EFFECTS OF AN OFF-SEASON CONDITIONING PROGRAM ON THE PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ADOLESCENT RUGBY UNION PLAYERS

Smart, DJ, and Gill, ND. Effects of an off-season conditioning program on the physical characteristics of adolescent rugby union players. J Strength Cond Res 27(3): 708-717, 2013-The aims of the study were to determine if a supervised off-season conditioning program enhanced gains in physical characteristics compared with the same program performed in an unsupervised manner and to establish the persistence of the physical changes after a 6-month unsupervised competition period. Forty-four provincial representative adolescent rugby union players (age, mean +/- SD, 15.3 +/- 1.3 years) participated in a 15-week off-season conditioning program either under supervision from an experienced strength and conditioning coach or unsupervised. Measures of body composition, strength, vertical jump, speed, and anaerobic and aerobic running performance were taken, before, immediately after, and 6 months after the conditioning. Post conditioning program the supervised group had greater improvements in all strength measures than the unsupervised group, with small, moderate and large differences between the groups' changes for chin-ups (9.1%; +/- 11.6%), bench-press (16.9%; +/- 11.7%) and box-squat (50.4%; +/- 20.9%) estimated 1RM respectively. Both groups showed trivial increases in mass; however increases in fat free mass were small and trivial for supervised and unsupervised players respectively. Strength declined in the supervised group while the unsupervised group had small increases during the competition phase, resulting in only a small difference between the long-term changes in box-squat 1RM (15.9%; +/- 13.2%). The supervised group had further small increases in fat free mass resulting in a small difference (2.4%; +/- 2.7%) in the long-term changes. The postconditioning differences between the 2 groups may have been a result of increased adherence and the attainment of higher training loads during supervised training. The lack of differences in strength after the competition period indicates that supervision should be maintained to reduce substantial decrements in performance.