Conditioning Biased to Repeat Sprint Demands

Benefits

Rugby is an intermittent contact sport with periods of high-intensity activity which are interspersed with low-intensity periods, with anaerobic fitness playing a key role in the ability to sustain the repeated high-intensity efforts, whether that is tackling, sprinting or scrummaging. Female players cover up to 300m of distance over 5.5 m/s, with up to 15 sprints per game, depending on position (Woodhouse et al., 2021). The ability to repeatedly sprint while maintaining sprint speed with brief recovery periods is crucial to successful performance (Bishop, Girard and Mendez-Villanueva, 2011)

Methods of training

Repeated Sprint Training

Repeated sprint involves a series of short sprints of 3-7 seconds in duration, with each sprint separated by a short recovery period, which is generally at a 1:3 work-to-rest ratio (Taylor et al., 2015). Research has shown this type of training to be an effective method of improving anaerobic fitness and repeated sprint ability (Taylor et al., 2015).