Returning Bevan buoys Cardiff’s pre-season

The man responsible for overseeing this block of training is Trystan Bevan, Cardiff’s High Performance Coordinator, back for his second spell with the region after four years away with Wasps.

“Pre-season used to be very, very important, but now it’s almost like a recharging of the batteries,” explains Bevan, “in a rest sense, but also in a performance sense. It’s pretty much a global season now, so off-season and pre-season is a chance for players to rest, to spend time with their families, but also to prepare.

“The game is a constant moving target with regards to what physical qualities you need to achieve as a player, so you try and target a few strong areas, and a few potentially weak areas players may have too.”

If you thought the old-school days of hill runs were a thing of the past, you would be wrong. This year, Cardiff continued the tradition of ascending (repeatedly) the picturesque but brutally steep hills of Castell Coch.

“There is such a thing as being too spit-and-sawdust in your approach to training, but there is definitely a place for it,” says Bevan, who is originally from Neath. “You need the sessions where you’re targeting specific aspects of speed and power, but you’re also looking to build that dark, resilient, mental toughness that doesn’t come with doing comfortable things. Castell Coch is a fantastic place to train. It’s got that fear factor that I like.”

He cites one of the all-time greats of boxing as testament to this approach. “Look at the way Joe Calzaghe used to train. He based himself in a dark, wet gym in Newbridge because he didn’t want to surround himself with any of the niceties of training.”

Bevan’s vast knowledge in his field is allied with his own experiences as an athlete: he represented Wales in the 400m hurdles and Michigan State University in 400m on the elite US collegiate circuit. (His athletics background has also seen him co-author a newly-published book on GB’s gold medal-winning relay team at the 2004 Olympics.)

Opportunities to put together an intense block of quality training don’t come along often in rugby, so Bevan and his team make the most of this window. “The long-term advantage is that it will make you a little more resilient and robust,” he says. “In the short term, as horrible as you feel going through the sessions, you’ll feel a million dollars once you come out on the other side. It can fill a player with confidence going into the new season.”

Wales and Cardiff wing Owen Lane recently described the training Bevan has been putting them through: “It’s been intense and a bit of a shock to the system. I’d done a bit during my time off, but this week has certainly been a step up in terms of training intensity, volume and running load. Dai [Young] is looking to play at a fast pace and with intensity. I can definitely see Trystan’s philosophy coming in, in terms of the amount we’re running and the high speeds we’re doing.”

If enjoying pre-season isn’t quite the expression most players would use, they are at least now fully aware of its benefits, according to Bevan. “Twenty years ago, players would roll their eyes at pre-season as something that they just had to get through, but the mindset has shifted now. They understand the importance of being in shape because it not only elevates the peak of their career, it elevates the longevity of their career as well. They get that pre-season is an element of training that will actually make them better as players.”

Putting the fear factor to one side, Bevan allows that there are ways of making pre-season fun. “I like to make the bandwidth of training quite wide,” he says. “For every session that’s monotonous and boring – where you’re looking to tick a box – you also want to provide a little variety. We’ve got many different groups training at different times and places: some are in the gym, some are on the field with the ball, some are in the hills. It stimulates the mind sometimes not knowing what’s coming up next.”

There are six or seven groups at any one time, and he breaks them down accordingly: “You could have guys who are quick but need to be fitter, or who are fit but need to be quicker. Then you could have big guys that need to lose a bit of weight, or light guys that need to be stronger. You judge each player’s profile against the other, and some might train particularly well with a certain individual, so we’ll add them to that group. You’ve got all these micro-groups operating as a whole.”

Finally, he believes that clubs at all levels, including grassroots, should adopt a rounded approach to pre-season. “You should be working on your strengths as well as your weaknesses. Most people in pre-season will say ‘I’m not fit, so I’ll just run up hills to improve my fitness’, but you should actually be focus on building your strengths as well.”

Harlequins v Cardiff Rugby, Saturday 4th September (15:00), Twickenham Stoop.