Andrew Sheridan - Training Zone

Andrew Sheridan is widely regarded to be the strongest man in rugby bar none. The Sale Sharks and England loosehead prop can dead lift weights up to an astonishing 300 kgs, and bench press around 210 kgs, showing the kind of strength every other professional rugby player talks about.


But, then again, it pays to be strong if you are mad enough to be at the coalface of international rugby union, especially if you have to face the man known affectionately as “Big Ted.”


There was a time when a prop used to be round. Now, with professionalism well and truly kicked in, Sheridan is the epitome of the perfect front row forward: 6ft 4 in, 19 stone (121 kgs) and yet just 12% body fat.


It is pretty obvious that he needs to possess an extraordinary level of strength and fitness. “On the basis that each eight-man pack weighs around 900 kgs, that’s 900 pushing towards me, and another 600 kgs (the second and back rows in his own team) pushing behind me,” Sheridan explains. “That’s 1500 kgs crashing into me from both directions. That’s a lot of power.”


Indeed it is, especially when you consider that with the number of re-setted scrums these days Sheridan has to face this surge of power 30 to 40 times each 80-minute game. “And that’s before you include all the rucks and mauls, and everything else I have to do in a game.”


Which is what? “You need aerobic fitness to sustain your stamina for that amount of time, and also anaerobic fitness because rugby requires a series of short bursts of speed, and minimum recovery times.”


You also need speed which, traditionally, props have never had, but then not every prop has been like Sheridan, the man attributed to almost single-handedly destroying the Australian pack in the 2007 World Cup quarter-final in Marseilles. “I’ve run the 100 metres in 11.9 seconds,” he tells you, without batting an eyelid.


But the main area in which Sheridan has to produce strength is undoubtedly his neck. “I’m a loosehead, and that means you have to counter-act a tight head prop whose job is to bear down on you and put all his weight on to your neck. It’s the reason why props tend to have so many neck and back problems. In return it’s my job to get under the tight head and push him up. Whoever wins that battle helps to decide which pack of forwards is dominant.”


With as much as 4 kgs in weight lost during each game, and as long as three days to recover the physical battering of a test match, it is little wonder Sheridan is bordering on being a fitness and, especially, weights fanatic. “Let’s put it this way,” he admits. “My favourite programme on TV is “The World’s Strongest Man.!”
At the end of each season – usually in May – Sheridan is supposed to have four or five weeks off, but he still maintains a slight training programme. “I don’t feel good if I haven’t done something most days,” he explains. This usually means a swim, a game of tennis, or a jog. It is on his return to the club in late June that a 12-week, pre-season period begins, designed to put fuel in the belly for the long, hard season ahead.


“It begins with speed and anaerobic tests, just to see where we’re at. Then we go through the four main areas of being a rugby player: aerobic, anaerobic, weights, and skills, with three sessions a day, except for Saturdays, when we have two. Sundays are days off, but we still undergo some cardiovascular work for an hour, on a bike, or in the pool, just to loosen up the muscles.”


Once the season begins Sheridan’s schedule is a little more set in stone. “Mondays are not overly physical if we’ve had a hard game on the Saturday,” he explains. “We’ll have a weights/conditioning session in the morning, and a rugby skills session in the afternoon. I tend to throw in an extra neck session on top most days as an injury-prevention precaution. Tuesdays tend to be more challenging. The forwards tend to work together, working on line-outs, driving using a scrum machine and picking up the ball and running. There’s a lot of contact involved and it can be very physical. A second session in the afternoon is more skills-based. Wednesday’s involve a rugby session in the morning, then weights and conditioning in the afternoon while, although Thursday is technically a day off, I tend to have a long swim. On a Friday we have what’s called a team run, which is a short but intense session out on the pitch and in the warm up period before the match kick off on a Saturday afternoon we’ll have a few scrums, with three players pushing against three more, and hit a few tackle bags, just to get you warmed up. On a Sunday morning I wake up feeling like an old man, and that’s when we have a recovery session, which is usually in a pool, on a bike, or just a few gentle stretching and fitness exercises to loosen up the body.”


This process is repeated week by week, for eight and half months of the year, before Sheridan then undergoes his ten-week, pre-season regime. So does the softly-spoken giant have time to do anything else?


“Well, I have my brick-laying qualifications,” he says. “But I spend quite a bit of my time sleeping.”
Is it any wonder why!  


Fitness Box:

Andrew Sheridan’s Strength Regime:


Neck: 3 times a week, using a neck harness, which includes pulling 90 kgs and holding the weight for 30 seconds repeatedly, and also a neck dead lift, using a harness and a 60 kg dumbbell before squatting and applying weight on to neck.


General strength: Strong man exercises, such as dragging large tyres, hitting tyres with sledge hammers; dead lifts with bars up to 300 kgs and bench presses up to 210 kgs x 3 for back and legs often 4 x per week.


Core stability: using Swiss balls and lesser weights lifted to strengthen lower back through balancing.


CV work: swimming (128 lengths per week), shuttle running, “down and ups” – sprint, fall to floor, jump up for more sprints and falls. Anaerobic work: 8 x 100 metre sprints, with 30 second recovery intervals in pre-season; then training games in regular season.