The principles behind effective in-season S&C are often simple: manage players individually, maintain the qualities that matter, and keep them ready to perform when matches take priority.

Paudie Roche once asked a top international rugby player what he wanted from his S&C programme for the season ahead. 

‘Whatever keeps me standing and performing’ was the answer. “He used the sea stack as an analogy, and I thought it was an absolutely brilliant analogy. This sea stack at all times of the year gets beaten and beaten. You can chip away at it over time, but it does keep standing.” 

Across 25 years in high-performance sport, Paudie has worked with Arsenal Women and Academy, Munster Rugby and the IRFU. He now runs Coach Roche Performance and mentors coaches working across the game, including through FIFA’s women’s national team programmes. 

In a recent Setanta College webinar, In-Season S&C – Training Without Compromising Match Readiness, he shared the approach he has refined over that time. 

Availability First 

For Paudie, the purpose of in-season S&C is to maintain the qualities built in the off-season and pre-season, reduce injury risk, and manage fatigue so players are ready to compete. 

“My job is to make sure players are available. If they’re not available, it doesn’t matter how strong, fast or fit they are,” he says. “Our job is to keep them on the pitch, competing and performing.” 

That starts well before the season does. 

“Have we done the right work in the off-season, and have we done the right work in the pre-season? If your off-season is poorly planned, then you start the pre-season chasing qualities, and depending on the length of the pre-season, you either catch up or you don’t.” 

Straining, Maintaining and Gaining 

He groups players into three “buckets” according to their needs. 

The “strainers” are often experienced players with plenty of miles on the clock or a history of injury, who need careful management. The “maintainers” are steady and consistent, and need their qualities kept where they are. The “gainers” are younger players, or those coming from a less demanding environment, who need work to get up to standard. 

“For a mature, experienced player, your job might be mobility, stability, recovery. It might be just keeping them fresh,” he says. “Whereas for a young player who’s hot off the minor team coming into the senior team, you might be having to do a lot of extra work to bring them up to a level.” 

Managing the Concerns 

In-season S&C can often meet resistance from coaches worried about muscle soreness, fatigue and a crowded schedule. Roche has seen gym work dropped entirely in the weeks before finals. 

“All of my experience and the research will say that you need to maintain strength, speed and power, and you lose those qualities after two to three weeks of not training them,” he says. “So, it’s very important that it’s constant conversation with the coaching staff. You have to understand their lens as well. They’re trying to win a game, win a tournament, maybe keep a job sometimes.” 

He also stresses that fatigue isn’t always about doing too much. 

“Fatigue is a triangle for me. It can be over-training, under-fitness or under-recovering,” he says. “And mental fatigue is sometimes bigger than actual physical fatigue.” 

Principles That Don’t Change 

“Our principles shouldn’t change in any of our planning. Methods can change,” Roche says. 

The first is the minimum effective dose, with a note of caution about chasing personal bests late in the season. 

“A personal best in any part of the season is a very cautious place to be as a practitioner, because that is maybe a one-off, and we’ll constantly try and chase that,” he says. “What is the minimum you need to keep them healthy, prepared and ready to perform?” 

The second is low volume and high intensity. 

“Intensity doesn’t create fatigue. It’s the high volume of intensity that creates fatigue generally and causes excessive muscle damage,” he says. “High intensity, low volume will actually stimulate your nervous system for explosive events.” 

He also highlights autoregulation, built on trust between players and staff. 

“Have you the trust and the transparency with your player and coaching staff, so that the player comes to you and says, ‘I’m hanging today. Can I just do half the gym?'” he says. “Sometimes the data will say you’ve done too much, when physically and mentally you can see you haven’t. And sometimes it’s the other way around.” 

Practical Tips 

Strength, power and speed are the hardest qualities to build and the quickest to lose, so Roche plans them carefully across the season. 

“If you’re unfit, I can guarantee you, four to six weeks of a well-progressed programme with great intent, you’ll get much fitter. Strength, power, speed, you might not see gains for eight, 10, 12 weeks,” he says. 

His practical guidelines: 

  • Strength: low volume, high intensity, typically sets of five reps or fewer, with a few proper working sets. Don’t let isometrics replace the big compound lifts. 
  • Power: low volume, high velocity. It can be done in 10 to 15 minutes before training to prime players for the session. 
  • Microdosing: short doses of strength work after games or training when there’s no time for a full gym session. 
  • Speed: maximum speed exposure twice a week in a one-game week, at 90% or more, particularly to protect the hamstrings. 
  • Fitness: individual top-ups after games, off-feet conditioning where appropriate, and technical drill top-ups for players not getting game time. 

For female athletes, he includes low-level deceleration work wherever possible, given the prevalence of ACL and ankle injuries. 

Cut Through the Noise 

Paudie’s closing message is for coaches who feel overwhelmed by information. 

“There’s a lot of noise in the sports science world. We’ve never had so much information, we’ve never had so much technology,” he says. “Try and cut through the noise and not do something because it looks good.” 

He points to a young S&C coach he mentors with a low-resource national team. 

“She is doing an amazing job because she has to keep it simple, and the simple is really working,” he says. “Believe in yourself. You’re probably doing the right things. Try something for a while, and if it doesn’t work, then you can change it. But don’t just flip-flop from one fad to the next.” 

Watch the Full Webinar 

The full webinar ‘In-Season S&C – Training Without Compromising Match Readiness’ is available at www.setantacollege.com/webinars.