Preventing poor movements dysfunctions and injuries in elite youth rugby players

The current situation in amateur youth rugby
Across the United Kingdom and Ireland, the youth teams which parents and local volunteers are aiming to provide the best coaching possible for their local rugby clubs. However, with limited knowledge of the coaches sports conditioning(fitness) and injury prevention methods there are a lot of kids who are growing up with poor mobility and poor posture that will affects the players functional movements. The past experiences which I experienced as a young rugby player was that the sport has a military disciplined approach of doing a lot of press ups and sit ups to strengthen the core and upper body area of each individual player and a lot of running to train the cardiovascular systems. The problem with that approach is that the rugby players are required to be able to produce power quickly so when doing a lot of cardiovascular training and push ups are not sufficient for producing power. Secondly doing a lot of press up is not beneficial for a rugby player to perform for functional reasons. This is due to the forming an upper extremity movement impairment syndrome, that can be developed by a pattern overload by performing repetitive motions such as press ups. This can also be developed by sitting down for extended periods of time, for example the young rugby players who are at school sit for prolonged periods of time in a class room will also inhabit the syndrome. The Upper extremity movement impairment syndrome will develop rounded shoulders, forward neck posture, improper scapulothoracic (movement linked to shoulder use such as raising and lowering your arm) and glenohumeral kinematics (rotator cuff fatigue). These impairments are caused by weak rhomboids (inner back muscles), tight pectorals due to the over usage of press ups, Underactive LFT and overactive UFT (neck muscles which force forward neck posture) and poor functioning of the rotator cuffs (shoulder joint).

How Pilates could help young rugby players can avoid injuries
(Robinson, et al., 2000) composed a book for a wide audience of sport and health enthusiast called “The Official Body Control Pilates Manual” which claims the Pilates can help Relaxation, Coordination, Concentration, Alignment, Breathing, Centring and Stamina. Any rugby player could use this as a great foundation to build their training routine upon. In their book they have specific pages for most individual sports, including rugby that indulge into the common problems rugby players have and why their body progressively over time start to develop these dysfunctions
Rugby Players has a contrast of physiques which are required for various positions, so some rugby players might have different muscular imbalances and movement dysfunctions due to the nature of their position. For example, a front row prop physique will encounter different muscular imbalances and poor movement dysfunction in relation to a winger. The Front row forward especially have more shoulder and neck problems due to the pressure of scrums and the all round physical nature of their jobs. Whereas a Winger would more likely have lower limbs dysfunction due to changing speeds and directions quickly.
The Most Common problem for rugby players are:
• Over Developed shoulder and neck muscles (Mainly front row)
• Tighter upper trapezius to support the neck
• Overworking Levator Scapulae (Border of Scapula)
• Poor Pelvic Stability due to weak tranversus abdominis, pelvic floor and multifidus
• Tight dominating adductors
• Weak Gluteus Maximus
• Tight hip flexors
• Overworked Hamstrings
• Arched Tight lower backs
• Overdeveloped Pectorals

Foam Rolling After Sessions for Increasing Mobility, Flexibility and reducing injuries
The Foam Roller is a beneficial tool that can help recover your muscles after a workout, increase your mobility and can improve your flexibility. However, this beneficial and easy using tool can be neglected or underused when helping rugby players. The Foam Roller is used to break down the collagen around the muscles fibres to allow the athletes muscles to help boost naturally recovery. When weight training or playing a heavy physical sport (such as rugby) the athletes body goes under great stressed and muscles fibres tears. When the muscles fibres tear the natural recovery of the body will try to repair themselves by using collagen to in theory glue the muscles back together and help the muscle recover. However, the body natural recovery isn’t always going to glue the muscles fibres back together perfectly and that’s how knots in the body muscles are made. The Foam Roller is used to remove the knots by rebreaking the muscle fibres which hasn’t recovered properly and to allow the muscle fibres to gradually recover back to its near natural state.
Here is a typical upper body Foam Roller routine:

How to get your athletes to “buy-in” to recovery sessions
I can 99% guarantee you that most young rugby athletes would put their recovery at the bottom of the list when you ask them what they do most or what they prefer doing out of strength training, rugby training, conditioning training, etcetera. The biggest problem which does occur with the young rugby athletes is to get them to “buy-in” to their recovery sessions with the same approach as their strength training sessions.
(Estes, 2017) gave a great analogy on how to get your athletes to buy into their recovery sessions by saying that “your body is like a bank” meaning that your body takes ‘money out of the bank’ by training and the more taxing the sessions such as heavy loaded strength training or a tough conditioning session the more ‘money you would withdraw out of the bank’. However, the athlete’s recovery session is there to help ‘pay back the bank’ for those hard sessions. The Coach needs to address to their athletes that not every session needs to be the hardest ever session and that in the long term building the foundations to set your body up for the gruelling conditioning sessions or for the heavy loaded sessions are very important for the athletic career.