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First XV Coach Cast Episode 17- Broken Bucking Bronco
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The Bronco fitness test is everywhere in rugby—but does it really measure what matters on the pitch? In this episode, I break down why the Bronco falls short, why context matters in player testing, and what alternatives actually prepare athletes for the game
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Transcript
Introduction & Overview
00:00:01
Jarrod Dyke
Hello again all, welcome to back to First 15 Coachcast. If you haven't been here yet, my name is Jared Dyke. I've been doing this for about half a year now. So today, we'll get right into it.
Introduction to the Bronco Test
00:00:13
Jarrod Dyke
I have um want to talk a little bit about something I've touched on it before, but I really want to get specifically into this thing. And um it's right in my wheelhouse because it seems to be a very popular fitness test that is done in my sport.
00:00:29
Jarrod Dyke
um my sport of choice, which is, was rugby. It's called the Bronco.
Critique of the Bronco Test
00:00:34
Jarrod Dyke
you haven't done it before, here's here's the layout. You start, it's ah it's timed, there's no rest.
00:00:42
Jarrod Dyke
You start on the goal line, you're going to run twenty two to a 22 meter line, turn around, come back. You're going to to the, I believe, the 10 meter line.
00:00:53
Jarrod Dyke
turn around come back now those that haven't played rugby 10-meter line is not 10 years out from the goal line it's actually just 10 years off of the 50 so you gotta do that you're gonna run to the far 10-meter line turn around come back and you're going to repeat that five times
00:01:13
Jarrod Dyke
and there's a lot of that like one of those is kinda kinda sucks five of those Wow.
00:01:24
Jarrod Dyke
And this is, this is a standard test that a lot of teams are running. And unfortunately, here's the thing. um i mean, think about it this way. There was a point in time where baseball players, professional baseball players were asked to run a mile.
00:01:39
Jarrod Dyke
Rugby is not there yet where we don't understand that that actually, that test has very little bearing. It might have more bearing and more validity with say sevens players, seven on seven players. You know, it's kind of a,
00:01:53
Jarrod Dyke
bit of a blitz of a half.
Relevance to Professional Rugby?
00:01:54
Jarrod Dyke
It's seven minutes. it's You play the same on the same field with half the players, a little more than half the players that you usually do. That might have some more validity with like that, but when we're talking about professional teams that put 15 on a field at the time and play in a 40-minute half, 35-minute half, and used, it don't work.
00:02:17
Jarrod Dyke
Plain and it's not a it's not a It's not going to hold up for... The sport, I think, plain and simple.
00:02:28
Jarrod Dyke
Really, if you think about it, and listen, I've done the i've done the analysis on it over and over again. There's rarely a point in time where an individual player is going to run that type of distance.
00:02:40
Jarrod Dyke
There's rarely a point in time where an individual player is going to need to run the full length of the field and back. So doing anything of the like more than once, and i understand it's mostly only half a field, still,
00:02:54
Jarrod Dyke
doing that five times and saying that this is your standard.
Rugby Dynamics vs. Bronco Test
00:02:59
Jarrod Dyke
I think the the average time is somewhere around five minutes or something like that.
00:03:06
Jarrod Dyke
So at no point in time, if you've ever watched a rugby game, is the but it's rare the ball isn't played for five minutes. Let's put it that way. If the ball isn't played for five minutes, you can see guys are just absolutely gassed.
00:03:18
Jarrod Dyke
They're like, holy shit, how's this ball not gone? There's usually a penalty, a um a knock on a a small infraction for hitting the ball forward. ah Ball's gone into gone into touch, slash out of bounds, if you haven't if that's what they call it in rugby.
00:03:35
Jarrod Dyke
A try has been scored. Something. Something happens where the play stops.
Challenging the Bronco Test's Value
00:03:41
Jarrod Dyke
So at the very least, looking at how long ah the ball is in play is really it's really ridiculous to think that that that test has holds any validity whatsoever.
00:03:56
Jarrod Dyke
ah and this is going to be a this This might be an episode that those those that listen to it that are from the rugby universe, I'm going to make them mad. And I honestly don't care. Because it it's a test that needs to be challenged. Because it's no it it doesn't hold anything. It doesn't hold any weight.
00:04:13
Jarrod Dyke
and People are saying, oh, I need to find out your VO2 Max. I don't think it takes that long to
Exploring Alternatives for VO2 Max
00:04:19
Jarrod Dyke
find out your VO2 Max, really. If you need to know.
00:04:24
Jarrod Dyke
I'm not a scientist or anything, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't. So there's that. um But back to it. The ball in play will probably never exceed more than one minute, maybe two.
00:04:37
Jarrod Dyke
So there's that. An individual, depending on the position, will probably never be sprinting for that long or trying to, well, at that point, it's no longer sprinting. It's now running fast.
00:04:49
Jarrod Dyke
It's still, it's looking at
00:04:55
Jarrod Dyke
what are you doing on the field? And there are even in defense is a little bit harder work. So you're going to be moving more because there's no plan to a defense
Fitness Tests for Rugby - Beep & Yo-Yo
00:05:06
Jarrod Dyke
necessarily. Everyone's got to work hard and and make tackles and so on and so forth. Offense, it's a lot easier to predict who's going to move when. And I can tell you, especially for a team that has the ball, it's easy for players to catch their rest with the ball and play because certain players will take their turn passing the ball, carrying the ball, you know, helping out with support, as we call it, getting into rucks, which is the hard part. part
00:05:33
Jarrod Dyke
And I'm not denying that you're not going to do hard work for ah up to a minute, but you're not going to do it for a minute straight. You're going to do it in intervals.
00:05:46
Jarrod Dyke
So, and if anyone's trying to tell me, well, the turn is the interval. Not really. It's a turn and go. And especially if you're if you're timing it a player that... yeah has nothing else to do, like they have no reason to just keep going and really hit it hard because they're trying to get a good time, they're not going to take that turn as a rest. going to try and turn and go quick.
00:06:09
Jarrod Dyke
So that's not, that doesn't come as at any sort of interval. So we we can dismiss that idea. And it's just, there is no point in time where this is actually going to measure up to anything.
00:06:23
Jarrod Dyke
It is outright cardiovascular fitness. And I'm not saying it's not, it doesn't need to be a piece. I'm saying there's ways to do it better. And I've, I wrote a piece on this as well. And if you were to ask me what you need to do instead, all right, first of all, let's talk about the levels.
00:06:42
Jarrod Dyke
So at youth level and really amateur club level, club level, club level, spit it out.
00:06:51
Jarrod Dyke
A test like this is not necessary.
00:06:55
Jarrod Dyke
especially when you think about amateur club level, um anything under the under below professional level, or you know maybe a high-end university, college, whatever you whatever you wish to call it.
00:07:09
Jarrod Dyke
Looking at that,
00:07:13
Jarrod Dyke
yeah there are so many other things that, especially, and you know I can speak for myself, in my experience and in my case, where I have players that are coming into our team having never before played the sport, probably barely ever seen the sport, but just heard good things about the team, maybe their teammates, maybe their friends that are playing and they want just join up join up and and tag along.
00:07:39
Jarrod Dyke
I have got way bigger fish to fry with the preseason allotment that I'm given, which is about two and a half weeks, to bring someone from having to Know nothing about the sport to be able to play it in ah in a competitive match Two and a half weeks is nothing in that case and yes, I have players that have experience and that can help along but So where some of these players we need to bring them from you know zero to four not zero to one so Time really the value that I get out of a fitness test is so marginal compared to trying to teach these players sports and
00:08:21
Jarrod Dyke
a sport that they've never played and really skill development for those that have. So between those two, i don't have a ton of time for it. And then even at like high end uni and professional level, there's, they're only training twice a week. They're only hit getting two practices in a week.
00:08:40
Jarrod Dyke
And again, we're we're talking about preseason, you know, it's probably only a couple of weeks. So in that case, it's probably four practices, maybe six. Do you really want to waste one of them on,
00:08:51
Jarrod Dyke
a fitness test, especially one that doesn't carry a lot of weight in terms of know what it actually what it reflects for per player. And yeah, I am not saying that people that do well on this test aren't fit, and I'm not saying that people do poorly in this test aren't fit.
00:09:15
Jarrod Dyke
What I'm saying is there's still a better way.
Developing a Custom Fitness Test
00:09:19
Jarrod Dyke
My personal favorite is the is the beat test or the yo-yo test. ah You got sprint and then you get a certain amount of rest and then you sprint back, repeat until you failed two in a row. Basically and repeat until you've gone, you failed to get down and get back within the given time.
00:09:36
Jarrod Dyke
And the the rest goes down and down. And to me, that has a lot more ah carry over to the sport because really, if you're talking about either running into a tackle, carrying the ball,
00:09:49
Jarrod Dyke
um down the field or getting into the contact areas is what we call it sometimes the rock where there's a ton of hard work being done. You're not doing it in, you know, five minute bursts. You're doing it in very short bursts and need to, and then you need to be able to repeat it.
00:10:07
Jarrod Dyke
So that's, so that's why I find something like the beep test or the yo-yo test more valid. And then something of my own creation.
00:10:18
Jarrod Dyke
i I don't remember where I saw the idea for it, but i liked it a lot um and just modified it a little bit. But essentially i will have my players, and this is something I'll just do for regular fitness just to see how how they're doing.
00:10:32
Jarrod Dyke
I will have my players stand on their goal line and they're going to sprint through the 22 meter line and they'll walk back and I'm going to give them a five minute block in that and see how many they get in that time. Then I'll give them some rest and see if they can repeat it.
00:10:46
Jarrod Dyke
you know Something like that is really And then if I want to retest them down the road, it's and still good fit ah good fitness drill. It can fit in with other parts that you need in order to make sure that
00:11:03
Jarrod Dyke
rugby fitness is up to snuff.
00:11:07
Jarrod Dyke
And you can just remeasure it. And then, yes, you need to be able to go for 40 minutes. All right, well, five minutes isn't 40, number one. And five minutes isn't long enough, really, to...
00:11:22
Jarrod Dyke
to really um
00:11:27
Jarrod Dyke
be enough for what most people would consider zone two or long, long, long cardio, long, slow cardio or long-term cardio, whatever term you want to put to it.
00:11:38
Jarrod Dyke
So if you're going to look to train that, then I would say, yeah you need to probably look at getting on a bike, going for an easy jog,
00:11:51
Jarrod Dyke
walking uphill on treadmill, i I certainly am a fan of that. um Anything, rower, anything of that sort. And yeah, you need to see where this person's, you really need a heart rate monitor and you need see when they're asked to be, especially like in the case of like uphill incline treadmill, you can measure the speed and the
Conclusion & Listener Engagement
00:12:15
Jarrod Dyke
incline. And if it's the same over time and you're still doing the same period,
00:12:21
Jarrod Dyke
but the person's heart rate is no longer jumping as high as it used to, you can use that as ah as a measurement as opposed to this ridiculous test, honestly.
00:12:34
Jarrod Dyke
So that's and that's my spiel for it. There's a lot more I could dive into with that, but I try and keep these episodes nice and short. So ah yeah, of course, if you want to talk about it, shoot me a message, shoot me an email.
00:12:47
Jarrod Dyke
um But than that, that's going to be it for today. appreciate everyone that's been listening to me right along and is and has given me some kind words of support. I'll be back sometime next week. Thank you very much. Have a good one all.