jonh wrote:Fit is a very general word and usually when talking about sports you have to reffer to sports specific fitness.
If we take a season from the day after the game of the final match of the previous season the training progresses in a periodized way, ie specific phases of training related to the specific times of year.
Straight after the final game of the previous season the players should be allowed a period of active recovery, ie rest with a few active sessions thrown in ie a few games of basket ball or other sporting events that maintain, but refresh the body, nothing intense at all. You will then enter after this phase the phase commonly know as preseason, this is where the foundations are laid for the sports specific fitness ie this is where the players in general term get "fit". It is where they work on the aerobic fitness and size in the gym, as the weeks pass the phases become more specific to the sport. Rugby League is an anaerobic intermittent power endurance sport with periods of active recovery. In simple terms rugby league is a sport requiring high intensity power bursts for short periods ie when the ball is taken up or when you are performing a tackle, the most part is spent activley recovering ie moving forward or back in the defensive line but this active recovery can also be a transition phase, ie supporting a run low intensity but then getting the offload and taking the ball forward it suddenly becomes high intensity. Players have to be conditioned to deal with the specific fitness demands of the sport.
As the preseason continues training becomes more and more specific, building on the general foundations adding strenght and converting this to power, at the end of the preseason the team should be being conditioned with high intensity power training with a view to maitaining this throughout the season twinging it to peak at times dictated by the coach throughout the season. All drills should challenge the systems used in a game the closer to the start of the playing season you get, while you can attempt to replicate and manipulate drills to be sports specific, in simple terms the most sport specific training is to play the game which is where the term match fit comes in, as you can never copy the exact demands of the sport in a training environment.
Building intensity and specificity is the key, the above is a very basic model and there are several more relevant models than this but it is the simplest to explain the difference between being fit and being sports specific or match fit.
Prior to anyone saying anything yes i will change my sig to officially the most boaring poster on here.
