Rugby pre-season and a changed appetite

Started 19 August 2025 · 17 replies · 162 hearts · read 2.2k times

RohanPune, IN · 19 August 2025

11 months ago

A question rather than an update: Rugby pre-season and a changed appetite

The logistics of this are defeating me more than the medicine is.

The arrangements are the hard bit for me. Nothing medical has been difficult; the organising has been relentless.

My household has adjusted to about half of this and the other half is causing small daily friction that I have not known how to raise.

This is the boring administrative kind of problem, which I gather is the kind that actually gets solved when you ask.

Thank you. This circle has solved four practical problems for me already and I am hoping for a fifth.

BertrandToulouse, FR

My rest days matter more than they used to and I have stopped treating them as optional.

RonanBelfast, NI

Bertrand has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

What I found is that the first six weeks were the worst for performance and that everything after that has been ordinary.

ClémenceNantes, FR

Holding this with you rather than answering it.

RenFacilitatorBristol, UK

Two things, both boring. Nobody here can tell you what to do about your week. And describing your own week is genuinely useful to somebody planning theirs.

BaySt Ives, UK

I would gently say that if training has become the thing you use to justify eating, that is worth saying out loud somewhere.

BramGhent, BE

My experience is that this is entirely compatible with serious training and requires deliberate attention to fuelling.

RinManchester, UK

Bram, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

The thing I underestimated was hydration. My requirements changed and I noticed it in the gym before anywhere else.

9me too 6

NadineLyon, FR

Somebody in this circle said that grip strength is the most honest measure and I have tracked mine ever since.

EdwynNewcastle, UK

Bram, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

Keeping what I had built was the whole of my concern and it turned out to be almost entirely about protein and lifting, in that order.

8me too 5

OndineLausanne, CH

#10

Coming back at two years to say the strength held, the training is unchanged, and the fuelling took a season to get right and then became automatic.

PamSouthport, UK

#11

What I would say to anybody starting is do not stop lifting. That is the one thing everybody here agrees on.

MaryamBirmingham, UK

#12

Reading Ondine, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Nothing here is coaching or medical advice, and the fuelling side in particular is worth a proper conversation with a sports dietitian.

NoleneDurban, ZA

#13

The advice I got that helped most was to prioritise consistency over intensity for the first three months, and it was correct.

10me too 2

TacitaRome, IT

#14

My coach and my prescriber have never spoken and I have relayed everything, and I would do that differently if I started again.

PolaGdańsk, PL

#15

Just marking that I read this properly rather than skimming it.

RenFacilitatorBristol, UK

#16

Gently noticing that we have drifted from the original question into a related one. Both are worth having and only one was asked.

BoWhitby, UK

#17

I keep a very simple training log alongside everything else and the two together tell me more than either does alone.