A Few Things

1-For those of you who have lacked a serious strength and conditioning program and decide to take part in this one, soreness is something that you will become familiar with. It will happen a lot, especially for the first two or three weeks. It is normal, it will not always be like this. It's OK if you cannot stand up or sit down without discomfort. Your muscles will become much more efficient at repair.

2-You will be placing much more exhaustive demand on your body for the next seven weeks. If you begin to experience a lot of fatigue (not during the workout) and are eating without direction it might be time to look into some basic eating methods/strategies.

3-You will need to warm up adequately for workouts. Warming up is not sitting on a bike, running on a treadmill or doing whatever it is people do on an elyptical. You need to be putting your joints through ranges of motion. Most importantly your midsection/lower back. It is the beginning point of all power that is created in the body. It is an area very dense with muscle attachments, bones, ligaments, spine, organs, etc. That being said it is very important to move that area around extensively. If you don not know how to do this the warm up that i do consists of:

-standing back etension
-standing hip etension
-wide angle forward fold and goiong opposite hand opposite leg. 10-20 reps.
-plank to up dog or cobra to down dog with some calf pumps back to plank. 4-8 reps
-hug knees into chest to a glute bridge (feet flat on the ground and hips raised high into the air). ~10reps
-lay flat on your back and raise a straight leg as high as it is able to remain straight and lower immediately.
-Same as previous except once the leg is at the top take it down across your body letting your hips stack on top of each other, return the leg to an upright position and then lower it. Alternate and repeat. ~10 reps
-Roll back to plough position (feet over your head) then roll up to a seated wide angle forward fold. Do 3 to the middle, three to the left and three to the right.
10 squats, ten pushups and situps. Spiderman walks and bearcrawls should be an adequate warm up.

3-Listen to your body! If it says that you need to take a rest day, do it. If it says to only workout three times this week, do it. If you are playing sevens and feel as though Saturday games and practice on Monday and Wednesday is already borderline too much, then do not participate in this workout program. This is a voluntary program for anyone who does not have a program follow or is interested in trying something new. We (NOVA rugby) are just trying to emphasize that strength and conditioning in the offseason is important.

Thats all.