The days of running hill sprint after hill sprint in the hot Australia sun are gone according to Brumbies Athletic Performance coach Ben Serpell, but that doesn’t make a professional preseason training program any easier.

As most grassroots clubs begin preseason ahead of their 2018 campaign, we caught up with Serpell to get an inside look at how the Brumbies spend their summer months and find out what we should be doing to get fit ahead of round one.

“In the right context, hill sprints can have an effect but when you’ve got guys slowly trudging up a hill at walking pace, you’re not going to get results because if you want to play fast, you need to train fast,” Serpell said.

“It’s not about just grinding it out anymore, there is a fair bit more to it. You’ve probably heard personal trainers talk about high intensity training and that’s essentially what we’re doing, just at a far more advanced level and targeted specifically at rugby.”

A typical week during preseason at the Brumbies consists of 12-14 sessions but Serpell said it was difficult to place each one into a category.

“We don’t really do a speed session, then a weight session, then a field session because we try and integrate it all. Our speed coach will work closely with our rugby coach to create sessions that help our guys run fast in rugby, not just fast in general and there is a bit of a difference there,” he said.

“The days of the gym and field being part of the program separately are gone. We want to reduce the disconnection between the physical side of training and the rugby so that we know anything that we are doing to increase their physical capacity, can directly translate onto the field.”

Serpell said part of his role was to educate the rugby coaches and help create a program that caters to both the players physical and technical needs.

“At the start of preseason, all the coaches sit down together and decide how they want the side to play, then we look at what we need the players to be able to do physically to play that style of rugby and we begin the build our weeks and training sessions around that, knowing that certain drills will give us certain metrics that we can work off.”

Serpell said it was crucial for players to build a strong physical base early in the year, before the focus turns more to rugby. At the Brumbies, most of this occurs pre christmas before the groups attention shifts to pre season trials and the opening rounds.

“It’s no secret that Michael Cheika came out last year and said the fitness levels of the Super sides wasn’t good enough and the only way to improve that is to increase your running load. To be honest, I don’t think it’s been as big an issue here at the Brumbies but we’ve still made some adjustments,” he said.

“That’s why preseason is so important. You can’t be doing these high volume sessions when you’ve got a game a few days later, the work has to be done now so that you can create a base for yourself ahead of the season.”

While every player at the Brumbies has his own individualised program, on high intensity days most players train in the morning, then leave for four to five hours before returning for another high intensity session in the afternoon.

Serpell said it was vital that coaches tailor a specific program to suit the needs of their squad and added that a one size fits all approach no longer works.

“If you look at a game, the tight five need to work in smaller spaces a lot more and carry the ball over short distances so they need good pace off the mark. They spend time more time on exercises that will help them drive through contact compared to outside backs, particularly the way Australian sides play, who need to sprint at top speed repeatedly.”

“If you put a rugby side on a spectrum from jersey one to 15, the closer they are to an outside back, the more they’ll prioritise speed and vice versa for those closer to the tight five who need more strength.”

Serpell said the Brumbies have taken advantage of their convenient location up the road from the Australian Institute of Sport and have worked closely with the AIS sports science department in recent years.

“We’re pretty consistent with what we measure throughout the year. The one metric that encompasses everything is exertion by session duration. We can apply that in the gym, on the field or in the pool. We track the players using a GPS during all of their field and running sessions so we always know what they’ve done and at what intensity.

“We also measure wellness in the mornings, how much sleep they’ve had, body composition and saliva but in all honesty, and this is something I’m quite big on, the best metric is simply asking how the player is feeling today,” he added.

But if you don’t have access to GPS trackers and a fully equipped gym, what should a grassroots coach focus on during preseason?

“Consistency and compliance are the two most important things,” Serpell said.

“There is no point turning up a week or two before the season and expecting to get good early season results. The more you can train for a longer period of time, the better.

“The challenge for someone in a grassroots environment is to not get too far ahead of themselves and to create a program that the players want to complete, then you’ll get the compliance factor as well and that leads to results.”

Well that, and no hill sprints!