If you see an 18 stone, heavy set man crashing into a fence somewhere in and around Bristol don’t be alarmed. That is rugby training in isolation.
Bristol Bears head of strength and conditioning Kevin Geary has lifted the lid on the unorthodox training during the enforced coronavirus shut down.
The Bears players are currently training away from the club on ‘active rest’ in the second week of a planned five week shutdown of Gallagher Premiership in England to try and prevent the spread of the coronavirus Covid-19.
In reality with the number of positive cases in the country escalating a return on April 24 looks highly unlikely.
Geary, who is regularly praised by Bears director of rugby Pat Lam as one of the best in the game, has outlined the club’s outside the box approach to training.
Speaking to Irish publication The 42 he said: “The player’s health is our number one priority.
“Training really hard will drop your immune system and so will dropping carbohydrate intake, so we’re keeping the latter close to normal and not training like it’s pre-season.”
While players can still get out for runs at the moment the rugby skills work they can do is incredibly limited despite the best efforts of Geary and the coaching staff at Bristol.
He explained: “Everyone has a rugby ball each. They’re not allowed to pass to each other but they have a ball in their hands and have individual skills work given to them by the coaches.
“The kickers can still kick at the moment. And then guys doing running sessions would have built-in skill work, maybe kicking the ball above themselves to work on their high-ball catches.
“Forwards, for example, will do scrummaging positions in between runs, keeping those good habits and getting that loading in their feet by pushing against a fence or something solid.
“Others might do lineout jumps, so lads won’t come back into team training without having jumped, having been in a scrummaging positions, or caught a high ball for weeks. That’s where it would bite us.”
Last week Lam outlined a plan for players to spend three weeks training in isolation before coming back together to get up to full speed two weeks before they are due to play Worcester Warriors away from home at the end of April. However with the government banning large scale social gathering and instructing a policy of social distancing that now looks unlikely to happen.
With doom and gloom on social media, plus the restraint of world class athletes being cooped up indoors for much longer than normal, Geary said the limited training the Bears players can do provides a real mental escape.
He said: “We know what’s going on around the world, everyone’s seeing the clips and trying to get their head around it. We’ve explained to the players that the schedule and the structure of their day can break that up for them, even if there is any lockdown.
“The players have been positive and hopefully this can help. It’s going to be tough, so this has to be their bit of escape really.”
