. Want to increase your power production? Increase your strength level. You better “meet the demon” before pre season starts for the MLR teams in February 2021.
Rugby is a physical domination sport. The greater your ceiling the more dominance you can exert.