App Helps Eagle Women Hopefuls Prep For November
App Helps Eagle Women Hopefuls Prep For November
Jackie Finlan looks at how USA players all over the country get ready to be Eagles.
By Jackie Finlan
As USA Women’s National 15s Team head coach Rob Cain toured the country this past month, he continued to build up his player pool; those new additions need to get on board with the training and preparation plans.
The new additions were then added to a virtual community within sportsYou, an app that allows the WNT management to communicate with and monitor its athletes.
See the USA Women's National Team LIVE on FloRugby
The Rugby Weekend
The app has a social media feel to it, and the app helps build some community in a group that might not see each other for months at a time.
“This is my first time in the player pool, and I’m still figuring it all out,” said Chicago North Shore captain Charli Jacoby, who was added to the pool along with teammate Brittany Simunac when Cain came to town. “It can be a lot. You have the strength and conditioning program on top of everything you’re doing for your own club, so it’s comforting knowing that people are out there doing the same thing.”
The pool players have been training in four-week blocks, and strength and conditioning coach Ian Jones designs programs that address mobility, lifting, conditioning, and a training schedule. For the most part, everyone is on the same lifting program but conditioning sessions are modified by position. Within the app, Jones is the main contact along with nutrition specialist Ben Kirk.
“There is a timeline within the app just like Facebook where anyone can post with information, inspiration, and updates. Rob [Cain] likes to occasionally add inspiration and humorous videos,” explained Megan Foster, a capped 7s and 15s Eagle based in San Diego. “Ben does a great job at adding content to help with all sorts of nutrition concepts and ideas. I very much appreciate the graphics he shares with the group. I usually save them to my phone and look at them from time to time for meal ideas and more.
“Ian uploads the strength and conditioning programs and fields any questions we have about them,” Foster continued. “Our daily wellness and RPE [rate of perceived exertion] surveys are linked to the app as well. These help us and the management to monitor our training load, injuries, recovery, and more. We can even send direct messages to people through the app if we wanted to.”
The Eagles have used these types of apps before, and during the previous Women’s Rugby World Cup cycle, the team beta tested BridgeAthletic. That app was primarily focused on strength and conditioning, recording reps and weight, and providing instructional videos for exercises.
“SportsYou is a little more hands-off in the sense that we do not use it to record our weight room and conditioning numbers,” Foster added. “SportsYou is a central location where we get most of our information and expectations from the management. Last cycle, we used various communication platforms for nutrition, S&C, inspiration, and support. Now, it’s nice to get all this content delivered to one location.”
The centralization is also felt on the community side of the app.
“Everyone is very positive on the app’s feed. … We haven’t gotten too competitive on any posts yet, except when we are offered a free tub of protein. That’ll always get us going,” Foster continued. “I think this app is best for the players who are new to the WNT pool. The nutrition content provided is great for anyone who doesn’t know what it takes to properly fuel their body for high performance. It even helps someone like me, who has been in a high-performance atmosphere for some time now. As a player, we know what is expected of us at all times because of the abundant communication from management within this app.”
Cain is due to select his November test squad at the beginning of October, and FloRugby will broadcast the Nov. 3 test against New Zealand, occurring during The Rugby Weekend in Chicago.