Training Transfer: don’t waste your time in the gym
Let’s not forget.
The reason rugby players train is to improve performance on the pitch.
I apologise if you spat your coffee out after reading the above statement. I realise how controversial that line is.
Yet in a world of 5s scrolls and salespeople fighting for your attention, it’s often forgotten: any training you do, as an athlete, should have a positive impact on your performance. One way or another.
Time is a finite resource. We can never get it back and nobody wants to waste it – especially doing programmes that don’t work with exercises that have zero transfer to on-field performance. That’s why understanding where certain training methods and exercises can fit into an overall programme is important.
There are several lenses one can use when considering whether an exercise is appropriate, relevant, and potentially impactful on athletic performance. I’ll go out on a limb here and personify these lenses to trainer-types you probably know and/or follow on the ‘Gram:
The Powerlifter Type
The Weightlifter Type
The Functional Trainer
The Sports Specific Trainer
The Bodybuilder Type
As an athlete, it can be somewhat confusing. The powerlifting type argues that max strength is everything: run faster, jump higher and dominate contact. It makes sense.
The weightlifter type shows great mobility coupled with explosive power and points out that: triple extension is the cornerstone to true athletic endeavours.
The functional trainer throws up clips of exercises that: work through all your imbalances and will keep you from being injured on the pitch.
The sports specific trainer is giving great instructions on movements that look pretty much like what you’ll do on the pitch: therefore it’s super specific and a game changer.
Lastly, the bodybuilder type promotes that high(er) reps and sets is the key to getting strong, lean and athletic looking: who doesn’t want that?!
If I told you that all the above are correct and have a place in the yearly planning of an athletic calendar, you might read that as a cop-out. So let me explain…
Regardless on your biases or which school of thought you’re coming from, all exercises and even methods can be broadly viewed in their ability to create carry-over to athletic performance.
In the field of strength and conditioning the term is known as dynamic correspondence and there is a list of criteria us S&C coaches run through to determine the level of transfer an exercise may have with performance (Verkhoshansky & Siff, 2007). Originally this concept was applied to single joint strength exercises to discover the likely training transfer effect for weightlifting performance, though coaches can apply this more broadly to determine the potential of transfer for training methods as well as exercises (Goodwin & Cleather, 2016). A full breakdown of the criterion of dynamic correspondence is justifiable and something I’ll post in my critical articles section in the future.
There are a few principles to first understand in order for you to determine if an exercise or method is going to waste your time in the gym. The first of those principles is: there are levels of training transfer.
Take the back squat for example.
The back squat isn’t specific to running. I mean, when a rugby player makes a break on the pitch, he/she isn’t exactly doing it with a barbell on the shoulders. The barbell back squat isn’t unilateral and (if performing the full squat) it generally requires greater hip flexion than you would expect to see in a sprint (Slawinski et al. 2017).
So why is it an excellent exercise for any athlete who wants to run fast?
Because research tells us so (Baker & Nance,1999).
If looking at references isn’t your thing, checkout this video. Here is our Loose Head Prop (110kg bodyweight) squatting 200kg for 3 reps in-season. His 10m time is 1.68s (that’s fast for a LH Prop). All the other players at Biella Rugby who hold positional records for the 10m acceleration test squat 1.9 - 2.2 times their bodyweight. From props to fullbacks.
I guess there is some merit to the old saying:
“You can’t go wrong with strong.”
Anyways, back to our example…
The back squat is an excellent general exercise in relation to the goal of running faster because it can help improve the capacity of lower body strength. Getting stronger means improving the ability to express more force into the ground. This in turn will put you in a position where you could potentially be faster, certainly during the acceleration phase (Salo, 2005).
So, the back squat isn’t sprinting. Granted.
Though it’s clear there could be a level of transfer to sprinting if an athlete who isn’t great at producing force went and got himself/ herself significantly stronger.
Researchers have coined this type of transfer as a Level 2 Transfer because it improves a physical capacity which is utilised in the sporting skill (Goodwin & Cleather, 2016).
So maybe that Powerlifter Trainer you follow on the ‘Gram is onto something.
But what about the Functional Trainer? His/her athletes aren’t doing any traditional strength training, so they aren’t working on improving their force production and that style of training won’t be useful for rugby players. Right?
Not exactly.
We could breakdown various examples, but for simplicity let’s stay with our sprint example for this one.
The Single Leg Hip Bridge is functional enough for a Functional Trainer, Right?
Okay. Okay. We’ll throw a band in there to make it extra functional.
Now in our example this exercise may have been prescribed because the Functional Trainer noticed an asymmetry in the posterior chain of the athlete. This unilateral exercise might be the exact right call to minimise the asymmetry, therefore reducing the likelihood of an injury (Knapik et al., 2001). In doing so, the athlete has more ‘time-on-task’ performing his/her sport and/ or movements with a higher level of transfer which in turn will lead to performance gains. This level of transfer would be considered a tertiary transfer. Of course, someone could argue that depending on tempo/ sets/ reps etc the Single Leg Hip Bridge (with band) could also create a Level 2 Transfer. And to that I would say: okay (it potentially could if the athlete was a newbie).
Levels.
Admittedly it’s a cliché in the performance community but worth stating…
“Context really is king.”
To make sure you aren’t wasting your time with certain exercises or methods of training simply ask your trainer for their rationale or use the above levels of transfer example to get a better idea whether it’s going to be an impactful exercise for you.
Takeaway Message
Remember that for athletes the aim of training is to eventually transfer to a better on field performance. There are several systems that can achieve that objective (Bondarchuk, 2007).
Don’t let someone’s training biases effect your preparation for sport, nobody’s got time for that!
Instead recognise that there are times in the season when general exercises will give the ‘best bang for your buck’ because they will set your base wide and allow a good taper into more specific strength exercises.
Stay tuned for further blog posts where I’ll discuss other guiding principles when it comes to training transfer, and or course, I’ll follow up with a critical article on the criterion of dynamic correspondence.
Reference List
Baker, D., & Nance, S. (1999). The relation between running speed and measures of strength and power in professional rugby league players. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 13(3), 230-235.
Bondarchuk, A. (2007). Transfer of training in sport. Ultimate Athlete Concepts, Michigan, USA.
Goodwin, J. E., & Cleather, D. J. 2016. The biomechanical principles underpinning strength and conditioning (pp. 36-66). Routledge: New York, NY, USA.
Slawinski, J.,Houel, N., Bonnefoy-Mazure, A., Lissajoux, K., Bocquet, V., & Termoz, N. 2017. Mechanics of standing and crouching sprint starts. Journal of Sport Sciences, 35(9), pp 858-865.
Knapik,J.J., Sharp, M.A., Canham-Chervak, M., Hauret, K., Patton, J.F., & Jones, B.H. 2001. Risk factors for training-related injuries among men and women in basic combat training. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 33(6) pp 946–54.
Salo A.I.T., Keränen T., Viitasalo J.T. 2005. Force production in the first four steps of sprint running. In: Wang Q, editor. Proceedings of XXIII International Symposium on Biomechanics in Sports. Beijing (China): The China Institute of Sport Science. p. 313-7.
Verkhoshansky, Y., & Siff, M. 2007. Supertraining. 6th ed. Verkhoshansky.com
