In this blog, we will be looking into an individual who wants to train to become a semi-pro level rugby player; this means that they will be their coaches first choice to the team and someone who will play in the final as the starting 15 alongside their own teammates.

Our participant is an 18-year-old boy with little to no experience in rugby, has an average build, doesn’t play too much sport in general outside of school. The participant has goals and the biggest one is being able to improve and get to a semi-pro level final and participate in one year (this means training when the season is off e.g. summer) to be able to make the participant level we will be looking into the three main studies of sports science which are biomechanics, physiology and psychology as a broad topic as well as nutrition, by breaking each aspect of training in to the 4 different areas it will allow the participant easy access to understanding their training as well as practically achieving their goal of semi pro within one year.

In the physiology section of the blog we will be analysing the nature of rugby and how much energy it uses whether that be aerobically or anaerobically as well as looking into the different ways of training to increase power as well as strength as rugby requires both as a key performance factor resulting in higher peak performance, therefor rugby as a sport is very dynamic and has many demands from physiological point of view. Having to compete with very fast, strong and heavy men and survive requires becoming one.

In the nutritional section of the blog we examine the dietary needs of a rugby athlete both in a game and the energy and nutrients required during training to increase the results of training and the repair rate of muscles, to play rugby at a high enough level requires an excessive amount of energy due to its anaerobic nature so we examined the benefits and negatives of this section.

Inside the psychological section, we look into how stress, anxiety and arousal can affect training and performance, by doing this it can result in an understanding of the level at which peak performance can be attained due to physiological arousal. In this section, it will examine ways in which psychology can affect performance and training due to the stress’ found while training and undergoing a specific diet, also it will consider how the potential risk of an injury can affect the participant psychologically in negative ways.

In the bio-mechanical section of the blog we examined the risk that is most associated with high intensity, high contact sport and this is injury. This can be classified to the joints as they are at more risk of injury but on the increase, is the concussion. From this it can be identified that proper technique whether it be the tackle or in a scrum will reduce the probability of an injury occurring.

Word count

515