The area of Strength & Conditioning (S&C) is a key focus for every PSA Rugby Academy, with a fully qualified, trained and accredited S&C coach within every Academy programme delivery team.
For young athletes, education around S&C and the associated areas of Nutrition and SAQ (Speed, Agility, Quickness) is really important in their future development and our programme looks to ensure that each player understands what their focuses should be for their specific age grade level.
Each of our PSA Rugby Academy venues has a fully equipped gym with free weights and other modern exercising equipment including power racks, treadmills, exercise bikes, rowing machines, cross trainers and more. The use of additional gym equipment like power bands and swiss balls is designed to teach simple and effective exercises to strengthen core strength, which is the fundamental building block for top rugby and athletic performance. Players are fully supervised at gym time and are actively tutored by the S&C coach and supporting staff in the development of their technique for each carefully designed session.
As with the core rugby skills, each player at a PSA Rugby Academy is also assessed in the area of S&C and age-appropriate physical fitness to benchmark them against expected performance within their age groups. The results of these tests are passed confidentiality on to players and their parents/guardians via the Player Development Report sent out after each Academy. Combined with the techniques and exercises learned within the programme, each player will have a clear understanding of their focus areas after each Academy to continue their ongoing physical development for high performance rugby.
