🚨Rugby Fitness Hack!🚨This Workout will make YOU Fitter for Rugby! USED BY PROS! 😱

Summary

Join The Rugby Trainer and breathing expert, Jacko, in this fascinating session revealing a unique fitness technique used by professional rugby players to boost their performance significantly. The focus is on exhale breath holds, a method that enhances your repeated sprint ability and tolerances to lactate and CO2 in just a few minutes per week. This practice not only improves physical endurance but also aids in maintaining mental calmness under pressure, crucial for mastering the game and making better decisions during intense matches.

Highlights

• The secret to rugby fitness? Exhale breath holds! Improve sprint ability tenfold! 🏃‍♂️
• Managing CO2 levels through strategic breathing can calm your mind and improve focus! 💆‍♂️
• Incorporate these breath hold techniques once a week for significant results! 📅
• Mastering your breath can enhance game tactics and on-field decisions! 🧠

Key Takeaways

• Master the art of exhale breath holds to skyrocket your rugby fitness! 🏉
• Learn how to manage CO2 levels like a pro with simple breathing hacks! 💨
• Improve your sprint endurance and mental game simultaneously! 🚀
• Discover how controlling breath can lead to better game decisions and calmness! 🤔

Overview

In an exciting fitness revelation, The Rugby Trainer invites Jacko, a renowned breathing expert, to share insider techniques utilized by top rugby pros. They delve deep into the power of exhale breath holds—a method promising astounding improvements in repeated sprint ability and overall game endurance. If you’re fit and healthy, incorporating these can transform your performance!

The method revolves around intentional exhalation and breath holding, which positively alters your body’s response to lactate and CO2 buildup. It's a challenging but rewarding practice that enhances both physical stamina and psychological resilience. Key is the strategic management of your breathing between sprints to avoid unnecessary panting and stress, instead cultivating a state of calm readiness for the next bout of action.

Jacko shares exercises adaptable to any form of cardio, encouraging athletes to practice these techniques regularly. The strategic reduction of CO2, dubbed the ‘CO2 dump,’ not only aids in quicker recovery but strengthens your calmness under pressure—vital for accurate decision-making during rigorous matches. This crossroad of breath control and mental composure could be the edge players need to elevate their game.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The introduction chapter features a guest speaker who is a breathing expert. He has experience working with top athletes like George Ford, Henry Arendelle, and both the men's and women's England Rugby teams. The expert, Jacko, is set to reveal a secret about breathing techniques that can enhance fitness sessions. The chapter sets the stage for exploring the importance of breath in sports and fitness.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Breath Hold Technique Explained The chapter explains the exhale breath hold technique, emphasizing that it's not suitable for those with heart conditions or blood pressure issues. However, for healthy individuals, it can significantly improve repeat sprint ability, by up to 10 times according to some research. The technique is part of a broader discussion on fitness and enhancing training sessions.
• 01:30 - 04:00: Exhale Breath Hold Exercise The chapter discusses the benefits and science behind the Exhale Breath Hold Exercise. It explains that incorporating breath holds into repeated sprint exercises can significantly improve your body's tolerance to lactate and enhance oxygen recovery periods. Although the technique is challenging, it promises substantial gains and results if practiced diligently. The chapter ends with a mention of a simple breathing technique to initiate the exercise.
• 04:00 - 08:00: CO2 Dump Technique The chapter titled "CO2 Dump Technique" discusses a specific breathing technique used to lower oxygen levels in the lungs, blood, and muscles. This is achieved by holding the breath after a normal exhale rather than an inhale, as having full lungs would increase oxygen levels. Lower oxygen levels result in increased lactate production, which helps the body improve its ability to handle and buffer lactate. The key point of the technique is to ensure the lungs remain relatively empty by holding the breath on the exhale.
• 08:00 - 15:00: Conclusion and Contact Information In the final chapter titled 'Conclusion and Contact Information,' the narrator prepares for a sprint exercise, emphasizing the importance of controlled breathing and strategic rest periods to optimize performance. The exercise involves running 40 meters followed by a short rest, focusing on breath control to manage oxygen levels effectively. This technique is critical for enhancing athletic performance, highlighting the chapter's focus on practical advice and the significance of breathing techniques in physical training.

🚨Rugby Fitness Hack!🚨This Workout will make YOU Fitter for Rugby! USED BY PROS! 😱 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 If you're looking to spice up your fitness session, I am joined today by a breathing expert who's worked with some of the best players, George Ford, Henry Arendelle, and England Rugby men's and women's. He's going to share with us today a secret that's going to help and spice up our fitness sessions, and it's all about our breath. Let's go and check it out. So, I'm just joined by Jacko. Firstly, thanks for coming down. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this session. Putting your paces. Yeah, we've just been uh filming the goal
• 00:30 - 01:00 kicking one as well. So, if you are a goal kicker, make sure you head over to that. Jack always has shared some incredible insights to get in control, but today fitness and we're going to talk over things that we can add to a fitness session to get a little bit out of it. So, what have you got for us? So, the technique we're going to use is exhale breath hold can sound a little bit crazy and if you got any heart conditions or blood pressure issues, then this is probably a little bit too hard for you. But if you fit well and healthy, this can boost your repeat sprint ability. So some research has shown us by 10 times better than doing
• 01:00 - 01:30 just your repeated sprint session without the breath holds in. So it's some wild wild claims that science is backing up that you can improve your tolerance to lactate. You can improve your oxygen uh reox oxygenation recovery periods with this technique. But it's hard. You got to do the work. But if you do the work with the breathold, you get bigger gains and bigger results from it. Amazing. I'm pretty nervous about this after you said the word hard. So what is the breathing technique to start with? So very simply we take a normal breath
• 01:30 - 02:00 in and a normal breath out and then we hold the breath. It's important that we hold on the exhale rather than on the inhale because we don't want the lungs full of air and full of oxygen because one of the things that we get from this technique is we drop oxygen levels within the lungs and within the blood and within the muscles and that creates more lactate but then your body gets better at dealing with it and buffering it. So we don't want to hold on a big inhale. We're going to hold on the exhale. So, relatively empty lungs.
• 02:00 - 02:30 Okay. So, I'm just about to run. Breathe in. Breathe out. And I don't breathe in again. You hold and then you run. And we're going to run 40 m. Oh, days. We're going to run 40 m. All right. And you've got 30 seconds until you got to run back. So, your 40 m sprint is going to take you, depending on how fast you are, six, seven seconds. So, you're going to have 24 23 seconds rest, something like that. So that rest period then becomes key because you want to pant and that's not going to help you. The breath hold itself is creating oxygen to drop down
• 02:30 - 03:00 but CO2 to increase. So we improve our tolerance to CO2 as well. That will help us in time with our breath control. But when you're not ready for it at first, it's the thing that's making you pant. So you change your body's relationship with that psychologically. That's going to have a bit of an impact as well because when you're panting and you're holding your breath, you can feel a bit um or panting after holding your breath, you can feel a bit stress. So, you practice staying calm under that sort of stressful situation. And uh we learn to control our breathing rather than let it being fast and panty so that you've got
• 03:00 - 03:30 those precious 23 24 seconds to get in a good place to mentally be ready to go again. Awesome. So, I'm going to go through it now with Jacko, but make sure you wait around at the end cuz Jacko is going to share a little exercise or a session for you to do to test out yourself, whether that's running on a bike or whatever that some of the pros are doing, which is uh pretty exciting. So, right, mate, nervous, but let's get into it. Right. So, he's just gone away and uh
• 03:30 - 04:00 was thinking about how we're going to film this. I said, well, let's just do it. You're going to do two sets of five. Each one's 30 seconds. So, it's two and a half minutes for one set, two minutes recovery in between. So, it's only seven minutes of work, but he was trying to get out of it, but we're getting him to go through it. So, this is going to be this is real. And this is You see himself psyching him up because this is going to go down. Do I know it's game time? It's time to do some fitness. So, to switch flick the switch. How fast am I going? Is it like
• 04:00 - 04:30 You're going 70%. You're going Well, a bit close to 80 85 maybe. This is going to be it's not absolutely flat out. You can go absolutely flat out if you want to, but let's say let's aim for about 85%. Okay, let's go. Right, so we got the stopwatch going every 30 seconds. I'll count you down. 3 2 1. It'll be on the three. Take an inhale. Take an exhale. Go. Are you ready? Okay. Normal breath in. Normal breath out. Let's go. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
• 04:30 - 05:00 [Music] 20 seconds recovery and just try to get calm with it. Breathe out. Go. Gone. Gone. Bomb. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. [Music] Gone. Two reps down. Only three reps to go. So breathe in. Breathe out. Go. Let's go. Push. Push. Push. Push. Push. Three down. Two to go. Go. Nice. Push. Push. Push. Push. Only one more after [Music] this. Yeah. Last rep of set one and I'm
• 05:00 - 05:30 going to give him something to help in his recovery before set two. Go. Hit that six seconds again or just under. Nice. 2 minutes of work. We're going to give him 3 minutes of recovery before the next set. And we're going to teach him something important that's going to help him recover or regulate his breathing in the recovery period, which is something we call a CO2 dump. You don't want to miss this one. This is like a little breathing the frozen. Just
• 05:30 - 06:00 not just notice what your breathing wants to be naturally like. Don't change it. Just let it happen. And we see it wants to be shallow. It wants to be a little bit chesty. Okay. When you're holding your breath, not only is oxygen going down, but CO2 is going up. CO2 is like a big driver of our breathing. It influences the acidity within the body in acidity within the blood and within the tissues. And when you get more acidic, like your legs get more tired and you get that jelly legs. Yeah. That is good. That felt harder than if you just done five 40 m sprints, right? Oh,
• 06:00 - 06:30 yeah. Because you're holding the breath, you're starving the body a little bit of oxygen and you're increasing the amount of CO2 within the blood. Now, if that is the case and if CO2 is a quite a big driver of our breathing in your recovery periods, a little hack you can use is to dump off CO2 purposefully. Okay? So in this we use the mouth purposefully to try to get rid of you got 24 seconds. It's like the whistle's
• 06:30 - 07:00 gone on the pitch. You got like 20 seconds before the next scrum or the next play. If I feel really out of breath carrying on panting doesn't help you regulate and doesn't get rid of the CO2 in a most efficient way. Okay. So one is improve your tolerance to CO2. But the other is this little hack. So you try and drive as much CO2 out of your mouth. Yeah. You should feel exhale. It's like it's an ab exercise. Yeah. So bang.
• 07:00 - 07:30 Yeah. That last five meters of any like you need that to drive the ribs down and in to force the air out. Yeah. And then afterwards after just blowing some off. Look how it's easier to brea. It's easier to breathe calmer. And when it's easy to breathe calm, you can breathe lower. You can hang back to nasal if you need to. Yeah, it does feel like that's what I needed that last 5 meters last sprint. I just I just want to Yeah. Yeah. You want to get rid of that CO2.
• 07:30 - 08:00 It's interesting, is it? You hold the breath. The first thing your body wants to do isn't breathe more oxygen in because your brain knows it needs to get rid of the CO2. So, we're going to use that to our advantage. Rather than panting and shallow getting a bit rid of a bit, it's like get rid of a lot in three or four breaths, which might take you two seconds cuz they're quite fast. And then you've got the rest of those 22 seconds to actually recover better. So, show us what a couple Yeah, we got we got 30 seconds before we started. So, show us three. Good. That should feel you should
• 08:00 - 08:30 feel it in your abs. Yeah. Good. Good. That was that was tough. That was hard. Right. This will be easier. Breathe in. Breathe out. [Music] Go. Then blow off that CO2. Yeah. Nice. And then feel more in control. Yeah. Let's go. Go on. Go on. Go on.
• 08:30 - 09:00 Nice. Breathe out. Hold. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Go. Push, mate. Push, push, push, push, push. Really good. Hold it. Hold it. Now it's the last one. This is the money where it's the most important one. Blow it off. Get ready. Psychologically, this is the easiest because it's the last one. Physiologically, it's the hardest. Take a breath in. Take a breath out. Go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
• 09:00 - 09:30 [Music] Okay. The resistance that your nose is providing is making the CO2 stay in. Now, that's the opposite of what I just said. Yeah. But what I just said was when we were going to go and do another sprint. Now, keep the mouth closed. Keep the mouth closed. Keep the mouth. Now, whilst we're we're done. Get there's a chance to rather than get rid of it. It's like let the body get more comfortable with it. If you can build up
• 09:30 - 10:00 your tolerance to CO2 when it is higher during higher intensity exercise during games, you feel less out of breath and you'll feel less stressed and you'll have better control when you need it. So you can use the CO2 dumps to allow you to do something better, but equally at the same time you can not use them like at the end of the session and eventually you're going to start feel calmer again in a minute. initially if you do choose to use your mouth mouth but if you choose to use
• 10:00 - 10:30 your nose where those holes are smaller and you you can hear your breathing starting to calm down now make it come from here and slowing the exhale is helpful. So nice deep breath, slow in the exhale. When we slow the exhale, we slow the heart rate and you get back under control of things. And that time now, rather than you just blurting it all out, your body has had to deal with it. And then over time, the adaptation is the receptors in your body that respond to that, they start to calm down a little bit and you're better in control of your breathing. Yeah. So rep
• 10:30 - 11:00 three and four, legs are filling up the last 5 10 m. Just keeping that intensity, eyes are filling up. It was tough. You managed the breath hold all the way to the 40. Yeah. But literally I was getting there and I was just and but that and that's it. So it it it actually reaffirms something we said that actually your body is trying to get rid of that CO2. So if we can improve our tolerance to it, that's one thing. That's why I majored breathe nasally with the small little holes once we've finished so your body can start to
• 11:00 - 11:30 get used to it. Yet the little hack during the session was like get rid of it but just get rid of it efficiently rather than sort of half hourly or on auto. So, what would you recommend? How many of that uh those little blocks of five was that six minutes? That was session. One set of five takes two and a half minutes and you have two or three minutes rest between and then you do your second set of five about once a week. Yeah, once or twice a week max, but it's quite spicy. You don't uh you don't need to do much. So, once a week definitely is the sort of starting
• 11:30 - 12:00 point. It can be done off feet on a W bike. A lot of the professional the international athletes I work with will do it off feet because they're trying they they've already got like a what bike session that they're doing or they're just trying to take some of the load out of an impact out of the legs. So that's something that you do once a once a week takes 10 minutes or less. Did you notice the difference? Like set two was harder because it was set two. Yeah. But did you feel like you had some level of control once you were starting to get rid of that CO2 a little better? Yeah. So say as soon as I crossed the
• 12:00 - 12:30 line the first four or five breaths I was just felt bad and then soon as I could get back in control of my breath I felt oh I can calm this down now. There's this relationship between our breathing and the mind in terms of being able to stay calm. So the breath hold increasing CO2 we actually not only causing all these effects with your lactate we're actually there's fear centers in the brain. So you actually feel more like stressed and more panicky the more CO2 you experience in the brain. But your ability to control your
• 12:30 - 13:00 breathing then reverses that. So you felt calmer when you calmed your breathing. And you can apply that to any aspect of your rugby training and games where you feel a bit stressed or under pressure or nervous. Control your breathing. Control your physiological response. Yeah. Yeah. And how I could see that fit in the game is if doing either a big attacking or defensive set, you've worked really hard, but then when the ball is coming towards where you are, that's when you need to get in control, make good decisions. So just before that, that's when you can get rid of all that the the quick breathing. Uh
• 13:00 - 13:30 that sort of breathing. Then as soon as the ball comes to you or in your channel, that's when you can get back in control. Rugby is a great game for a number of reasons, but one of them in terms of using your breathing is when the game's going on, I'm thinking about rugby, not my breathing. But we have lots of stoppages in play all the time. But just the stop start nature of the game. Whenever the ref blows the whistle, I would be using some, you know, when I played, I didn't know any of this. It's one of the reasons why I'm quite passionate about helping people that are still playing. There's all these times in the game, these precious times in the game when you can do
• 13:30 - 14:00 important things like communicating tactics, but get control of your breathing during that period when there's a stoppage and you will physiologically and psychologically be in a better place, make better decisions, be better focused, be calmer, play better, and and probably enjoy it more as well. And there we go, mate. That was class session. Benefit from you to I was only hoping for three. I thought I was going to have all the editing over the top of it. I was like, no, we're doing it. Doing it. But yeah, thanks for that. And where can people come and find you for more information if they want to work on their breathing
• 14:00 - 14:30 or help their anyday life every day? Yeah. Well, mainly in rugby because that's I play professional rugby myself, but um work in a number of different sports as well as people outside of sport because breathing can help not just you stay calm in a rugby match, but can help you stay calm in a stressful life. So my website is probwork.com. Uh the pro breathwork app is the app available on Apple and on the Google store. And my Instagram is probably where I'm most active on social, which is jacko.david.jackson. Jackson. Perfect. And subscribe to my channel for more rugby drills, tips, and
• 14:30 - 15:00 insights to make you a better player. Cheers.