How To Use "Canary Sessions" To Autoregulate Your S&C Program w/ Ed Lea (SSOF Ep 150)

James de Lacey2:40

So what are the main areas of performance that you're in charge of then right now?

Ed Lea2:40

Definitely the conditioning. So that's kind of the umbrella aspect of the program that I'm looking after. We're really fortunate. We have a guy called James Wild who works with us full-time. He's a Harlequins employee who looks after our speed program. And then Gaz Tong, who is the head of athletic performance—him and myself look after all the strength and power-based work within the gym. But yeah, the conditioning is definitely the area where I have the most autonomy and sway.

Obviously, like any business in the world, as being the head, if he wants something in, I'm going to have to provide him with a strong reason as to why not. But that hasn't come up yet. So at the moment, yeah, I would say as a performance team, we're pretty relaxed and we're very open and have real good conversations.

Nobody takes anything personally. I think a lot of environments want challenging conversations and they want to have this idea of what an elite environment is. And I'm not saying we're elite, because are we performing elite? Finishing seventh in a Premiership probably doesn't suggest that.

But one thing we do know is we know the road we're all driving down and we know the end goal. So that's clear. You need that to have the challenging conversations. And because we all know each other so well, we know the end goal. So therefore the environment is amazing. So yeah, I thoroughly enjoy it at the moment.

James de Lacey4:00

How much does the technical coaching staff influence what's going on? Do they ever kind of butt in and have a say?

Ed Lea4:13

I wouldn't necessarily say butt in. We're fortunate, we've got a guy called Danny Wilson who's our head coach. He's been around a lot of good S&Cs. He's a young coach. He's actually a coach first and foremost. He didn't play at the highest level. So he wasn't an international rugby player. What he did is he worked through the coaching ranks and wanted to be a coach. So his understanding of skill acquisition and his library of drills and how things work and how people learn is fantastic.

So that's the—he's the first head coach I've come across that is like that. A lot of the other head coaches are ex-professional players, which again have their benefits. I know a lot of people especially in our industry dislike that, but I actually think there's a lot of benefits. Their feel for the game is much better, much greater than ours.

But our whole way of developing players is based around two aspects of the game. We need to understand our game model. So we need the coaches involved there. So what is our game model and then the ever-changing landscape of professional rugby.

So I don't think we could be running this program without them being involved. We ask for their involvement and they want to be involved. So it's a two-way street. There's never—at this moment in time, we haven't had a point where they've dived in and said, 'Look, you need to do this or you need to do that.' We've definitely had head coaches in the past at different clubs and at Harlequins where their involvement probably was a little bit overwhelming as a way of putting it. But at the moment, this current coaching cohort, we're really lucky with how we've got the setup going.

James de Lacey5:36

Yeah, I would agree with you with the collaboration there as well. Like the best teams of coaches I work with are the ones where you're putting things together on the field and marrying it in the gym, and you're working with the coach to help facilitate whatever it is you're trying to get out of the session.

Like for example, the easy example is probably like agility development, right? Like you can do shitty cone drills that ain't going to do [expletive]. But when you're working with the skills coach to design scenarios or just a bunch of different scenarios where they can run through that achieve what the coach wants, which might be like 3v2s, counterattacking drills, whatever it is, and you're also getting the chaos you want from the change of direction, decision-making on top of it, it's kind of like the perfect fit.

You're giving them some of the maybe some of the things you want to see, and then they just bang it in and you've got like a build. I mean they've got a bigger drill library than you could ever think of to cover all those things that you want.

Ed Lea6:42

Yeah. And so to give you an example of the collaboration, and this is such a minute part of it. We don't do generic warm-ups with the players. We give them—so let's say we're starting rugby at two. They're professional athletes. They're adults. We say we're on at 2. At 2:00 you need to be coming to me and we split forwards and backs. Me and the other S&C coach, or I say performance coach—you need to be ready to be going at 85%.

I'm not gonna waste my warm-up going through side skips, backwards. Everybody wants to do that and that's fine. That's cool. But we see them three times on field a week. I'm not wasting my warm-up time doing that. I'm confident enough with my rugby ability and my rugby knowledge that I know that today in rugby units—because you got to look through and see what they're doing—I know that on defense they're looking at edge defense and bridge passing.

So I'm confident enough that I can go to Jason Gilman or Nick Evans and say, 'Look, this is the drill I'm looking at to do. I'm going to progress it slowly for 5 to 10 minutes knowing that you're going into this. How does this drill fit within your unit? So I know I want it to blend in.'

And then what language are you using today? Because I also don't want to be using different language. And then if you're using the right language, it feels to the players like you know what you're talking about. They feel like there's a collaboration. It's not just, oh, S&C are here, we're going to do side skips and leg swings and cool, and then we're going to do this fancy little speed drill. Those days are gone for me.

It's now about, right, how can I seamlessly transition the players over to the coaches? And that's—again, that was an example of the collaboration or how we see collaboration at Harlequins. It might not fit for everybody and that might not be what every rugby coach wants, but at the moment that's how we kind of see it.

James de Lacey8:30

That's music to my ears. I'm just thinking back now. I think I learned it from Vern Gambetta back in the day about it. The warm-up and the session itself shouldn't be seen as two distinct different things.

It shouldn't just be all over here now you go do the session. It should you shouldn't even know when the warm-up starts or ends within the session. And you can blend it to the point as you mentioned the same language like even doing say maybe it's a contact defensive day and doing your warm-ups.

Well warm-ups in this context might be some kind of underhook games, grappling games, whatever it is, but you can still reinforce the same fundamentals of tackle tech during that session. Have the sport coaches involved and then it just gradually progresses into harder contacts or the different various things that the coaches have going on.

I mean, you can do the same thing in combat sports as well if people are doing things. I mean, jiu-jitsu, box, MMA, whatever it is, you can do lighter variations of whatever it is you're trying to do and just progressively build and it's such a good way of going about it. It doesn't waste time as you mentioned 10 15 minutes long.

Ed Lea9:39

I think if you got a good grasp of the game model and how the team wants to play, it's a really good opportunity to bring energy in a different way that the coaches do because I think a lot of players, rightly or wrongly, and coaches see the athletic performance staff as the initial energy point.

We have to be the energy givers. Now, not to the I'm not the biggest fan of the screaming, shouting, whistles, that style, but I do believe if you've got a good grasp of the game model, what the session looks like, you've got an opportunity to blend it into the session in a really different way.

So, like making it competitive, but not something that the players are going to get technically pulled up on. Or doing different things like bridge passing. So bridge pass is essentially where in layman's term wingers on the sideline bridge pass goes over one or two attackers to bridge the gap between them quickly and then the defenders have to rush.

So you can do stuff like that. First pass has to be kicked and it's always going to be with a football. Soon as that football's caught that's dropped and then the ball gets passed in. And it's just something different that still connects that when after those 10 minutes of the warm-up they go into bridge pass or bridge attack and it is similar and they've got the ball in hand then the first 2 minutes of that drill isn't going to be sloppy.

But there's just a way to bring some energy, collaborate with the coaches and just show some alignment between the whole team.

James de Lacey11:09

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I love that. And let's bring it to some of the strength conditioning side, too. We're not just talking about rugby there, the entire podcast, but the I think a good place to start would be the different kind of sections or portions of the season, preseason, offseason, in season, kind of how things change throughout that and then obviously we can get into the weeds as we go through this, but maybe you know what do you have an offseason? What's the length of the preseason? What's the length of the inseason? And how did things maybe potentially change just generally throughout those periods?

Ed Lea12:33

Yeah. So that's pretty apt at the moment. We are I am 17 hours into my off season. We have a five week offseason where two weeks of those five weeks we technically can't have any contact with the players. Players will reach out to us and we can provide some insight into what we would do if we were in their position.

We then have three weeks of guided and to be honest we're not really I know that a lot of teams would send out say oh here's seven different conditioning sessions or here's loads of different options for weights. We're pretty dictatorship in ours because gone of the days where you use preseason as a way to build somebody back up.

We preseason is at best 10% of their rugby year at best. And at the moment we've got our preseason is a four-week block, one week off, two weeks back in and then we're into games. So it's not a huge amount of time and you're gonna have to pile on some rugby.

It's quick. So you're gonna have to pile on some rugby there. So we're really fortunate that we've got those first four weeks pretty much to ourselves as S&C. Almost looking relatively old schoolish where it's like right we the head coach has gone we know we need some rugby in there so make sure there's time available for us but we need to be fitter as a team so you've got four weeks to get these guys really fit.

So our off season we dictate exactly what they do. So, we dictate the runs they're doing, knowing what the runs they're going to do coming in, the the sprint intervals that we are doing in preseason. They are going to be doing the sprint intervals on the bike three times a week.

So, we are prepping for that. So, we need to maintain some level of conditioning on bikes for the guys just so that we don't have to have two or three weeks of bringing up the level of conditioning on their legs. So when they come in, we know exactly what they've done and it's very clear if they haven't done it as well.

So then the preseason for us is regaining previous strength levels, regaining or improving cross-sectional area. Reintroducing higher volume of sprint work. So, we're getting that two or three times a week cuz in season the undulating nature of Premiership rugby and European rugby is that you can't necessarily fit it in every week. Everybody wants to do it, but we just can't.

And so those first four weeks are regaining those qualities and then drastically improving a level of conditioning, general and specific. And then once we get into the games, it's about kind of realizing those strengths and understanding how each individual flows.

We're not really for the first four weeks, we definitely don't go, "Right, James, we think you need to put on weight. So, you're going to be in the mass club." That's not how we do it. What we probably do is just emphasize the quality a little bit more once we've regained the strength levels, once we've regained or improved cross-sectional area or got the fitness to where we need it to be or realize that the fitness isn't there.

So, it's probably post preseason. So, it's a little bit different to how a lot of people would think it would be. Post preseason is when we would then start to emphasize the quality rather than in a period where there's not a lot going on.

Because actually when there's not a huge amount of rugby you can develop quite a lot because the stress levels are not there that big load of the weekend of the game isn't there. So we can develop all the qualities and then see which one needs to be emphasized once we start getting into the season.

We have we then so I I'll waffle here so stop me if you want to stop me. We've got we have two warm-up games and then two Premiership Cup games before our first Premiership rugby game. Then we go into a eight block of Premiership rugby.

So there's a lot of rugby in one block. So you're looking at 12 to 14 games if you're playing. Not everybody will play everything. So then you've got to be really savvy with how you go about developing qualities there. So as I said, we'll emphasize a little bit.

And then we need to have a way of understanding how somebody's maintaining those qualities. So little check-in points, little what we call within our system a canary session. So the old canary down a mine, if the CO2 levels are too high, the canary would die. And we just wanted something short and sharp and punchy that we could use to just have a little check-in.

So for example, on let's say your quality that we wanted to develop was conditioning. So we'd go through the preseason block. We'd start to try and emphasize that as a quality and then in a big block in the season, you can't then just have really extensive tests to see if people are maintaining fitness levels.

So we have a canary session that we do most Mondays which never changes, volume and intensity never changes. We track heart rate and we see how your response goes throughout the season. And if your response differs that it should not out the norm for example so if you normally find this session that we use as our canary for fitness if you normally respond at let's say a six or seven out of 10 RPE and then you start over the weeks start to then find it an 8 or 9 out of 10 you will see in your heart rate kinetics they change you have

A big spike or you really struggle to get your heart rate up, then that's our little way of going, "Oh, he might be doing too much or he might be not doing enough." And then it just allows us to sit back and have a look at the landscape and understand where somebody is.

And then the same with if we're, for example, one of the things I use, I had a group last year, one of the ways to track and see how people are going with their strength whilst still getting something out the session, use 45% of your body weight in dumbbells in each hand. And it's just a max rep set. And that's something that you can just use every five or six weeks, which in a silo is a nice way to get some volume in. And then you add in some stuff around that.

And then as a little canary test, you can say, "Well, actually, last time Joe Bloggs got 15 reps on that, he's got 20. Fantastic. Or this time actually he's only got five and he's way off. What have I been doing different?" And then allows you to sit back and go, "Shit, we've actually only had one weight session a week. He's played 80 minutes for seven games in a row." And then it just starts to give you a little bit of an understanding.

So in answer to your question, it's quite hard to say, "Right, we do this for this block, this for this block," because we've got a squad of 65 to 70 who are going to play for 42 weeks of the year. So everybody has such a wildly differing program. But that's one of the real fun aspects of the job at the moment in the Premiership. You have so many players and the games are so dense that you have to be on your feet and understand what's going on.

James de Lacey19:34

I've taken down a bunch of notes, so I've got a lot of questions to go through here. So, let's start with what you talked about, the canary session. So, I think that's something athletes listening to this could potentially start to use themselves as well, almost a kind of a benchmarking workout you do every Monday almost, I guess monitoring, if you want to make it really simple.

In response to this kind of canary session or monitoring kind of exercise, is it something that you're looking to make instant change to the program for them or is it something where you're kind of monitoring and waiting and seeing if this is going to have, if it's a long-lasting effect? At least in some of my experience, some guys might come in in the morning and, you know, a tough game, they're beat up, they do something, they don't perform as well, but then once they're warm and by the afternoon they kind of come right.

So I don't know if there's something there that you're looking at, you know, changing instantly or you kind of just monitoring and seeing what you're going to do.

Ed Lea20:26

Yeah. So I'll take a step back and kind of explain the where we do the session. So that's the really important part. It has to be consistent in where you do it. If you do your canary session on a Monday, then a Wednesday, then there's no point in that. Any monitoring needs to be consistent and reliable.

We tend to do the conditioning block and the fitness thing on the Monday. So the Monday is a real low day for us. And the whole point of the morning of the Monday is to encourage blood flow, restore range of motion, and just leave feeling better than you did in that initial gym morning gym session. They've then had lunch, they've moved around, they've regained some energy and blah blah blah. So we hit that. So that's kind of to put that at the forefront. That's always the same. So nothing ever changes.

And then the canary session that we do with the forwards. So we use a lot of general conditioning for the forwards. It's just because a lot of guys within rugby are heavier. So actually having an on feet submax test on a Monday, you could probably get away with it, but I don't want to. I want people to buy into it. So it is what it is.

And so we have a session that starts slow. So we use the ski erg. And they just go, we use body weight to determine what calories they have to do. But if your body weight stays the same throughout the season, your calories will stay the same. So then you just hit four rounds of X amount of calories on each and three rounds of an increase and then two rounds of an increase and then one round that's spicy.

And I'm talking the final round if you're 110 kilo guy as an open side flanker, maybe 120. You're going to be hitting 18 to 20 calories on each piece. So it's punchy by the end, but it starts very low level. And the reason why I wanted that is I want to get something out of the session as well.

For example, we're not gonna, let's say the Bronco, which I have no issues with whatsoever, the Bronco in itself is not enough to really stimulate or change anything. Whereas this session on its own, if you're consistent with it and you're doing a lot of other stuff in the week, then it will move you forward a bit.

For example, I have my own canary session which I did this morning actually, which is a 5K loop around the area I live and I know what I can do if I'm feeling good, if I'm tired, if I'm really feeling spicy, I want to go for it. And it's the same principle. So we use heart rate and also the ergs and the RPE and just generally chatting to the guys and they just get around that and they know why we do it. So that's why they know that it's consistently there.

And we'll kind of have a look. And a lot of time it doesn't even need to go down as deep as understanding each recovery bit. I don't need that necessarily. That's interesting for me, but a lot of it will come down to one of the open sides who does it consistently or regularly with me. He'll be like, "Geez, those last two rounds were way harder than they were last week." And if that is the case, as you alluded to, I'm not going to change it on that week.

It is where it trends because they might, for example with a squad of 65 to 70, he might have only really been playing the last 20 and then for the past 3 weeks played 80.

And I don't think, and this is a little bit of a side piece and it's with monitoring in general, I think a lot of people want to be quick to change something with a monitoring tool but all it should do is just educate you on the environment at that snapshot. Because as you said as well, you want to get up and they're moving and it might actually be that because they've been playing four games that they've been coming off the bench, that Monday morning was enough to make him feel good.

But actually in reality now if they're consistently playing 80, then in reality they might need two days recovery and then you find out that that's the case and then you might move that canary to Tuesday and go from there. So, I hope that didn't make that sound uber complicated but it was good.

James de Lacey24:18

It makes sense because you're kind of looking at some of the trends of how they performed during that session. If you, for your own one then, if you ran your 5K and you saw a big dip, what would you be doing with your own training?

Ed Lea24:30

Yeah, good question. I would most likely have a look at what I'm planning on doing the next few days and I'm definitely biased towards that because I think that with the players as well. Sometimes I think, "What did I do prior to the session to make me feel good or not feel good?" That's probably where I need to go or do go with the players and I need to probably be more detailed with myself.

So, for example, I know I can comfortably get around this 5K in 22 minutes comfortably. If I come around at 24, I might be like, "Did I just chuck my shoes on and go? Or did I sit on the bike for 5 minutes like I normally do? Or did I have no caffeine?" It might even just be the most simple questions but usually those little snippets give you the easier answers and go, "Okay well actually that's something I just need to remind myself of next time," and it's a habit.

And that's what I do with the players, for example. We have a block after the rugby on the Monday where they come in and do this conditioning session and some of the time when the guys have been like, "Geez that was so much harder than I thought," we'll be like, "Well actually what you had is you had a half break and you didn't come down like you normally do ready and warm.

You actually cooled down and then you sat around. You might have had a refuel bar before you came in." And then they're like, "Oh yeah, okay." And then that's all it takes. You don't throw the baby out with the bath water and go, "Oh my god, let's change this week."

Sometimes if I've run around this in 26 minutes and I'm like, "Jesus, I don't think I've done anything," and I look back previously and I had a week where I had 35 minutes in the red zone, then I'm like, "Ah, potentially that's what I'm feeling like I'm feeling."

I'm also dreadful though in my own way of being like, "Eh, I'm not playing rugby, so I'll just work. I'm still going to lift weights tomorrow morning because I have to because I've got kids and I have to lift at 5:00 a.m."

So, yeah. My daughter doesn't care what my canary session looks like. She's going to want me.

James de Lacey26:28

No, I feel you there. Regarding the sprints as well, obviously we talked a lot about principles on here. You're working with Dr. Andra on that as well. You talked about, so obviously I think you're doing once a week now in season because obviously that's all time allows for with the schedule, but you mentioned I think once you get to preseason or at least offseason you're going to look at three times a week of sprint intervals.

So my question around there is how do you marry the sprint interval training, which is probably I'm assuming your main kind of physiological driver for conditioning, that's kind of your go-to. How do you marry that with say time on feet and a volume that you may need to just be on the feet and moving and doing rugby?

Because I'm assuming that would take place of, you know, I guess a lot of traditional rugby programs might be doing a lot of maximum speed running or hills or, you know, coat hangers and all the general club stuff that a lot of teams do. So, you know, I guess is it replacing a lot of that and then how are you tackling that kind of difference in potential running volume? Is it just more technical training?

Ed Lea27:32

Yeah, it is replacing, but it's not replacing the running. So, we are going into a preseason where our running volume is going to be more than we've ever done previously. And we have a lot of different—

James de Lacey27:44

How many days a week are you typically or you looking to hit in kind of in preseason?

Ed Lea27:59

Yeah. I mean, it's a range because of props and fullbacks range, but I reckon it wouldn't be too dissimilar to, well, not too dissimilar, it wouldn't be too far off, say between 25 and 35k a week. Yeah, obviously in season we could get up to 20k maybe, but the intensity would be very different or the makeup of the intensity would be different.

Where the sprint intervals fit for us is we're going to a lot of running in our preseason, more than we've done previously, as I said, and different to what we've done previously, previously from when I left and where we are now.

And I think the reason for where we are now, so I go off on a little bit of tangent here where I'm at in my head with the conditioning games is, for conditioning games for us and I think a lot of people like it, but I think that's a really good way to emphasize or show your fitness. I don't think it's a great way to develop your fitness if I'm honest.

If you've got a level playing field across your team and your fitness across your team is fantastic, then yeah, conditioning games could be a real good way to really show and develop your fitness. At the moment, where we're at, we probably need to bring up 60% of our squad fitness wise to where we want them to be.

So, using conditioning games as running is not where we are at the moment. We will use games, but it will probably be interspersed with strict running blocks, not necessarily off mass. We go off a lot of time based work in terms of work as hard as you can full time then work fartlek style work and then we'll present that at the end of the session and then retrospectively we try to increase that each time.

There'll be some 1k loop so we're lucky we've got a good road, like a pinpoint 1k loop around our training base which is road running which we'll use a lot this season.

So then to go back to the sprint intervals, the reason why they fit so well for us is because they're so time efficient, but so effective in developing the qualities we're looking for. It's not replacing any running. And it's probably replacing the off conditioning we would do a lot of on those days if we weren't doing conditioning or sprint intervals, sorry.

It's just what I think it's doing is it's complementing for us. It's just emphasizing or putting the icing on the cake on those days that are going to be high. In preseason, we actually what our main aim to do is to get guys fit enough that they can handle a really hard training week in season.

So, we don't do all day every day. What we do is we go right, what's our training week look like in season? And then physically, can the guys handle that at the moment? And if not, right, well, let's use the preseason to really develop those qualities.

Actually, there's you can do too much in preseason. You can run somebody more than they need to be ran. A prop doesn't need to go to 35k. He's never going to do it in a season. So, actually, what you're doing is you're just wasting your time trying to just work somebody hard.

So, what are the areas that are going to complement the rugby and the sprint interval for us is just is working so well. Even with the minimal effective dose we're doing at the moment, we're seeing some changes. So, we're pretty pumped about the three weeks or three times a week. Sorry.

James de Lacey31:14

Nice. So, so that means I think you mentioned obviously high days there. So, was it like three high days a week in the preseason?

Ed Lea31:14

Yeah. So, we go Monday, Wednesday, Friday as our main intensity days, not necessarily main rugby days because as I said before, we've got four weeks where we're the leaders of the program. Or leaders is the wrong term. We are emphasizing the qualities in the program and the rugby will kind of fit in and around that.

Tuesdays will be the guys will be in and this year I think we're going to be doing a lot of swimming and we're going to be using that day as an upper body volume day but little to no on feet work and even if it was on feet it would be based. And then Thursday we tend to have off.

And then once they come back from the four weeks so they have four weeks on, one week off and then back in, then it will go to a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday like we have in season and emphasizing those days and getting them used to basically so that we can go back and if last year a Monday was here, we wanted them to be able to handle that as a low day on Monday and then go from there and develop those qualities.

James de Lacey32:20

Gotcha. And then they will also do their running work that you mentioned there on those Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Ed Lea32:20

Yeah. Correct. Yeah.

James de Lacey32:20

Gotcha. Gotcha. That makes sense. Perfect. What's interesting is there a couple different—Let's go to this one here. So you were with the Highlanders for a bit and their preseason or their season structure is a lot different in Super rugby. I think you would have had 4 months preseason in that time. Is that somewhere around there?

Ed Lea32:35

Yeah. No, November through to March. So yeah, pretty much.

James de Lacey32:35

Yeah. So how does that change then or how did that change I guess how you approach this? Because obviously you have a much smaller or shorter window with the Harlequins that kind of driven to what you do now. Was the approach different then in that scenario?

Ed Lea32:59

Yes and no. It was definitely more of an older view, older school view. And that's no disrespect to it. That's not bad. It's just how I think a lot of people initially coming around would think preseason would look like.

So we would have it was I think it was like November the 11th until say December the 17th, 18th maybe—

James de Lacey33:17

Just beasting.

Ed Lea33:17

Yeah, just beasting. And then and rugby would be dabbled in and out of that. And I'm purely speaking for the Highlanders here. There will be rugby in it, but I'm pretty sure it's the same for, I mean I've seen a lot of clubs around here so it's very similar.

And then after that actually it wasn't crazy different, sorry, from Premiership in terms of they come back after their Christmas break and you'd be pretty much performing like a rugby week except instead of the game being on the Saturday it's on the Friday. So you'd have your two buildup days, one big day and then you'd perform on the Friday.

It would just be two days off, two days. And they would structure it around Friday being a big dose of intensity or stimulus but around the rugby content. And then all it did is once they got into season, that Friday bumped to the Saturday and then they had a captain's run on a Friday.

We don't do captain's runs anymore. And we haven't done it at Quins for years now. But it wouldn't change too drastically. I think there's definitely the program is heavily driven by S&C prior to Christmas. Heavily driven whereas I'd say we drive what we need but rugby has dabbled in and out whereas it's heavily driven by S&C before there but it's not too different.

I think there I would definitely go about things slightly differently because it is a bit weird to have a longer preseason than you actually have a season. And I'd maybe structure it slightly differently, maybe start later, but it's—yeah, I'm not the one paying the bills, so it's—

James de Lacey34:46

What would be your, what would be your ideal November to December then in that situation?

Ed Lea35:09

Yeah. So, I would I'd have them start later and maybe go a little bit closer to Christmas because I think 2 and a half, 3 weeks off over Christmas is actually long enough to really dampen some qualities.

I'd then maybe have it as a really slow increase. So instead of just going hard from day one where you're building up all these qualities and I think it sounds really good to be like, 'Oh, they're going to go away. They're going to hold on to them and then when they come back we can realize it.' But actually, you come back and you go into rugby.

So actually, I think what you've done is you worked out really hard. You then come back into rugby. Rugby for me as well, we didn't have the fittest side around, especially in the first year we kind of moved forward a little bit.

But I think rugby then drops down because it looks hard but the guys that are working all is the same guys that are working. So the guys that are not as fit have worked hard before Christmas, probably not done a huge amount over the three weeks, and then come back and then they're into a rugby structure.

So I would probably have rugby in there earlier but have more running blocks throughout it consistently all the way up to the preseason games, whereas I felt that there was a lot of the fitness qualities got pulled away too early, too soon.

And then I think because of the nature of Super Rugby and how short it is, there was definitely a feeling of like, "Right, let's go hard and they've only... it's only 16 weeks, so let's really push them." But actually, yeah, it's only 16 weeks, but you've had four months of preseason.

So it's like they're with you from November through to July. So there's still a long time. So there needs to be more... a little bit more of a consideration of individual players and maybe suiting the individual, sorry, suiting the program to the individual rather than trying to suit the individual to the program, if that makes sense.

James de Lacey36:58

Yeah. Yeah. And some of them obviously playing NPC or playing in Japan and whatnot during the off seasons and stuff.

Ed Lea36:58

Exactly. Now that's the really challenging thing around New Zealand rugby and it's a positive and a negative is that I could spend from November through to July really trying to emphasize the quality with you or really emphasize a physical development, and then you go to your NPC side and the S&C coach there has a differing view.

Not saying theirs is right or wrong, but it's just different. And then they come back and you're like, "What's happened? I was trying to develop you. Let's... this is the most basic understanding of it. Let's say I was trying to add muscle mass onto you and we knew it was a long, slow process and yeah, there are conversations between NPC, but you then go to your NPC club and then they're like, "No, no, no, we need you fast," and then you go and drop body weight.

And it sounds good when everyone says, "Oh no, there's collaboration and we're back and forth and they'll try and develop what they want," but when push comes to shove and there's pressure on and the head coaches go, "I don't care what Ed said at the Highlanders, he's at Taranaki now and we need him to be performing now because my job's on the line. You need to drop weight on that guy then."

So it's a tough one. And I'm not... that makes it sound like that was an everyday conversation, but it's just a challenge. It's a challenging part of the...

James de Lacey38:10

Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, everyone's running their own program. So for something to be truly collaborative, it's almost got to be under the same... in the same building, has the same staff.

And that's why, for example, I know there's a guy called Gareth Duda and Sean Curry at the Crusaders who... and I know Sean writes the program at Canterbury, and from what I've heard... I know I've chatted to Gareth a few times and I've chatted to Sean once or twice, but from what the players have said that came from Canterbury back to Highlanders, they said that they run a real good cattle and there was... you could tell that you were in the same building. I know, and it would be easy to change it, but from what I've heard they're running a really good program there.

So for what I said there doesn't... isn't an umbrella statement.

Ed Lea39:07

Yeah, the reason Crusaders is one of the best teams in the world, I guess, isn't it out that way. Actually, I talked to Sean once actually, a long time ago when he finished a gig in Russia. And the Russian S&C was like, "Hey, do you want this gig in Russia?" Because the Romania one tanked during COVID and I was like, "Wow."

He was telling me about the gig and stuff, but it was in the middle of... like we're not talking about Russia. I'm not talking about a major city. I'm talking an hour flight from Moscow in the middle of, like...

James de Lacey39:36

Next to the Gulag, dude.

Ed Lea39:47

And I was looking at the pictures on the internet and I was like, I don't know if I can take my wife. For me is all good. Like we enjoyed it there, but to go to the middle of bum nowhere Russia with no English, I don't think that's going to work.

James de Lacey39:47

Going now though?

Ed Lea39:47

God, no, exactly. It'll be even worse now.

James de Lacey40:03

Anyway, back on topic. So I guess some of the question I have around congested scheduling. So obviously you have games every week and congested playing schedules.

I actually had a question from a fighter the other day around how he's struggling to hit certain qualities in a training week because he's boxing so often right now in that congested period. So this would be a good one to kind of throw to you, I guess.

How are you deciding what... you mentioned there's some sessions that kind of help you decide, but how are you deciding what qualities you want to emphasize with the player, then how are you deciding when and what you're shifting to within that schedule?

Ed Lea40:35

I think first and foremost you need to... it becomes almost cliché, but you need a really good relationship with the players. And the reason why I say that is because if you were to look at how we structure individuals' weeks, not everybody does the same session on the same day.

And that goes back to that you said you're one of the fighters. I think it was a boxer you said struggles to hit physical qualities where you need to. But I think that's because a lot of people try and stick to a structure. They think it should fit into... they should always do their strength stuff at the beginning of the week and then you start to build up and you don't do lower body on Thursday and blah.

Actually in reality I call it a shopping list. So I go to some of our players, the group that I'm looking after at the moment, and you go, "Right," after... and it can't be just week one, but you see how they develop, see how they respond to the stimuluses that you're putting forward to them, because you might introduce new exercises, etc.

And once you've had a few weeks, maybe a month or two of that routine fitting in, because you've got a long time to have these conversations, you then go, "Right, I've got these six exercises that we need to get done this week, and they need to be this volume and this is how we're progressing it, etc., etc. At the moment, where do you feel that fitting in your week?"

Then we extrapolate that out and so we've got our six main exercises. Then we go, "Right, these are the assistant or accessory exercises, whatever, volume-based exercises that I'd like to do because in reality if we don't do them for a few weeks, we don't hit them, then we're probably going to start losing some muscle mass, probably dropping down a little bit of strength, blah, blah." And then we've got some arms and some ab work that I'm like, "Nah, I don't care if you get bicep curls done, but they're available to you."

So once you kind of get your first, second, third choice exercises in, then you can spread it out over the week. And you might find that one guy goes, "I feel I can really push my strength in my lower body on a Tuesday," whereas one guy might say, "Actually, on a Thursday, it works for me a little bit better."

I know it's not traditional, but a Thursday might work for me to do my single-leg work. And if you know the player, you go, "Yeah, okay. I don't think it affects you on the Thursday. I don't think it affects your game on the weekend." Then yeah, let's go at it.

As long as we... intent drives adaptation. That's all I care about, the intent around the exercise. And I think if you saw our program, the volume's pretty low because the rugby is the main thing and we kind of keep it the main thing.

So I think it's hard to push the physical qualities you want to develop if you don't have a really solid weekly structure. We have a dense games and they change from a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but it doesn't creep up on me.

It's a Friday structure, a Friday game doesn't suddenly turn up on a Monday. I know when it's coming. So it's understanding that your body doesn't work in a week. You can look forward and go, "Between now and Christmas," or let's say it's November and we've got a two-month block.

We've got 17 strength sessions to get done. They fall here, here, here, and blah, blah, blah. Once you then know the player and you understand those levels of exercises and where it fits, then you can start to really apply the shopping list method to your week and understand how to get it done.

Having said that though, I'm going to caveat this with the young guys. So guys that are coming in maybe fresh out of the academy, I would probably be a bit more dictatory to be like, "I don't feel... and without being patronizing, I don't think you know the structure of the week well enough. You've been in school or you've been in an academy system where you're not playing week in, week out."

So I'm going to expose you to what I think for you is the best week, and then in a year or two, maybe even sooner, might be months we're talking, we can then start to change it to fit how you feel because everybody changes. Everybody responds differently to the stimulus.

James de Lacey44:38

I want to emphasize what you said there about it doesn't have to be seven days. You can think in 10, 14 day micro cycles as well to get stuff done instead of trying to jam everything into the same week, which honestly it's hard.

Ed Lea44:55

It's so, it's a hard mindset to break because you know it's so nice to think Monday to Sunday, football every week's the same. And when you're going 10 days like Monday to Wednesday, everything kind of just feels out of sorts.

But as well, I've had some interesting conversations with players, especially senior players, where you're like, "Okay, well, you're saying you're struggling to push your lower body on a Monday and Tuesday. Let's do it on a Thursday." And if they've played 10 years of professional rugby to then say, "Why don't we try some lower body stuff on a Thursday before playing on a Saturday?" They're going to have to trust you that that works.

And then the way you get around it is you go, "Okay, well, this Thursday, we're just going to do one working set. See how you feel on a Saturday. One working set of squat or walking lunges or whatever the hell you're doing. If that's ruining your game on a Saturday, we got bigger issues than we thought." So you have to have the trust of the players and the confidence. So yeah, that's kind of how we go about it.

James de Lacey45:51

It's funny. Many years ago I had a player from Georgia, and he was setting up. It was I think it must have been the Friday before a Saturday game. He set up, he started, want to do heavy squats and I was like what the, like what are you doing to play tomorrow? And he's like yeah, it's what they do in Georgia, heavy squats on a Friday. I was like I was thinking what the, I mean I guess if it works it works, but that was crazy to me to think someone would be squatting.

I mean, I guess he was a front rower, so he's just meat heads on scrum and stuff like that. But yeah, it's nuts to think. I mean, I guess anything works. I've seen some different week schedules and stuff. I'm like, whoa, you know, players don't feel beat up from that or players don't feel beat up from doing content on a Thursday and have to play Saturday. There's so many different ways of doing things. It's quite interesting.

Ed Lea46:31

We have, I mean, I was working with a prop this year who wasn't probably in a good position to squat. You look at him, he's jacked shoulder, he has actual loading issues, et cetera. But he had to squat 200 every week to a box. I mean, you wouldn't look at it and go, "That's a really good squat." It's not bad, but he's mentally, I have to do this on a Monday to know I'm set up for the week.

And you're like, geez, I was big enough and ugly enough to be like, yeah, fine. It's not taking away from my ego. As long as you know what I feel about you doing this, if this is making you prep for the week better, then have at it.

And I think the quicker you realize that players also have things they need to get done, then you can really have a good program because there's a lot of players that actually, Chris Ashton, the England winger who came to us for a few years, I was pretty new in the rehab role then. This was a fair while back. And I remember being like, "Shit, Chris, this is Chris Ashton. I get to look after him. This is amazing." And started working with him, got on really well with him and tried to provide him with an exercise.

And he stopped me one day and I don't think he knew the impact this conversation had on me. But he said, "Ed, I've had 10 different S&C coaches in my life with 10 different ways of thinking about things. I know what I need to do to feel good. So, just you let me know if you got anything else you want to really add, but if you don't, then this is what I need to do." And I remember driving home in silence thinking, "Oh, he's just completely changed." I thought I'd be getting all my gems off podcast and everything like that, but actually it was just a senior player that dropped a mic in front of me and I was like, "Oh god."

James de Lacey48:21

That's the thing with podcast and socials. People can talk about the best way to do XYZ. Then you walk into a professional weight room and you see everyone squatting above parallel. What's some other faux pas I guess in lifting? That's probably the main one. There's probably a bunch of other ones.

Ed Lea48:34

The beasts come out to play, isn't it? They're like, "Oh, yep." And then you see maybe not full range chin-ups or whatever else you see going on, you go, "Wait, but these guys are pro athletes." And then once you're in there, you realize.

For example, I put a video up the other day of our fullback who he did 20 reps with 20 kilos hanging off from a chin up, and I reckon he had a slight angle on his elbow. And the amount of people that DM'd me being like, "You can't be counting them as full reps." I'm like, the guy's had a UCL. He plays every week. This is on Monday and he's made X amount of tackles. It's, geez, you go do it then. You go do 20 half reps with them and then we'll talk.

James de Lacey49:38

It's funny. Only the ones who've worked in the environment understand what's going on and the things that I guess, I'm going to say let slide, but use that loosely, not letting it slide, but the things that don't matter in the grand scheme of things. They're getting the work done as you mentioned, the intent's there. Sure, maybe if you want to do some body weight reps after, you might cue him, but doing 20 reps of 20 kilo, just let him rip it.

Ed Lea49:58

What I say to guys with the lifts is as long as your range of motion doesn't change, that's fine. If this is the range of motion you can get, then we're going to work in it and we'll work hard. The intent drives what we're going to get changed. But as long as the range of motion doesn't change, that's fine.

James de Lacey50:24

And if they can't get deeper and you want them to get something deeper, hey, maybe you're going to do some body weight after to get that real whatever. But you got to ask yourself, why do I need them to get deeper? What's that going to change?

On the idea, last question for you as I finish as well, but the idea of the shopping list and kind of having the exercises in a week, you obviously have kind of, well I assume you have dedicated strength training times, but do you ever have guys that pick, maybe they want to do a little bit most days of the week, say they want to do one or two exercises Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, maybe some Friday, whatever it is.

Ed Lea50:57

Yeah, definitely. We have, I mean we've got a lot of senior players beat up. We've got a lot of that as most teams do. So we definitely have dedicated strength sessions Monday, Tuesday, Thursdays, but on those days if I build good enough rapport with you and you want to do it really early on a Monday or you want to do it last thing on a Tuesday or you want to do your sprints on a different day than we want to do it on and you want to dribble it throughout the week or you want to do something on a Wednesday which is an off day, I'm more than happy for that to happen.

I mean, for example, we've got a few players that need to add on a little bit of muscle mass, and the first go-to is not to add weights in. It's to dial in your nutrition. But once that's kind of dialed in, some of them might be like, "I want to do some arms on a Friday." Absolutely fine. As long as you don't go to a Rich Piana 8 hour arm set, I'm fine.

But I'm very open. Maybe to my detriment. It hasn't cost me anything at the moment, but to let's set your week up however you want. As long as, if there's a glaring issue, I'm not just going to blindly let you do random stuff, but as long as it's sensible to me and it works for you, then we can spread it out throughout the week as much as you want.

If, for example, we don't really have lower and upper body sessions as such. It's more kind of like, right, we need to make sure we get our lower body done, our single leg stuff done maybe a little bit earlier this week, so let's try and chat to the guys and see if we can get on a Monday.

But actually, it's probably a good day to press because we know we're going to have contact here and blah blah blah. So it's we'll have the shopping list. We'll make it work. The players know that it could change that, for example, we might have a Friday session and we might be training offsite on a Wednesday.

So actually, we've actually only got one training, one lifting session on a Monday. So yeah, I know your ideal situation was this, but unfortunately this week, one week out of the 42, we're going to have to put all our eggs in one basket and do our session all today and do everything today. And I know you don't like it, but these are the reasons. And then we might have two weeks after that where it's perfect and we can set situate your week exactly how you like.

James de Lacey53:08

Nice. Do have or do say like pregame power primers ever come into some of the scheduling? So day before or morning of kind of like quick and fast gym sessions?

Ed Lea53:26

Nah. No, it's not really something we do. It's for me I think a lot of the research which is valid and to be honest I haven't gone back to the research in a while so stuff might have changed.

A lot of the research I initially read was valid, but then when you see it applied, the loads weren't heavy enough. The intent wasn't there. It was more of like an energy session, which for me was then doing the opposite of an energy session and then draining from your cup the day before a session.

So yeah, so that's not really something we do. I also I don't have a huge amount of experience in it either. So I've kind of put my nail in the ground with that and we don't really program that.

The only times we'd probably come across it is if you get a player from an older player from another environment that has it. And again, that goes back to their shopping list. Like we had Jamie Roberts who came from Welsh environments and the Welsh team at the time was big into Friday lifts, hype up lifts or even the day of the game.

The guys play British Irish Lions. Who am I as a at the time I was a 25-year-old S&C coach to tell him that he shouldn't do that? It's that's not my place either. But if you're coming through my system or our system and you're asking me my opinion, that would be my opinion.

James de Lacey54:48

Did they or I mean that might have been a while beforehand, but if any other Welsh players have brought up any of kind of the Bosch concepts over to that or are you using anything kind of from that?

Ed Lea54:48

Funny you say that that I haven't heard many people apply the Bosch methods well within a rugby environment. I think they either go full Bosch or no Bosch and it's yeah we haven't really applied it. And I haven't really come across a player that has used it extensively. So no.

James de Lacey55:06

Good. I think that was everything everything I had for you. Where can people find it and follow you and keep up with what you're doing? Oh actually yeah is did that clip posted on your Instagram with the chinup so I can start commenting on your stuff.

Ed Lea55:21

Yeah the you're now testing me. I got asked this last time with Andrew and he asked I think I'm just down as Ed Lee on Instagram. So Ed Lee87 on Instagram. An open platform so you can secretly follow me if you don't want to actually follow me. But yeah, that's kind of the only place I'm at. I'm on Twitter but never post. I'm not very good at that type of stuff.

I quite like putting up things of our of our players and how we're going. But I'm the typical guy that I'll only put the good stuff up. You're not going to get any bad stuff.

James de Lacey55:54

Yeah, fair enough.

Yep. I see I see the clip here. Yeah, I'll link up the I'll link up your Instagram down in the description for anyone who's listening. Oh, you're on LinkedIn, too. I'll link up that too for anyone who wants to maybe get in contact with you and ask any questions or anything like that. But I appreciate you coming on, Ed.

Ed Lea56:17

No worries. Thank you very much for having me.