Surname 1

Student’s Name

Tutor’s Name

Course

Date

Macrocycle Athlete Training Plan

Our athlete plays for the Sydney Roosters as the scrump half whose role is controlling

and distributing possession acquired by forwards. Consequently, the position requires endurance

and consistent play primarily involving moderate exertion (75-84%) that props and locks. Scrum

halfs also require speed to accelerate from the scrum, line out, ruck, or maul which necessitates a

demonstration of agility needed to evade the opposition’s tackles. In addition to the specific

positional roles, all players have to compete and maintain position through strength and power.

The Athlete is 27 years old and experienced in resistance training, heavy lifting, and good

technique. Furthermore, he has no history of current or recurrent injuries. During the in-season,

his team has competitive matches on Saturday mornings with Monday scheduled for recovery.

Conditioning, speed, technical, agility, tactical, and quickness training sessions are performed on

Tuesday and Thursday evenings supervised by the Coach. Finally, weight training is scheduled

on Monday and Wednesday.

Athlete Testing

Creating an effective training program requires first understanding the athlete’s strengths

and weaknesses to optimize resource allocation and training outcomes. Moreover, establishing a

baseline allows the coach to monitor performance and progress throughout the program. In this

case, the athlete underwent a test battery to assess various attributes using processes and
 Surname 2

exercises as suggested by… with the results displayed in Table 1 below. A functional movement

screen as developed by Kraus et al. (2014) was also conducted to evaluate general functional

asymmetry and posture, which is a predictor of severe injury in contact sports such as Rugby.

The results reveal the athlete’s strengths as lower body strength and speed with an impressive

back squat. However, he has a weakness in upper body strength, which provides improvement

opportunities especially for lower body power.

Figure 1: Athlete Test Results

Strength and Conditioning Program

While the initial assessment demonstrated adequate degrees of lower body strength, it will

continue to be a primary focus in the macrocycle. Multiple studies have confirmed a positive link

between between back squat performance and sprint speed. The complementary focus will be on

improving upper body strength, and total body power. Periodising the training program is

necessary to ensure long-term performance adaptations by varying the stimulus. Alterations in

the maximal backsquat during the pre-season period may improve 0-40m sprint times for rugby

players which supports the need for continued lower body strength training. The plan covers a

macrocycle (a year), its constituent mesocycles (up to 4 week segments), and microcycles
 Surname 3

(weekly plans). The current pre-season will focus on general aspects (performance capacity and

hypertrophy), and specific (power and strength).

Off Season

Due to the rigors of a long rugby season, rest periods are mandatory for the athlete in addition to

unsupervised offsite training before resuming for the preseason. In this transitory period, the

athlete can perform self-directed exercises at a moderate volume and intensity to maintain his

form while not exhausting himself.

Pre-Season

The pre-season will commence with a 1-week introductory cycle designed to acclimatize the

athlete back into the training program. The period will feature low load and low intensity training

with the focus maintained on correcting technique and standardized completion of repetitions.

The subsequent season’s training regimen follows a block periodisation methodology;

hypertrophy → strength → power accompanied by a recovery week. The short introduction

exposes the athlete to novel stimuli thus catalyzing physical and physcological adaptations

needed to the subsequent stage.

Although there are individual variations, muscle size functions as a robust predictor of an

athlete’s strength and must be enhanced to optimize performance in rugby. These aspects are

usually handled during the pre-season due to limited time during the in-season. To improve

muscular hypertrophy, the athlete will perform multiplanar and multiangular exercises with a rep

range of 6-12 with some expected to end in failure. Workouts will be divided into dual upper and

lower body sessions to maximize the hypertrophic effect. The second hypertrophy mesocycle
 Surname 4

will feature advanced training methodologies like supersets to facilitate continuous adaptation

and improvement.

Strength training was selected as the basis of specific preparation due to its strong

influence on rugby performance. Therefore, the exercises will also include movements and

muscle actions frequently performed in the sport to enhance transferrability of learning. The

chosen mean intensity is 85% which represents 6RM. Research by Serra et al. Showed that quad

training sessions every weeks have better outcomes than dual or triple. The second part of

specific preparation is optimizing strength conversion into power. Power development can be

further categorized into speed-strength (low load), and strength-speed (High load). Excellent

examples of strength-speed are Olympic exercises like the power clean which requires rapid

application of significant force. In contrast, speed-strength is developed at higher velocities and

reduced resistance such as light jump squats. In this phase, the athlete will have four training

sessions every week with two emphasizing speed strength while the other two focus on strength

speeds. The second mesocycle will also introduce contrast training which mimics the post

activation potentiation mechanism thereby improving explosive performance even when

exhausted.