Training for Rugby vs American Football. Which is the toughest?

Posted by at 15:10 20/12/11

American Football

"Watch this one Reggie. This touchdown is for you" - Superstud

I sat back and licked my lips in anticipation.

Superstud was an athletic marvel. Blessed with endless speed and good enough genetics to win a natural UK bodybuilding contest with just 6 months training. This guy was the fastest in his school at every distance from 100m to a mile and set county records in the javelin. An all round stud with defined muscles ready to explode when action was called for, who had ran over and around everyone in his path to date.

The whistle went and I saw the quarterback hand it to superstud who immediately made a tackler miss with a dazzling sidestep and saw clear daylight in front of him. I saw him turn on the afterburners and stepped back to witness another touchdown.

The next thing I saw was a huge man mountain who looked, quite literally, like Popeye’s nemesis Bluto, throw an arm out and grab at the shirt of superstud and in one fell movement pick him up and slam him Undertaker style to the ground.

Superstud learned a lesson that day about the fate that befalls those who believe they are gods. One I never cease to remind him of to this day…

I began American Football with endless confidence and a belief that my basic athleticism and speed would take me far. I soon reconsidered when faced by gargantuan Bluto lookalikes and found myself a bit like the cartoon characters moving fast but going nowhere at all in the face of an immovable object.

For my position of linebacker I was cursed in the fact that I needed to be able to run with the fastest guys on the opposition while simultaneously trying to get around and through man mountains like Bluto. How does an athlete possibly train for both?

In American Football the game and position played dictates massively how training is conducted. The game takes place in the form of discrete periods of action interspersed by rest periods of 45 secs between each play. As such, and unlike other contact sports such as rugby or boxing, the training much more closely approximates the type of work:rest intervals seen by most strength athletes. This translates into the fact that typical strength training programs in American Football resemble the type of training done by powerlifters and weightlifters, and, to a lesser extent bodybuilders.

With the relatively long rest periods between plays in American Football players should be sufficiently rested to be able to operate at something close to their maximal power and speed throughout the game. In the same way that if weightlifters lifted 1-3 reps of a near maximal weight, followed by a 45 sec rest they would be in a position to repeat their performance.

In terms of speed training, you will see american footballers train much more like how olympic sprinters will with repeat sets at a high intensity and short duration, interspersed with a longer rest period. The wide receiver who sprints hard for 20 yards then stops and walks back to the uddle before repeating is training very similarly to how a sprinter might working on their acceleration during the winter. Its should come as no surprise that many players in the NFL represented their college and the USA at the very highest levels, including some olympic champions such as Renaldo Nehemiah, Willie Gault, Michael Carter, and Michael Bates.

Quite simply, because these guys train like weightlifters and sprinters in many ways, and are similarly gifted genetically, then they naturally end up being able to accomplish similar results as their counterparts in these sports.

The fast guys tend to be very fast while the strong guys can be ridiculously strong! So how would an American football player who trains to be both fast and extremely powerful fare if he decided to jump into playing Rugby?

Rugby

"Come on Reggie. We are playing a rugby sevens tournament and you are in great shape. Come and help us."

Those words were spoken to me by a friend of a friend who looked to recruit me one off-season for a couple of rugby sevens tournaments.

Rugby players were soft and fat and liked to drink more than train I thought. In school when I had played I had always been bigger and faster than the others and found it easy to dominate games. With all the extra training and bodybuilding like attention to my diet for years it could only get easier even after a layoff of over ten years.

Turning up to training and seeing some guys from pro rugby clubs attending (it was a representative team we were joining) only served to heighten my hubris. I looked around and even though some of the guys clearly weight trained, most looked very unimpressive and the intensity I was used to was absent. This would be easy I thought.

After engaging in what I thought were pointless passing and tacklins drills (what could they teach me?), we got ready to play a practice scrimmage between ourselves.

I positioned myself out wide waiting for the ball. Eventually I got it and saw myself against a 19 year old player who was with Castleford RLFC.

I feinted to go inside and then switched to the outside and got past him and outraced everyone to the tryline. Easy.

That was me happy and ready for the tournament coming up. Clearly I was a class apart!

On to the first game of the tournament. I thought the warm up for the game was a little harder than I expected but sure I would be fine when the game started.

I got the ball quickly enough and saw seven people in a line in front of me. The guy in front was their smallest player and I decided I would make a doormat out of him. He tackled me with perfect technique around my ankles. Not expected at all...

Next thing I know they have the ball and I am already feeling tired literally 30 secs into the game and struggling to breathe, watching as the ball moved across the field. Shorn of strength and speedalready. Where the hell was the ref with the whistle to announce the end of the play so I could rest?!?

It never came and next thing I knew a player was running to me and I decided to drive my head straight through him and launch him into orbit...

Hello? Anybody home? Five minutes later, still concussed, I realised tackling leading with a helmetless head into someone's hip was a very bad idea. I realised this game rugby was bit tougher and complicated than I thought!

What lessons did I learn?

Well, there was a very simple reason why I was super confident because, by and large, I was bigger, faster, and more explosive than the rugby players I saw. Of course I was since my training for American Football produced this.

Unlike me though I noticed that the rugby players I saw were genuine all rounders with strength and speed yes, but an endurance and ability to play for long periods with minimal rest I could not help but admire.

I never played rugby again but I learned my lesson. While I was ducking out of rugby practices and avoiding hard running or anything that would compromise my strength, I now realised rugby required a much greater level of aerobic and anaerobic endurance than I had.

If we look at the type of training rugby players do in the gym and running sessions, we tend to see a greater emphasis on training with incomplete recovery which forces the body to adapt by improving endurance while still allowing for strength adaptations. Typically the rep ranges used by rugby players will place a greater emphasis on higher rep ranges which are essential for the development of the type of local muscular endurance the sport requires.

From what I have seen of most rugby strength programs they tend to be closer to a hybrid of strength training and bodybuilding routines. This also helps to ensure muscle development for these athletes but from experience, because of the high endurance element required, most rugby players are not as strong as athletes in American Football or bodybuilders of a similar size. The demands of the sport are too great to allow this.

Conclusion

No athlete is tougher and depending on position played there will be some overlap in terms of abilities and training programs of these athletes. Generally speaking however the football players should be faster and stronger but get easily gassed. As all round athletes I tip my hat off to rugby players as being some of the toughest athletes around.

And yes, the rugby players would win the drinking contest hands down!

Author: Reggie Johal


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