With the big game in Twickenham tomorrow, on show will be the biggest collection of professional rugby players ever assembled.
If you compare these players to the 70’s, then you will be comparing chalk and cheese. The physical development of the players now would make mincemeat of the players back then.
I have to qualify this statement by stating that the players back then didn’t have the access to the training knowledge these days, the nutrition strategies that are commonplace these days, the different mindsets these days, the recovery advances that are very visible now.
We also have to realise that the players back in the 70’s were strictly amateurs, working a full time job and showing up for training a couple of times a week.
Weight training was often viewed negatively.
Eating a lot of protein was thought of as mad.
Training methods were very behind the times, and very unlikely to develop champion athletes.
Make shift gyms (if they had them in the first place) were remarkably poor and often unsafe, and nobody really knew what they were doing!!!
So it would be safe today to say that the likes of Gareth Edwards would likely still be fantastic players today, allowing for the fact that they would be right in the midst of all this training and eating knowledge, they would just be bigger, faster and stronger versions of what they were around 40 years ago!
The exciting thing is now that i really believe that any youngster can be developed into a professional athlete or at least semi-pro athlete given the right access to training, eating well, resting well and someone believing in them.
Many people don’t get as far as they could because they do not get enough professional help, i see many potential athletes every day coming through, and all they need is some encouragement, tried and tested advice based on science, and belief in themselves!!
More on this next week!!!
