Using ruck pads for all the right reasons

Matching needs

The next stop is understanding what pads give and take away and compare it to your needs. Then, you can choose to use them appropriately.

For example, if we want the physical work of hit, drive and finish, crash mats and pads are probably the right choices at the reduced physical cost.

If we are really struggling with leverage, staying on one side reacting to the step, then we probably want to make it more open by moving away from using these aids.

Matching needs is dynamic

Ruck pads should come and go during a season to help manage the team’s needs.

Look at where you are in the season. If you want to keep your players fresh and reduce fatigue, if they are tackling well and if the games are piling up, then you might use the pads more.

But you also need to keep them contact-ready to balance the weight of player-to-player versus pad, on a week-to-week basis.

Some weeks, you may choose more player-to-player and greater intensity, realising that the next game will have the players more fatigued.

For example, during a tournament campaign, some teams might know they have a lower-tier team to play against, so they will go into that game with some heavy training completed during the week.

Matching needs is specific

We must be careful not to be taken in by fancy pad drills on YouTube or the logo on the jumper. The real question is: does it match our team’s needs?

Coaches should live on a test-retest cycle. We train and we play. You evaluate against game-day performance. Did the training help improve the play?

"Ruck pads should come and go during a season to manage the needs of the team..."

The game is the test. This tells us where we are lacking and where we are excelling. Matching that against previous training, we can see what is working and what must be tweaked.

Most importantly, it tells us specifics that go deeper than surface level, so we can drop in the activities needed to maintain, improve or revise particular skills.

For example, if you weren’t happy with tackle performance, the pads reduce the impact so you can go at high speed and get after it. 

But the game evaluation might show that you need to control work post-contact. Here, player-on-player exercise at reduced speed and power may be the answer.

Paint the full picture

There were some great posts just the other week of France working on ball disruption, ball tie-up or snap down to jackal clips.

They were going at a very deliberate pace; what we would consider a walk-through pace. We are assuming they didn’t want to smash into each other. 

This was leading into a big international game and the French season is notoriously long. Without that context, judging the idea as a good or bad choice is hard.

Paint the game picture

Players need to learn the drill and, crucially, understand its use and the situation.

For example, the classic crash-mat tackle: straight runner, one side, one crash mat. The visualisation has to be that this is a crash ball. This is a one-off ball. This is a dominant tackle scenario – go get it and knock it back.

 If you blindly carry this drill into more open space with evasive skills, there’s going to be a failure of transfer because it’s going to look different.