Prepare Like a Lion – Preparing for a Rugby Season

Optimal Nutrition and Training Strategies for Pre-Season

2025 will once again see the rise of the British and Irish Lions for their tour of Australia. Over the tour, the Lions will play 10 intense games against some mighty opposition. The stress of all these matches over the tour is extremely demanding and requires players to be at their highest level of fitness and physical prowess if they wish to be triumphant once again.

Now all of us may not be as lucky to adorn the Lions jersey, however the demands are very similar when you have an arduous rugby season in front of you. In this article, I delve into the details of how to ensure you are at your peak physical capacity before each and every game.

It Starts in The Offseason

Sorry to break it to you, but the main elements of your physical fitness and ability will have primarily come from all the hard work you completed in the offseason. You thought you could rock up to a season without completing the hard work beforehand? Good luck with that.

In all seriousness, it is sadly common for many players to take too much time off during the offseason and not take it seriously.

The offseason is where you can (and should) really lay down some serious gains in Fitness whether it be Strength, Size, Power, Speed or Endurance.

Why though? Well, for a start, you don’t have an intense game every week getting in the way of your training and/or recovery, so it is much more suitable to train hard and recover well.

If you skipped your off-season training, check out our Training category of the rugbystore blog for some useful guidance on how to gain the advantage in your training and nutrition for your specific position. See the articles below:

Regardless of whether or not you have prepared fully for the upcoming season, it will be knocking on your door before you know it. Whilst teams set out to work on improving their fitness in pre-season, it is important not to overload or offset the improvements that were made in the offseason in Strength, Power or Hypertrophy. The key to this is the management of appropriate training systems – otherwise known as “Periodisation”. Putting all this training knowledge together, making sure it all fits together seamlessly, allowing for hard work but not too much, and ensuring the right amount of recovery.

This article will aim to simplify the pre-season training process, giving you simple instructions to help you plan your training and nutrition effectively.

1. HAVE CLEAR TRAINING OBJECTIVES

First and foremost, use the Pre-Season training period to specify exactly what you want to improve and train towards that. Stop trying to juggle everything at once or you will end up with average results in multiple areas. If you need to work on Explosive Power and Speed (which I recommend) stop trying to build muscle on your arms and other areas when it isn’t really going to make a difference. If you want to make an impact on the field come show time, you need to work on what is important in the game, not on the beach.

2. FOCUS ON POWER AND SPEED DEVELOPMENT

As stated previously, try to focus on what is important on the field. Without question the main elements that should be focussed on in Pre-Season is Power and Speed. Come the start of the games, the primary things that are often taken out of programs in season are the high impact high stress work like Plyometrics. These are often taken out due to their stress on the body, and are removed to allow proper recovery from games. Therefore, I would recommend taking the time during Pre-Season to focus on Plyometric work to enhance Explosive Strength. In saying this, please ensure that you build the intensity of the explosive strength work up gradually to avoid injury.

3. PUT THE BALL DOWN

I cannot emphasise how important Ball Work is to become a great player. Despite this, when the season starts, and you have a very intense game every week, all the strenuous strength and power training sessions just won’t be possible. This is because it will be extremely difficult for you to recover fully between all the sessions. In light of this, it becomes necessary to re-focus your effort on less strenuous activity between games. THIS is when you can pick up the ball again and really get to work on your skills. So put the ball to the side for a little while during Pre-Season and use the valuable time to focus on improving your physical prowess as described above. Don’t fear not working on ball work for short periods of time either. It’s normal for you to sustain the same level of skill despite not practicing for a while, whilst you work on your weaknesses.

4. DITCH ANY EXCESS WEIGHT

During the off-season, you may have accumulated a little unwanted body fat that certainly won’t help when it comes to being quicker on the field. Now there’s nothing wrong with gaining a little body fat in the offseason, I would even recommend it. Not only will it help you gain more muscle and strength eating surplus calories, it gives the body a rest from keeping a strict weight all the time. Come Pre-Season time however, you can utilise this time effectively to drop the few excess pounds/kilos and improve your power to weight ratio. This will leave you feeling faster on your feet come game time. I would recommend starting the season off with a bang, not worrying about your weight too much, just ensure you have enough calories in to sustain the increased training capacity. Towards the end of the off-season, perhaps the final 4-5 weeks, you can focus on dropping around 1-2lbs per week safely without dropping too much muscle.

LAYING IT OUT

Here is an 8 Week Pre-Season program that will help improve explosive power whilst still maintaining strength and size gained in the offseason.

Training Days – 5
Weight Training Days – 3
Conditioning Days – 2

Monday – Weight Training (Power Development)

Tuesday – Conditioning (Anaerobic Sprint Training)

Wednesday – Weight Training

Thursday – Conditioning (Aerobic Intervals)

Friday – Weight Training

Progressive Overload

I would recommend that you begin with a load that you can comfortably manage your specified rep range at around an 8/10 effort. Each week you can increase the load marginally (progressive overload principle) until each set is more demanding. This allows you to focus on good form and allowing adaptation to occur over the 8-week duration.

NUTRITION

The part everyone gets wrong…. Oh, so simple, yet oh so complex. Without going into a great deal of detail – which would be easy, considering Nutrition is so hotly debated. When we simplify things, from a sports performance perspective, you MUST ensure that you have enough nutrients coming in to fuel performance (Carbohydrates), repair damage (Protein) and recover from Training (Proteins Carbs and Fats).

Below is an example on how to work an effective day’s nutrition to assist with the demands of Pre-Season Training with the above nutrients accounted for ensuring maximal performance and recovery:

Example Training Day Diet

Understanding YOUR Body

It is important to note that you MUST start to understand your body and what it needs. There is no point eating the same things every day as your energy requirement will be different each day and having surplus calories will just lead to unwanted fat gain. It is important to look at the demands of the day and make a judgement call on what to drop out. Furthermore, if you feel you are not getting enough energy in, you must increase it in line with your output.

An easy way to see how things are going is to TRACK your weight.

Do this twice weekly first thing in the morning and take an average each week. It will allow you to remain informed and adjust as necessary.

More information = More Knowledge.

More knowledge = Better Results.

Simple.

If you’re not assessing you are just guessing. Other than that, keep Nutrition SIMPLE. Less complications means more adherence.

Article Summary

Off-Season is where it all begins – don’t skip the hard work in the offseason and you will be better prepared.
Specify what you want to work on in Pre-Season – I recommend Power Development.
Phase this in, start with lower volume and intensities and BUILD IT UP gradually.
Keep nutrition in line with training – not too much but certainly enough to train hard and recover.

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About the Author: Dean Robertson MSc, BSc (Hons) is the founder of Elysium Training Systems Ltd. An Edinburgh based company focussing on working with a range of different populations including, team sports, powerlifters, physique athletes and general health and well-being clients looking to change their performance, lives and mind-sets. You can contact him through the Elysium Training Systems Facebook page or at elysiumpt@outlook.com