Activate

When a movement occurs, it is a combination of muscle forces. When some of these muscle forces are weaker than they should be, or don’t even occur, then this is a problem. Other muscles must work harder to compensate for the weaker muscle forces. Activation exercises aim to wake up and stimulate the muscle so that the muscular forces being produced are strong and each muscle is doing its job. Activation exercises do this by contracting the target muscle to excite and stimulate it. An example of muscles that often needs activation in players is the gluteus muscles. The gluteus muscles are extremely important in running and jumping activities. If they are not stimulated and functioning to the best of their ability, performance could be affected and the risk of injury could rise. The videos below show some examples of exercises for activating the gluteus muscles. Coaches should be aware of the main muscle groups used during rugby and plan some exercises to activate them within the warm-up.