The Leeds Rhinos Foundation Coach Education Programme returned on Monday with the fourth workshop of 2015 on ‘Linking coaching to Conditioning’ with Leeds Rhinos Head of Athletic Performance Jason Davidson delivering to 35 coaches at the Leeds Rugby Academy.
The ‘linking coaching to conditioning’ session followed on from previous sessions in 2015 on implementing video analysis, coaching defensive philosophies and an 'on the road with the academy' session delivered by Leeds Rhinos Player Performance Manager Chris Plume involving an observation of the Leeds Rhinos under 19 squad.
Monday’s session started with Jason Davidson providing community coaches with a chance to see first-hand how the Leeds Rhinos squad go about a normal week, incorporating a match day and training schedule that builds in conditioning as part of the player’s routine with a Q&A allowing the coaches in attendance a chance to ask questions relevant to their own coaching at amateur level.
The session then moved outside onto the Leeds Rugby Academy pitches, where Jason worked with the Birstall Victoria under 16s squad on a series of drills that incorporate skill work alongside conditioning in order to utilise the amount of contact time conditioners and coaches have with players in a given week.
As part of the workshop, Jason ran through a series of drills that distinguish between different positions within a Rugby League team and how to apply specific drills to simulate in-play scenarios that players would come across on a game day, including speed and passing drills for backs, combat and wrestling drills for forwards and how to provide drills for the whole team.
The workshop finished up with a chance for coaches to ask Jason about specific drills for different areas of the game with an interactive Q and A and more examples drills with the players working on some of the finer areas of the game.
Davidson commented:
“I went through our working week and show the group just because we are full time it doesn’t mean that we do more training per week than people would do when there at amateur level. We still get a limited time when we are allowed on the field and we still get time limits where every session has got to run to that time limit.
“Unlike in the past where the coaches have them for 30 minutes and the conditioner has had them for 10 minutes, we try and get the conditioning and the coaching working together so that we get a good 40 minutes to an hour working on skills and conditioning all combined.”
Next Monday the 29th June the Leeds Rhinos Foundation are offering the first specific workshop for coaches new to the game, as the start of a series of specialised workshops for the coaching of age groups at Primary School level from minis (under 7s) to under 11s.
For more information on Coach Education and to sign up for the Coach Education newsletter contact: LRCAbooking@leedsrugby.com
The video of the linking conditioning to coaching workshop is available to view below: