Application Of Soviet Sports Science w/ Mark Bennett (SSOF Ep 117)

James de Lacey2:46

Was that Medvedev?

Mark Bennett2:46

Yeah, yeah. After tennis I went back to do some work for World Rugby, and I was in Romania prior to the last World Cup. While I was there I met the current head coach at the Blues where I'm working now, Vern Cotter, and ended up going to Auckland to work with him.

So nice, over the years I've had a quite varied career in terms of quite a lot of clubs when I think back, but it has been, going to say, it's going to be probably like 27 or 28 years while that's taken place.

James de Lacey3:18

Yeah, it's a lot of experience we can dive into as well. And congratulations on the Super Rugby Championship as well with the first season. Obviously it doesn't get any better, coming to a club first season and doing that.

Mark Bennett3:18

Perfect.

James de Lacey3:18

So if we come back to the training philosophy, we can start with the strength training stuff around, I guess, this kind of Soviet Sports Science influenced model. Do you want to maybe just dive into maybe how you see strength training for sports performance?

Mark Bennett3:47

I think the first thing is that I don't tend to separate them out. They are separate trainings, but I think it's important that they're all considered within the same plan, schedule, context, whatever you want to say. So at one end you have a maximum force output, which I suppose would be maybe powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting in a one-off event, and you go right through to the other end, which is endurance, where you consider it's about being able to produce a percentage of your maximal force over and over and over without getting fatigued and being able to repeat that.

So I think it's important to realize that I think everything has been on one spectrum. And at one end you simply have the ability to produce high levels of force in an instant. On the other end you're having to reproduce medium levels of force for a longer sustained period of time. And it's about how you train to maximize your performance on that spectrum dependent upon your sport and needs and your individual makeup. And you have to take all those facts into consideration.

And it's important to realize that sometimes maximum force training, in the sport I'm in, sometimes that sports training will need to take place outside the gym. But also we have times when you can be very beneficial for your endurance performance within the gym. So I think the first protocol is that I consider it all to be in one lab. I don't try to separate them out.

James de Lacey5:59

In terms of, you said some of the max force might be done outside the gym, is that referring to like contact, collision-based work, or is that something...

Mark Bennett5:59

I'm thinking more about if you're trying to... Okay, so it's not maximum force, but it's towards the spectrum. If you consider that large spectrum of events, then you have, people wouldn't consider sprinting or jumping to be close to that maximum force, but it's certainly a lot closer than it is to the endurance end. So I'm thinking about things like sprints, when you're towing, throwing medicine balls, that type of stuff. It's all part of the same output or developing the same outcomes. It's just when you do them within your training cycle and who you do them with.

James de Lacey6:29

Yeah, that. Let's dive into that a little bit. So maybe we can start on the individual level. How are you deciding then, I guess, who needs what? If someone needs to be more on the endurance end, or someone needs to be more on this maximum force end?

Mark Bennett6:57

Okay, so let's take a step back. Even though they're all, even though they're both on the same spectrum, I'd have separate tests. So you could be, you could be a requirement for maximum force, let's just say, and you could also be a requirement for endurance. It's just how we train those factors would be dependent on tests.

So there are a number of tests that you could use from Carmelo Bosco, for instance, to find out what type of strength training is more beneficial for you, which I quite like and I frequently use. So they'd involve, the typical test where maybe you would do a squat jump, so not a countermovement jump, a squat jump from a set position. You would do a squat jump with varying weights on your shoulders up to body weight, and then you would look at the difference between your basic squat jump, a ratio of your basic squat jump and your weighted squat jump.

And you would hope that, now I'm going to have to pull this figure out of the air without checking, I have a feeling that it's going to be somewhere about, I think it's about 27%. I think you'd want to jump 27% of the height with a barbell of your body weight on your back in comparison to your normal squat jump. If you jump more than 27% of that height, or whatever the figure is, I'd have to go and check, you would be focused on explosive-type strength work. If you jump less than that height, then I would focus players on maximum strength work.

And then from there you have looking at depth jump height, how high can you countermovement jump and how high can you depth jump off a box the same height of your countermovement jump? Okay? And if you can't jump higher than your countermovement jump, if that makes sense, then I'd be looking at doing some stretch-shortening cycle type work. If you can jump higher, then I'd be more concerned again with whatever we're doing is going to be focused on being able to improve rate of force development in the muscles rather than worrying about the tendons or the muscle-tendon bodies.

And then in terms of endurance, I'm probably looking at testing players on a Bronco and looking at normative data and making a decision about whether they have very good or good aerobic endurance for their position or not, and then placing them on programs according to that, really.

James de Lacey9:59

Gotcha. And then with the depth jump, then you're comparing that to countermovement jump. Does it, are you taking reactive strength index measures off that, or just doing a straight jump height comparison?

Mark Bennett9:59

Jump height. I think that there are too many factors that go into RSI. I mean, you can tell somebody, you can get an extremely good RSI by having very short contact times and not jumping too...

High, so people's jump... I just prefer to look at the actual height they achieve. So I tell people drop off that box, have a relatively soft landing, not a stiff landing. So it's a depth jump rather than a drop jump. Jump as high as you possibly can, and I'm hoping that that height will be higher than you can... So there's two factors. I'm hoping that that height will be higher than your counter movement jump, but I'm also setting the height of the box at roughly what your maximum counter movement jump is.

James de Lacey10:56

That makes sense. You want to maybe go into a little bit of detail, especially for the listeners, around why someone should ideally, or potentially, be able to jump higher with the depth jump versus just the counter movement jump?

Mark Bennett10:56

Well, I mean, you have the... it's obviously a very forceful contraction. And I know we shouldn't talk about absorbing force, but as we go down our tendons are able to stretch and use that force like an elastic band to re-explode. And good athletes would have the tendency to be able to... would be very good at that.

And in my experience the most explosive, quickest guys, with the right type of training, can have a better depth jump than they do counter movement jump. And it's also interesting that if you look at the two abilities, at one end you have a squat jump, which is almost completely dependent upon the muscular body, to some extent. How quickly can that produce force, or how much force can it produce in the time available?

If that... that's a lot harder to improve than a depth jump. I mean, actually improving somebody's ability to utilize their tendons and switch off the Golgi reflex, etc., it's a lot easier than trying to just improve explosive strength, which is going to be very dependent upon muscle fiber type.

James de Lacey12:25

Perfect. And I want to further go into your philosophy, especially around, I guess, some of these maximum outputs we've talked about: maximum force outputs, being explosive. And I believe you're... I'm not going to say you're against, but let's take the extreme side, the coordinative approach. We can even just say like Frans Bosch as a real extreme end, or we could even look at maybe force vectors, trying to do movements in directions or movements that are similar to what's happening within the sport. Does that come into your training plan philosophy at all?

Mark Bennett12:55

At some point, but not so much. There going to be... maybe we'll get to a little bit more about how I plan my training. So towards the end there might be some work done, but I would consider it practice rather than, you know... The players do this type of work.

If I could have some sort of count of the type of training we did, even if we did it in terms of minutes, the specific training we do on a weekly basis, daily basis, is going to be a lot higher than the general training. And my job is to make the players better athletes. They're already running, stepping, stopping, re-accelerating, getting up and down off the floor, whatever movements you want to talk to. They're already doing this for two or three hours during the day, so I want to give them the potential to be better than that.

So I want to give them a... the easiest analogy is to think about is like a racing driver. They're already sitting in that car practicing driving for three or four hours every day, so why would I spend more time on that? My concern is about giving them a bigger engine. And that bigger engine may not transfer immediately, but it will transfer. It may take three weeks, it may take six weeks, but it will transfer.

So I would rather spend my time making changes to physical changes that will actually make them a better player, rather than trying to improve coordination. And I think the problem we have is, again, we talk about spectrums. You need two things from training: you need specificity and you need overload. We have plenty of specificity, so I need to make sure there's overload there.

If you want to change somebody physically, it doesn't just come by tapping them with the little wooden chopstick. That's not how physical change occurs. Our bodies don't want to change, so I have to take a sledgehammer and you have to hit them with a sledgehammer. And you have to understand how long it takes them to recover from that beating, or training session I should say—don't mean that really—how long does it take to recover?

And how many times do I need to hit them with that sledgehammer, and how hard do I need to hit them with that sledgehammer? And how do I do this to get the correct type of physical change?

Once I have that physical change... so I think about, if I'm thinking about the weight room, I think it's important to think that... maybe do I care about... maybe the easiest way to look at this is, I had this conversation with Vasansi and I spoke to him about squatting. I said, "How important is squat strength?" And he said, "Well, squat strength is not important." He said, "But if you train correctly to be a good rugby player, you should have a very good squat."

Because it's not the strength training from the squat that manages... it's not the amount of force. So if I gain 10 kilograms on my squat, it's not that 10 kilograms I've gained that goes into the movement. It's the squat training, it's the improvement of neural capacity or neural drive. It's the stiffness in my tendons, it's the increasing cross-sectional area of type two fibers. These are the things that make me a better rugby player.

And these are the things that I'm using strength training as the sledgehammer to beat the player to get these changes. It's those changes. And you know what? It's really nice that at the end you might put... from your start to end of your career, you might end up putting 80 kilos on your bench press and you might end up putting 140 kilos on your squat. But those aren't my desired outcomes. Those are simply really nice side effects of training that players enjoy having. Does that make sense?

James de Lacey16:53

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So instead of chasing... a lot of people talk about you got to squat, bench, or deadlift more and these numbers got to go up regardless. But it's more so, "Hey, I'm doing these to drive these adaptations: more recruitment, etc." And if the numbers go up, fine, but if not...

Mark Bennett16:53

And you know what? They will go up. But they won't go up when you think they'll go up. They'll go up six weeks after you expect them to go up when we do something else. And these are the things that players... you have to have some trust from players or the people you're working with. And soon they start to realize, "Oh, actually, he's not lying to me. These things are happening. Maybe I need to start listening and doing what we say."

So I think it's important that we realize that rugby players, well, they do need to be strong, but it's a side effect of their training. It's not the desired outcome.

James de Lacey17:42

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Is there a point where you would deem... I'm not going to say too strong, but someone who's very far on that strength spectrum where you would potentially do less of that work?

Mark Bennett18:10

Well, I think, yeah, not necessarily. Look, you need to maintain it, and I have some thoughts around that as well. But I don't think you can ever be too strong. That's just a side effect. You can spend too much time chasing adaptations in the gym. You can do that. So you can't... you haven't got time to spend four hours in there a week. You may need to do two hours every week of this type of work, or three hours every week of this type of work.

But when we get to the point where players are very strong, the chances are that it's not the same sort of sledgehammer beating they need anymore. I still need to do strength training, but now maybe my strength training is focused on explosive work, or it's focused on plyometric work. Or it's... you know, so there's a little bit of a different focus on it, although I'm always revisiting things. You're trying to individualize things according to that.

So I'm not sure, you know, what is it really going to hurt me if I can squat 500 kilos? Maybe it'll hurt my back at some point, but no, it's not going to hurt me. What is going to hurt me as a player is spending 10 hours every week trying to, but I have other things I need to chase and other adaptations that are more important.

James de Lacey19:10

Yeah, that makes sense. And we can go into some of your training programs as well, like you mentioned before. So do you want to maybe go through how that's kind of designed? It sounds like... is it almost kind of blocked, or you're kind of pushing max...?

Mark Bennett19:37

Believer in block periodization. There's some very good literature that comes out of the old USSR that shows how much better block periodization is in elite athletes than what we would call complex parallel. So you've got conjugate sequence, which isn't what Louie Simmons does, at...

Westside. If you look at it, conjugate sequence is actually doing a block working on one or two specific adaptations and then moving on to the next block and the next block, whereas complex parallel would be doing everything at once.

If you have a good athlete, let's take a little step back. If I'm working with a rugby team, maybe I'm lucky if I have four hours or five hours a week off-season and two hours a week in-season. So how in-season can I get physical capacities to move or change if I am working on everything I need to do?

If I'm working on maximum strength, rate of force development, plyometric ability or stretch-shortening cycle, aerobic endurance, maximum speed, agility, where do I find time in the week to do that? And more importantly, where do I find enough time to do enough volume of work to actually change something?

So I'm not a huge believer. I see so much in team sports, two things turn me off straight away. If I see somebody's programming and on a Monday they're doing strength training and on a Tuesday they're doing strength training, on a Thursday they're doing power training or whatever you want to call it, if they do that with their players or clients, that turns me off.

And the second thing that turns me off is if I see somebody who starts a periodization paradigm for strength training where they're doing, for example, 10 on 70% of some movement at the start or five on 80% and they're moving towards a one-rep maximum. Well, that's just a strength training program. I don't want to get them stronger, I want to drive adaptations.

James de Lacey21:42

So that's interesting. Okay, so within, say, because there's a lot of, I guess within combat sports, grapplers will compete very often. You could probably compare that similar to an in-season as well then. Are you blocking, say, three or four weeks of just pure, "Hey, this is maximal strength development," and another three or four weeks blocking, "This is just pure development"? It's in-season as well?

Mark Bennett22:12

Yes, yes, I'll do that. Because we don't have enough time. And when some people in rugby would worry about moving away from maximum strength for a while because of the obvious needs to maintain muscle mass and size, but I think when you look at a lot of the work that you can do for explosive strength, for instance, in blocks, you can do complex training or contrast training. So there are many ways to include some stimulus in there that will maintain muscle mass or body weight.

James de Lacey22:38

Okay, so you'll still have some of those elements even within those blocks as well?

Mark Bennett22:38

But it's important to realize that if, for example, in my complex, if I'm doing a block of work to develop explosive strength, maybe I'll have some heavy squats in there or some heavy leg press or some heavy lunges, whatever the movement is that's suitable for that player. May well have that work in there. But the goal of lifting two reps at 90% won't be to improve maximal strength. It'll be to be able to potentiate or produce some post-activation potentiation or whatever you want to call it for the explosive exercises that are following it.

But again, there's a nice side effect where if I'm doing that, I'm helping to maintain some element of maximum strength. I'm able to push out for longer before I need to revisit that training block.

James de Lacey23:41

So then, what does a general set-rep look like for developing that maximum strength thing? Because you mentioned working up to one-rep max.

Mark Bennett23:41

So in the off-season, it maybe something, I'd be using like repeat serial methods where maybe doing something like, for example, they might do a session, for example, it might be a chosen exercise. And look, I don't think it has to be a squat, because it can be a lunge, it can be a leg press, as long as it's working the correct muscle groups I have no issues. Leg extension? Look, some players I got no issue with. They're not going to be the mainstay of the program.

So maybe a session for lower body in a, I call it a maximum strength period, but I'm not trying to develop maximum strength. In reality, what am I trying to get out of that period? I'm trying to get increased neural drive. I'm trying to get increased cross-sectional area of type 2 fibers, these types of things.

So it could look like it could be sort of 12, 10, 7, 5 reps at 60, 65, 70, 75, 80% with maybe five minutes between sets, and then maybe a 10-minute break and then they'd repeat that. That could be a type of training session for some players, especially younger players who need to improve muscle mass.

For players who have some more, for players who have a greater training age and maybe don't need to worry about muscle mass so much and have better recovery capacities for heavier weights rather than just volume, maybe they would look at something like two to three sets of three reps at 90% of one-rep maximum with five minutes recovery and then maybe a 10- to a 15-minute rest period and repeat that again.

James de Lacey25:49

Would they just be doing that one lift in that session? Because that would be almost an hour, wouldn't it, just for that?

Mark Bennett25:49

Yeah, they, so, I, this is my other belief is that, what do I want to do? Do I want to just throw a load of exercises at players and hope that they get better, or shall I focus on one or two things and really try and get the adaptations that I need out of those?

So maybe they would do that, and maybe at the end of the training we would have some, so, off-season, that's an hour probably to do the main exercise of the day, and then maybe there's sort of 15 minutes at the end where we might do some things like nordics, calf raises, depending upon individual needs.

So we'll test the players. We'll use a force frame to test the players and we'll understand if the hamstrings are strong, we'll understand if their calves are strong. And if we're doing enough fast running, if I'm honest, I don't care too much about those muscle groups. I just want them, I want my players, when I look at rugby, it's about being able to push into the floor really hard with your feet. That's what I'm doing, whether I'm in a scrum, whether I'm in a tackle, whether I'm ball carrying, whether I'm accelerating. It's the same in combat sports too.

So I want that. So I chase those adaptations. And then there may be work to do around other muscle groups depending on the player, but that will be at the end and that will be away from it. And even occasionally if we have a really hard week where I know we're doing a lot of running, then it may be that we will do that work after a running session. We'll come back to the gym and do some hamstring curls or nordics or whatever they want to do, plus their calf raises.

But if I'm honest, I've generally been pretty good at not caring about those things, or not, not caring. I think they take care of themselves in other ways. I mean, the adaptations, why, how do I use my hamstrings in rugby? I probably don't use them to drive through tackle. I don't use them to, so they're used to run. And I can maintain or get those adaptations from running. So as long as I'm doing, have a high-speed running, I don't really, I'm not really too concerned about those, if I'm honest.

James de Lacey28:09

I think I tend to agree with you on that. I think the overemphasis on training muscles that are often injured, I think, is probably led to more problems than, I think especially for like adductors and things like that. Like I've never done with any athlete specific adductor work, but never had adductor problems, but we're always doing lateral movement.

Mark Bennett28:09

And off-season program, so I'll send players a program, it's doing everything. So they come in, in prep, they have done some adductor work, they have done some side squats, they have done some lunges, they have done leg benches, they have done bent-leg calf raises, straight-leg calf raises. They'll come in prepared. Then from there, look at where they are, we'll make sure that we're doing what we need to do for performance, and then we're measuring where injuries might occur, and players will do extra at the end of that. Get good at what I need to get good at, then put eight or nine exercises into a training session.

James de Lacey29:06

Yeah, that's fair enough. And it sounds like it's almost run like an upper-lower split.

Mark Bennett29:06

Oh, it can be, yeah. Off-season, oh, so if I look back last off-season, excuse me, well, actually, throughout the year, we've done three strength training sessions all year. And that was right from the start of pre-season until the Thursday before the final. We did three strength training sessions every week. Towards the end they became voluntary, but people did them. There were very few that didn't.

And they will be a sort of one upper body, one lower body, and one full body type training session. And when we have the upper body and lower body as separate sessions, that will be more of an opportunity to include some other work that we talk about.

James de Lacey30:13

The full body session would just be very basic lifts with maybe one addition at the end. That makes sense. And then obviously as you approach semi-finals, finals, you're potentially altering that training program to be potentially less volume, whatever it is, just to help with recovery for those matches. So obviously Fighters go through a similar thing, obviously coming to the end of Fight Camp, having to taper down some of the training. So how does that look then compared to maybe earlier in the season on volume rather than intensity?

Mark Bennett30:40

So we'll do blocks of work. And none of this is my work by the way, this is all Bansky. I've just stolen it from him and I try my best to follow what I believe it means. And from the limited information I've had from him personally, I try to follow that and maybe if he saw my periodization he'd say no that's not how, but it's worked for me.

And every time I've tried to move away from it I've had issues. And when I say I've had issues, physical performance isn't as good, players are not as fast, they're not as fit, they're not as explosive. So it works. So if I'm going to change this, somebody has to find me something better and something simpler to do.

So I have a block of maximal strength work and in that block of maximal strength work I will do sort of longer aerobic intervals alongside it. So those would be the two things I would do together.

Then I would have a block of explosive strength work and I would do shorter aerobic work alongside it. So maybe one to one recovery, lactic work, short intervals from 20 to 15 seconds.

Then I would have a block of what you would call specific work, but again I would use Vash Shanky's guidelines for specificity. Does it use the right muscle groups? I would go through down through his laws of dynamic correspondence. So a specific exercise for me, it would rarely be running with a barbell on my shoulders or a broomstick above my head. It would be something designed to improve the right type of energetics or force development within the type of movements we do in the game.

And the lower the training age of a player, the less specific the specific work would look, if that makes sense.

And when doing that specific work we'd be doing a lot of repeat speed, we'd be doing a lot of anaerobic, in inverted commas, work. And I'm a believer that that's very useful for rugby players, but I also have an understanding that it's quite limited in terms of how long you can run those training sessions before improvements stop.

So in my experience I can probably make players better for five, six, seven, eight sessions maybe of repeat speed work, then I have to go back and do some longer intervals again or something similar. So that's the way I've—lost my train of thought now. Where were we going?

James de Lacey33:27

Oh yes, volume.

Mark Bennett33:27

Now trying to decrease volume throughout that. But when you look at what we're doing, volume is naturally decreasing. So if you run through that block, you're kind of getting there anyway. I get there. I'm doing—and even at the end, when it comes to the very—if we reach playoffs, I've then gone from my block periodization, we had three weeks of playoffs this year.

So in the playoffs we've gone from block periodization into how do I maintain qualities as well as I possibly can with doing a minimal amount of work. And early in the week I would just try to get players to do an explosive type training session, which is the inverse of what I spoke about earlier.

And then at the end of the week we would be trying to max out. We'd be trying to lift. So we played the final on the Thursday. On the Saturday, and on the Thursday before, we were maxing out on squat and bench press, trying to lift as heavy as we could for two reps.

And when we've spent eight months working with players and they've lifted heavy weights, they're pretty good. I mean the players were able to sort of work their way up to 180 kilogram for two bench press and the strongest guys, maybe 270 for a double squat. They could get all of that done within 25 minutes.

James de Lacey34:48

Is there any worry of residual fatigue? I know there's no volume there, but even just some kind of central nervous system—conversation you have with players?

Mark Bennett35:18

So this year they've never done it previously, and most clubs haven't. That's definitely not a thing in New Zealand. So we would come in and you would do this preseason, and then we went to Japan for some warm-up games and we did the same work. Although we were in explosive block, we were certainly doing heavy squats on a Thursday, I'm playing on a Saturday.

Then we're in an explosive block, we did the same in our preseason warm-up game when we came back to New Zealand. And then we came to the first week of preseason of season and players were saying, oh we're squatting today, I can't do that, my legs will be tired. So then I say, oh, were they tired last weekend? No. Were they tired the weekend before? No. Well why are they going to be tired this weekend? Oh good point.

That was it. I think the proof of the pudding then, when you come to the end of the season and the sessions are optional, is that players are coming in and maxing out on a Thursday. So it doesn't sound right, but it works. And again, this isn't me, this is Vash Shansky.

I spoke to him and he spoke about maintenance work. What should I be doing? And he said, oh just do two sets of two at 90%. That will maintain neural qualities, that will maintain tendon qualities, that will maintain muscle mass for short periods of time. So I do that and it's worked.

And I monitor my training, my strength training program, I monitor through countermovement jump. Not because I think countermovement jump is the most important factor in rugby, but it tells me what's happening. It tells me whether my training is going in the right direction. If players are jumping higher, there's a good chance that they have a potential to run faster, stop quicker, do all the—hit people harder on the field. So I monitor it.

And we went this year from—100% was the score average on day one, obviously, because why don't you jump on day one, that's your best. And then we work towards it and we're looking for some sort of undulation in pattern throughout the year. I mean if I want to make countermovement jump better, I have to do enough volume and intensity to decrease it a little before it gets better. It can't be so, but then we want to keep that going high.

And I promised the players, or I should say the staff in the department promised the players, that the last week of the season would be our highest jump. And we did, we got to 121%. So we added 21% over the course of six months.

James de Lacey38:11

If you're not seeing that dip, are you increasing training volume?

Mark Bennett38:11

Not necessarily training volume, but what I'll see with players is that—again, I'm going to go back to him, and people think I owe my career to Vash Shansky if I'm honest. If I hadn't have read his books, I'd still be doing powerlifting paradigms and trying to impose a powerlifting program and a sprinting program onto rugby playing athletes.

But when you look at him, he has a very good long-term athlete development plan where he has suggestions upon what would be the greatest stimulus exercises for players. So he would say that the aided depth jump done correctly is the highest stimulus—not a drop jump.

So when I was younger, probably a mistake that I made was trying to get Academy players to squat heavy and to depth jump as early as possible safely with good technique. And you see some very steep changes, but then they plateau off because I've missed a whole lot of methods and means in between. Straight to the ace card, right, get better.

So if players aren't dipping—I think that his Paradigm would start with something like jumps in place, then they would start with extensive jumps horizontally, then you'd go to five and 10 rep maximum weights, then you would go to heavy weights, then you would go to maybe continual barbell jumps, then you go to kettlebell jumps and squat jumps with heavy weights, then you—so we keep on having this paradigm.

So I would start players off at the very beginning of that paradigm. And then if a player's not falling during my phase when I'm loading with explosive strength work, I would look at increasing the stimulus of the—

Exercise. So if you're doing continual barbell jumps with 20 kilos on your back and you're not becoming fatigued by it, I might give you heavier squat jumps to, or I might give you kettle bell jumps to do, and then I'd move you on through that.

And then the other thing I also do, which is not Verkhoshansky, which is stolen a little bit from Bondarchuk, is that throughout the year, as well as having the graphs on each player of the squad averages, I have a graph for each player looking at the type of work that they're doing, which is a nice little colored box on my graph. And I would see what stimulus throughout the year has allowed you to achieve your biggest gains, and I would make sure that at the end of the season when we want to peak that maybe you did really well after kettle bell jumps four weeks down the line, I did really well after doing heavy doubles on squats, somebody else did well after doing frog jumps and sled tows. And I'd make sure that that would be what your type of work is when we're coming in to try to peak.

James de Lacey41:18

Oh, that's awesome. And obviously we talked about different loads of jumps and going across that spectrum. There's obviously two philosophies around that: staying really heavy and really light on either end of that force velocity spectrum to maximize power, or to play across the whole thing. And obviously the school of thought is, hey, force times velocity, I maximize either end, I maximize power, versus trying to be in the middle. So I'd love to hear your take on that.

Mark Bennett41:45

So I don't know, to be honest, what the answer is. Now I know if you read Schmidt-like stuff, he talks about being—he was a sports scientist from East Germany—he will talk only about either end of the spectrum: plyometrics and heavy weights. And if you move this side of the graph, each side of the graph, the middle of the graph is going to go up naturally, which makes sense.

Now I do tend to work across the spectrum because I think that it maybe is giving an advantage. But if it isn't giving an advantage, it's certainly not giving me a disadvantage. And it also gives some variety and variation and a whole lot of exercise selections that players can go to as well. And I think players appreciate that during a long season.

I don't want to be stuck only doing two exercises. I want to have lots of things like, even though I'll tend to focus on one or two things at a time, I still want to throughout the year be able to rotate those things so there's some variety in there for players and variation.

James de Lacey42:46

Are you rotating say each time you go through a maximum strength block it's a different exercise, or you're rotating within the block?

Mark Bennett43:15

I like to do that, but there comes to be problems sometimes because, for example, if you have a player who's been doing squats and you want to change him through to lunges in April, right in the middle of the season, you're going to have some pretty bad DOMS there to deal with. So there are times where if I get the opportunity to do it, I'll do it.

And then you're also surprised that how many players don't want to change. So they're happy to change their explosive exercises, be whatever that is: frog jumps, single leg hops, triple jump, depth jumps, kettle bell jumps. They're happy to change those, but they like to stay within a box for their maximum strength exercises or their potentiation exercises, those heavy works.

It's the nature of rugby, I think, that rightly or wrongly they like to have a good squat, they like to have a good bench press, they want to be able to chin heavy, and that gives them confidence. So if players want to change, I'm more than happy and I will encourage players to change. But if they don't want to change, I don't have an issue.

James de Lacey44:14

Is range of motion something you play with? I guess change it all?

Mark Bennett44:14

When I—so again, this is Verkhoshansky when he's talking about specificities—is that I think that if I'm trying to build tissue tolerance, if I'm trying to build type two fibers maybe, if I'm trying to actually build something, then I tend to go for a large range of movement. There are players who can't do it, I got no issue. If players want to box squat a high box squat, I'll do that. If they want to lunge lower, lunge higher, lunge, I'll do that. But I don't have an issue. They do what they can do because it's a collision sport.

But I like to have a full range of movement where we can. But then as things become more specific, if you follow the laws of dynamic correspondence, I'm trying to do things from the joint angles of wherever I'm trying to develop, whether it's for acceleration or maximum velocity or scrimmage ability or to hit a ruck low or a ruck, whatever we're trying to do is where I might change the angles of movement then, joint angles.

James de Lacey45:11

Yeah, no, that makes sense. It's perfect. And we'll quickly go into conditioning as well. So we've talked about the different blocks: long high-intensity intervals into short high-intensity intervals into more repeat sprint stuff. I guess within those blocks as well, I'm assuming you've got to cover sprinting as well. So I'm assuming speed is involved in those blocks too. So how are those all balanced together?

Mark Bennett45:38

Look, I make that simple. So in the early days we're doing lots of acceleration work. And then through that middle block of explosive strength, we'll build up and do some maximal speed. And in the last block it tends to be sports-specific stuff. So actually slowing down, stopping, going again, agility, whatever you want to call it.

So they simply go through—it's actually probably not specific because all of those, maximum speed is the least specific. But it goes in there because of the safety issues, because we need to go towards that. And also, look, if somebody is doing six or seven kilometers a week of work above 5 meters per second, the hamstring is going to be pretty tired anyway. So I don't know what I'm going to get by giving them high-speed work, and also I don't know about the risks involved. So I would tend to leave it for the next block where we've quietened down our volumes of running.

James de Lacey46:35

Gotcha. So then you're not trying to, I guess, touch close to max velocity each week throughout the season? It kind of just depends on season?

Mark Bennett47:05

Players will, because we'll be doing less—look, there's less endurance work done during the season. But players will try to touch on it. Some certainly will, especially the backs. Some forwards aren't too concerned about it.

And I try to look for patterns, and I've never been able to find patterns where somebody's not hit high velocity for three weeks and then had a hamstring injury the week they have done it. I tend to see things where people, from injuries in-season, hamstrings and calves, where people have had rather than large jumps in intensity, large jumps or drops in volume where they've had an injury and they come back, and they've tried.

So I think it's probably, for me, it's more important about having a nice stepwise progression in the amount of running you do and the amount of high-speed running you do, rather than being concerned about hitting maximum velocity.

James de Lacey48:07

Perfect. Yeah, I see the common sense behind it.

Mark Bennett48:07

But sometimes actually doing it pragmatically, you might—okay, we're going to plan to do it Thursday. And then you look at Thursday and suddenly somebody's done eight and a half kilometers. Now you're not doing it. So it doesn't happen. Yeah, days like that.

During season, those players who don't play will follow the periodization paradigm. So if you're in a maximum strength and a longer aerobic interval block, those guys Thursday, Friday, Saturday will do long intervals. If we're in repeat speed, they'll do repeat speed. So we'll follow those paradigms for those players. I'm trying to repeat that. So rather than having the end of the week focused on replacing a game, no, we're trying to work in energy system. I want to get you better. So we can spend this four weeks getting fitter aerobically.

James de Lacey48:42

Yeah. Do you want to maybe give some examples for the listeners of how some of these long interval sessions look and how some of the short ones and even the repeat speed?

Mark Bennett49:14

So, look, you're going to have to trust my judgment here—there's a nice paper that, or trust my memory here. There's a nice paper out there that talks about the development of aerobic capacity, and if you read about it, it tells you that rugby players need, or team sports players need, between—you can work out the figures from how long they need to spend at maximum heart rate or and MAS speeds, or speeds above MAS.

And that if you're doing one-to-one intervals, as in 30 seconds work, 30 seconds recovery, then you're trying to get, if you get 16 minutes of work done during the session—this would include your—this, sorry to be confusing—so 16 minutes not of running, but of running and of recovery periods between runs, but not recovery—

Period between sets. So if I did five sets, if I did 10 reps of 30 on 30 off, that would be five minutes. I need to cover about 16 minutes in the session for the majority of players or the players who sit in the middle of that normal curve to get the best development of aerobic capacity. So I want to give them the best chance to achieve.

So when I do MAS work based on that I will do, I'm trying to build up 16 minutes. So it could be that maybe the first set might be 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off for 10 reps, which should give me five minutes. The next set might be 15 seconds on, 15 seconds off for 20 reps, which should give me five minutes. And then you understand, so I will try and build something together to just give them the correct time at the running.

So I'm not trying to relate it towards how much they do in rugby. I'm simply trying to relate it to what the literature tells me is the best for developing aerobic ability in these players, or the most effective. It may not be the best, but short term over six weeks it's what gives you the quickest gains, which is what we need.

So we look at doing that and then, obviously, players are individualized according to their MAS, which is calculated from the Bronco or whatever we do. And then I'll play around, sometimes I'll put a turn in there, sometimes I won't, and I'll give them one second for the turn. So I'll calculate all the distances accordingly.

And then my long intervals will be pretty standard stuff. So it could be anywhere from, obviously a lot slower. It could be, again, the longer the intervals, so generally with short intervals I'll never go below one to one recovery. So if we work with 30, we'll rest with 30, and I won't go higher with aerobic. But it's the opposite with longer intervals.

I might go anywhere from, if I'm above a minute running I might go down to anywhere from 50% recovery time to one to one. And I'll build that up to sort of, I've just got some thoughts in my mind about what seems to work.

We may do 12 times one minute on, one minute off. You might do four times four minutes on, two minutes off. And also the other point to note with all of this I think is that the further we are away from the specific stuff, so the longer the intervals, the more chance that I might do them on a bike or a rowing machine or a ski. Because I'm probably trying to get, I'm at least as concerned with central adaptations there, which you're going to get anyway.

James de Lacey52:34

That's actually going to be my next question. So I'm going to jump on the next one after that around the interval length as well. So obviously you're aiming for that 16 minutes, so the in the one to one short recovery, so when it's below 60 seconds but above one minute of running, it'll be a little different certainly?

Mark Bennett53:01

Yeah, it'll be, as your interval length, say if you manipulate it and you're doing short interval lengths, are you doing it at a higher percentage of MAS? Yes, yes. So and it might be that over a four or five week period I'll try to progress that.

So I might start players running 30 on, 30 off at 100% and try to get them to 120%. Because again, that's my understanding from the literature that the majority of people, it's never everyone, the majority of people within the squad will get their best gains if they do 16 minutes of work and rest at 120%. And it takes some time to get there. It's a hard session, that's pretty brutal.

James de Lacey53:32

For sure, for anyone listening you can try it, you can even do it on a rower or any machine.

Mark Bennett54:03

We often, we might do, lots of teams might do a block of MAS as running and then a block of games and swipe them back and forth. So you might have like five blocks of work in total, you might have three games, two MAS, or vice versa. And we're looking at players, we're going to have some players in the squad four and a half days work are doing 35 kilometers. So it's a lot of work.

James de Lacey54:03

Damn.

Mark Bennett54:34

Yeah, the best. I like that. I like that, games in between two, which I did that for the Kiwis. I do like games, there's something in them and the better the players the better they are. But I don't think they develop fitness as we think they do.

James de Lacey54:34

They don't. I don't care what you say, you only have to see people's heart rate responses to see that.

Mark Bennett55:04

For sure, it's definitely something you can use, but yeah, it's not something you can fully rely on as targeting a certain physiological adaptation you're after.

James de Lacey55:04

But I think they covered everything I had to. Where can people find and follow you? I know you haven't posted any of your stats stuff in a while. I quite enjoyed your little stats.

Mark Bennett55:04

Well, I'm trying to do some stuff maybe when I go back to New Zealand, but I've been quite busy. I find when I get, I get lean periods with work where I have some time where I'll do a lot, and also I have a lot of data to deal with. But it also tends to be with teams I've worked with in the past, so I'm probably not going to write anything too much about my current team until I finish working with them. And even then they're hidden.

But I'm on Twitter. I'm not, let me see, excuse me, I'm going to look what my, I don't, that's my only social media outlet. I go in there and I don't post as much as I used to. I did used to like doing stats, but like I said, it's the time. Mark Bennett 07, that's right.

And apart from that, you won't find me on Facebook, you won't find me on Instagram, and you won't find me on TikTok. I waste enough time on Twitter.

James de Lacey55:54

Perfect. Yeah, okay. Yeah, X now, we'll still call it Twitter. But I'll link that up down in the description as well for anyone who's interested in following Mark. And if you go through some of his old posts, he's got some really cool stat stuff on there too. But I appreciate you coming on, Mark, and sharing everything, and we'll leave people to you.

Mark Bennett56:29

All right, perfect. Thank you.