Phil - Paul, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. You’ve just finished the conditioning programme and you’ve got a bit of time off – can you tell us about the programme?

Paul – Well, they [the coaches] got us in four weeks early. Obviously, the All Blacks have done a similar thing where they had a four or five week period just doing weights and fitness, not even touching a rugby ball so the conditioning department, led by Tim Exeter, put together a programme for every player in the team. Some players needed to put on weight so they went on a phase of hypertrophy and some players who were big enough already were just put on strength training. Coupled with that, we had tailored fitness plans so we’d do weights and fitness every day.

Phil - Take us through a typical day, Paul.

Paul – Mondays would be an upper-body weight session, so you’d do cleans or some Olympic lifts to start off with as a full body work-out just to warm yourself up. For me personally, I was on hypertrophy so I would be doing 5 sets of 15 reps, I’d probably do 85-90kgs.  I would have to do that five times then we would move on to another circuit where it would be something like a dynamic, like a wood chopping action. We have got machines that we use for that sort of thing.  So after you have done your weights programme in the morning you have a couple of hours off and then on a Monday our fitness would be up at the gym for a Cardio-Vascular session, working to 80% of your maximum heart rate on the cross trainer and the bike.  You do three minutes; four minutes, six minutes and then you do four minutes, three minutes twice! So you go bike, cross trainer, bike and work your way up and work your way down.  You do two sets of that and that would be that day’s workout.

Phil – So it is not necessarily a massive amount of time but it’s really intensive.

Paul – Yes, you just concentrate of what you’ve got to do. You’re all split up into different groups.  Thursday’s for example, personally I hated Thursdays, just because we had a running session.  It was horrible in the afternoon, we would have the upper body weights on a Thursday and in the afternoon we would be at the track and that would be a long running stint.  We would do four 100m sprints, five 100m sprints, two 400m running round the track and then we would do another five 100m. After that it was four 200m and then we would finish with four more 100m.  So at the end of that you are blowing big time and I used to hate it because my back would cramp up ‘this is rubbish I hate this!’  But when you have done it you feel so much better in yourself.  

Then on Fridays it’s a good leg session day. It’s the end of the week and your legs are ruined but once again I am on hypertrophies so I would be doing five sets of 12 reps on a squat rack and then we would have to do Romanian dead lifts, same again five sets of 12 and we have this thing like weighted lunges and this really gets the bum.  That would be the weights and fitness for the day and not a rugby ball in sight.

Phil – Hypertrophies.  That’s a word I have never heard before, what is that?

Paul – That’s just building muscle mass.  You see your muscles decline it is called atrophy.  So the guys that didn’t need that much muscle, like Bruce, Ben, Carlos the big players, who are naturally quite big, they didn’t need to do something like that whereas the smaller guys like myself would benefit from it.

Phil – So what specific areas were the coaches looking at for you, was it your legs, your upper body?

Paul – Yeah it was everything.  With hypertrophy you don’t just need to get big up top or down the bottom, it is a fully body hypertrophy set.

Phil – So you’ve put weight on?

Paul – Yeah I have put about 2kgs on in four weeks.

Phil – So that is pure muscle then?

Paul – Hopefully. There will be fat but that’s because its hypertrophy.  The last time I got tested my body fat was down so that was good and I had put weight on.

Phil – You have got a bit of time off now before you go back into training.  You mentioned earlier that you have been in the gym today, have you got specific targets whilst you are off?

Paul – No, its pretty much rest while we are off especially no heavy lifting.  If you want to go out and keep your lungs ticking over then you do something like that whereas someone like me -  I want to keep working my legs to try and improve my Cardio-Vascular so I will be doing something every day.  Some players have gone away on holiday which is fair enough because they have been told not to lift.  I’m just doing little things, nothing heavy in the gym, something that you can get a good blow on.

Phil – So you go back next week?

Paul – Next Monday, I get to throw a rugby ball about again!

Phil – You finally get see a rugby ball then?

Paul – Yeah!

Phil – How does initial training go then? For someone who doesn’t know these things, is it a sort of gentle easing into of training with the ball or is it full contact straight off?

Paul – I’m not too sure how we are going to do it but normally we wouldn’t be coming back until Monday anyway.  In a regular season we get eight weeks off and we have come in four weeks early.  Normally you build into it slowly and it’s a lot of CV games and a lot of skill based orientation stuff.  But, we’ve got two new coaches in and they may want to bring a certain game plan or a certain way they want us to play the game so they might break everything down to an nth degree and say ‘look, we want you to do this’ and they may want to work on basic skills from the start and say this is the way we want to do it. Or, it could be a case of ‘how do things work for you?’  We will know more come July and we are only back for three weeks before we have another week off so I think we will be getting into patterns of play pretty soon.

Phil – You worked with Jim and Dorien when you were in England A.  What do you think they will bring to the Club?

Paul – I think they will bring the experience of being in a winning environment.  Jim and Dorien have done great things with Under 21’s.  They won the Grand Slam with the Under 21’s and we had some good runs in the World Cup.  Two seasons ago with the Under 21’s we won 11 out of the 12 games we played and the only game we lost was to New Zealand so that was a great achievement.  This year they showed their pedigree by winning the Churchill Cup. 

Phil – What about targets for yourself when you go back into full training? With Bruce’s injury you got thrown into the deep end last year so do you see yourself now as, not necessarily a senior member of the squad but, more experienced because you now have got a lot of guys about who are younger than you?

Paul – I’m starting to feel old now!  I was speaking to some of the guys and it’s like, “how are you doing?” And they say, “good, it’s going to be my 18^th birthday next week” and you think, “oh no!!” I’m 22 - 23 in January and years ago you would be talking to the other players and say, “I’d love to be 18 again” but its good that I got the experience last year and hopefully it will put me in good stead for this year.  Hopefully I’m a more mature player.

Phil – We will lose Sean for the World Cup and then there’s the Six Nations so the opportunities should be there for you.

Paul – Hopefully but there’s a lot of good young talent about who are also going to want to have a say about that.  You have got the likes of Will Harries, Grant Anderson, John Brake, David Smith all been young talents and all been involved in the England set up.  They have been pushing really hard in training as well.  Then we have got the likes of Chris Ashton coming to us in October, November time so the competition is going to be really healthy this year.

Phil – So how do you see it going in Division One?

Paul – I’m looking forward to it.  It’s going to be something different.  Not a lot of us can say we have played in Division One.  We got ourselves in this mess and we have got to get ourselves out of it at the end of the day.  I’m looking forward to it, going to see some new places.  We are going to get a bit more travelling done than we did the Prem. 

It’s a new season, new coaches and new slate.

Phil – I think that’s the same for all of us.  Thanks for talking to us, Paul.

Paul – No worries.

With thanks to Chris Wearmouth, Richard and, last but not least, Jackie H for typing the transcript and making the curry!

© Phil Hollis/ComeOnYouSaints.com.Ltd 2007

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