Johnny O’Connor on the demands of pre-season training

This week, Johnny discusses his return to pre-season training with Connacht and says that attitude is the most important thing in terms of getting the best results.

 

After what was an all too short break, I went back to pre-season training with Connacht this week.

My approach to my holidays had been something like Bord Failte’s ‘Let Yourself Go’ tag line, but it’s not something you can do for too long if you want to maintain whatever gains you might have made up to the point before your break.

Taking a week off, or maybe two weeks off is fine; it’s good to chill out and not worry about your diet and stuff for a while, but if you start going any more than three weeks without getting back into some sort of routine, it’ll be detrimental to your overall training programme.

My approach to pre-season training has been the same as long as I’ve been playing rugby, I’m there to work and to work hard and the minute you start to think about pulling back, you’re on your way out.

You might hear about players approaching pre-season in a different way the older they get, but although it might be true that you may get a little bit slower, there’s always a little bit more in you and you’d be surprised what you can get out of it.

Evolution

Back in the day, pre-season might have been all endurance-based stuff – lots and lots of long runs and basically being run to a standstill – but that would be considered a backwards approach nowadays.

Rugby had just gone professional about a year or two before I started playing and the training methods even back then might have been a bit dated, but it’s come on a lot since then.

Rugby coaches realise that players can’t be flogged to death. Before you almost had to be in from 9-5 and be training every hour of the day, but it’s so much smarter now. If you look at how athletic some of the Irish players are these days compared to about ten years ago, you can see that.

These days, you’ll come in and undergo a different variety of tests, you’ll have your body fat measured, do speed tests over 10 and 20 metres, aerobic tests, anaerobic tests and a result, the coaches will know where you need to make improvements.

We’ll probably do all those tests again in seven or eight weeks to give us an idea of how we’ve progressed. There would also be some weights involved as well and like the running, we don’t do weights to failure because it’s counterproductive.

There is a competitive element to pre-season training; players themselves will laugh it off and say there isn’t, but players by nature are, or at least should be, competitive and don’t want to be falling behind.

It’s not necessarily the case that the results of the various tests will have a massive impact on how a team is going to be picked at the end of the day, but the better conditioned you are, the better you are going to perform, so why take the chance of not being picked because you’re not in the best shape you can be?

Seeing the various results can also be good in terms of confidence, especially when you’re posting better results than you thought you would; it makes you feel better about yourself.

Attitude

Attitude is all important. As I said earlier, you come in to work and to work hard and shouldn’t be making excuses. It kind of pisses me off when people say that they are going to retire in two or three years and start to wind down somewhat.

Look at Alan Quinlan. If he said years ago that he was going to retire at 34 he probably would have, whereas he didn’t and he was still going strong this year. To be honest, he probably could have played on for another year and I’m sure there are plenty clubs that would have gladly taken him on.

It’s the same with a lot of guys in the NFL, you can see by their attitude that while they’re there they are going to give it their all and not be offering up pitiful excuses. Obviously, in some cases there can be an issue with injuries but I think it’s a shame to hear people say ‘I don’t want to do this exercise or that exercise today’ or ‘this is going to be my last year’ because you can keep on improving even if you’re well into your thirties.

The programme we’ll be doing over the summer is over seven or eight weeks and is designed to have us in peak condition for the start of the season. OK, there will be a few pre-season games before the season itself kicks off, but they’re more for tuning up than anything else, so you’ll be good to go for the first game.

But it’s not just the training itself that’s important. To get in peak condition, I’ll be trying to get eight or nine hours of sleep a night, getting my nutrition right and ensuring that I get sufficient recovery time in between sessions. I know it might seem like I’m rattling on when I say recovery is king, but it is king if you want to maximise every other part of a training programme.

All in all, pre-season isn’t easy and there’s a lot of hard work involved, but if you have the right attitude and are prepared to work and work hard, you’ll reap the benefits later on.

Johnny O'Connor plays professional rugby with Connacht. He has previously played for London Wasps and has made 12 appearances for Ireland. He is also a certified strength and conditioning coach. Johnny regularly posts articles from top strength and conditioning coaches around the world on his Twitter page. Click here to follow Johnny on Twitter.