Are Welsh players fit enough or do they train too much fitness? Is Welsh fitness as good as it should be because of all this cryotherapy training? Yes, fitness is a vital component in modern pro rugby, but as Wales spend thousands in these camps weightlifting and legally doping the blood to absorb more oxygen, is this the reason why the gap between Wales and Australia and South Africa was so evident in the Rugby World Cup last year?
Cryotherapy Training and Its Effect on Welsh Fitness
POLISH CAMPS
Does the focus on this type of training move Wales away from skills and tactics that are mostly needed for beating the better teams? Size and strength will come naturally with training and players can train in their own time with weights, so Wales need to use these team training sessions to bond with each other after months away with clubs or regions and use them to develop skills. Even Warren Gatland said in the press conference before the Scotland game, that Wales had passed too many times, so clearly the team’s skills and tactics need working on.
Lengths and sprinting under water were on the agenda – the aim to keep the players working when fatigued, as they have to in a match is all well and good, but if when you’re sprinting around on 80 minutes you can’t offload the ball in a try scoring chance, that means nothing.
To give you an idea of what a routine in these camps is like they usually enter a cryotherapy chamber. Followed by lunch and a workout for 41 minutes to simulate a game scenario, six lengths of the pitch mixed with jumps and dives to the ground to make things harder. Then with no rest, the players headed straight to the gym for weights, chucking medicine balls around like they were beach balls, apparently. The day is wrapped up by another round of cryotherapy, dinner and more weights. For a better idea of how Welsh fitness training works visit here.
So as you can tell weights bear heavy within the routines of the Welsh squad.
DOES IT WORK?
You could say yes as around the turn of the millennium Wales struggled to keep up with some countries who had progressed into pro rugby much smoother than Wales, but in years of more recent memory we are definitely up their fitness wise with the best with Welsh rugby outlasting some nations who were previously superior in this department. However the 2015 Rugby World Cup saw the team play with an amass of injuries with Rhys Webb, Leigh Halfpenny and Scott Williams all out with Cory Allen also expected to miss time, the weights cannot be 100% effective or the amount of injuries we are receiving wouldn’t be anywhere near as high.
Jonathan Davies returns for the France game on Friday and so perhaps this extra conditioning has helped aid his recovery from a minor knock. Overall it must be said that its effectiveness was great initially with fitness levels exploding, but with so many players playing outside of Wales and even within Wales where there are state of the art gym technology the fitness levels are mostly there already and so I doubt very much that it compensates for the loss of skills.
ALTERNATIVE
In summers that don’t involve anyone warming up for Lions tours or World Cups in the Autumn, there could be alpine training camps held that would benefit those who are fighting for Autumn Internationals and fitness after injuries. It would not be taking away from any club, regional or international duty. In the month before the Six Nations or the months before a World Cup, it would give the Welsh Rugby Union time to work on the scrum which hasn’t always been a strong point in recent months, although that has seen improvement against the injury hammered Irish and the plucky Scots. It would bring through the running game that northern rugby so desperately needs and can use if we want to, but unfortunately perhaps Wales play too much ”Warrenball” due to this lack of skills training in the off-season.
Welsh fitness is undoubtedly top level at this moment, they just need maximize when and how they do it for it to be able to work.
CHANCES OF CHANGE
The chance of this happening is probably unlikely in the near future, although the training camp in August of 2015; the last one that was due to take place was cancelled with Paul Stridgeon (wales fitness coach) saying ” We are ahead of where we want to be and when we reviewed the first camp and the schedule it was felt our time would be better spent using the world class facilities on offer at the Vale.” So it does seem that the Welsh team have realized that fitness isn’t top priority right now and with a reasonably successful World Cup after the home training behind it, hopefully a few more sessions will be spent in the Vale of Glamorgan rather than in Poland.
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