Catch up

OK! So I haven't written any updates to the internship in forever it seems!
To those of you who are regular readers - I apologise. I should have kept it up better.

My excuse is that I've been nursing an injury. On the 3rd October I dislocated my patella at rugby training, and it locked up due to a meniscus tear preventing my knee from moving like it should.
So I've now had surgery - blah blah blah. If you want details on this - go check out my other blog:
http://nitmanbabyrhino.blogspot.co.uk/

SO ... The Internship!
I have still been able to go in to help where I can. It has limited me being injured, but I can still help with the admin side of things, and to be in the weights room (not so involved as I can't really spot too good), doing protein shakes etc.

In terms of learning, the biggest thing that has been noticeable of late, mostly since the start of the regular season I guess, is the amount of changes that get made according the players. Some days they will come in feeling fresh, some days they come in beat up as hell so Gaz (head of S&C) alters either the entire group or individual players' plans according to how they feel that day. For instance if someone comes in with lower back pain and was due to do lower body weights, it will most likely change to upper body weights or just be sent down to the medical team. There is no "One Size Fits All" mentality whatsoever - which is 100% necessary in my opinion. These guys are all completely different as to what they can/can't tolerate, so it's massively important to have things tailored.

One of the more frustrating things is how sometimes things DON'T get tailored.
You're probably a bit confused considering what I've just said prior, BUT I'm now talking about rugby training. We feed back information to the medical team, and certain players who get "Red Flagged" if they're monitoring comes back that they're fucked also get mentioned the skills coaches, but a lot of the time it doesn't seem to have a lot of difference. It will just be "Well stop him once he reaches about 1.5-2k of running". And I suppose in some ways that's a good thing as they always want the players to be involved - BUT sometimes you just wish they could say "yeah ok let him rest".
I know I'm not the only one who thinks this, but unfortunately in this kind of environment I think it's the only real way of dealing with it as there is so much pressure to perform (plus the fact we have a small squad).

Another thing I've found interesting is how the squad react to wins or losses. As a squad we've had both, and the players react very differently. Sometimes after a loss they've come in and you can tell they've lost. Whereas other times they come in and it's like "well it's happened now - let's just move on" and they almost forget it ever happened.
Honestly - I don't know which is best. I mean everyone knows you learn a ton of information from losing, and as long as you learn from it I guess it doesn't matter whether you just move on from it, or whether you dwell on it. Every time I try to decide which one I prefer I counter argue myself. So I'll just say "Whatever works for you".

Performance wise - we're starting to look a bit more like the Quins of old. In our win at the weekend against Wasps in the new European Champions Cup or whatever the hell its called now we looked good in large amounts. We scored tries, and creating chances, through our open and expansive style. We also had a really good defensive performance, with a hard line press and tenacity at the breakdown. It was very good to see.

We're 2 from 2 in Europe, and we're 3/6 in the premiership. It could be worse. The squad is coming together nicely.

Other stuff from the internship - right now I'm starting to think a lot about what I want to afterwards. And it's probably mostly due to the fact that I'm injured and sat around doing fuck all after surgery, but I'm trying to come up with some options or ideas as to how I'm going to progress after Quins to continue my journey. Obviously the best outcome would be to get into a job in Rugby Union in the UK getting paid. That would be ideal. If not - getting paid overseas. Or getting paid in general.
But I also have a lot of options in terms of branching out and getting some more voluntary stuff under my belt to build a CV and help push myself forward in terms of knowledge etc so that people will want to employ me.
Those reading this - hit me up if you have any options or ideas!!! (nitmanperformance@gmail.com)

Right I think I'm done here.
I'm going to try keep these plenty regular again from now on, and I'll try to keep stuff varied.

Til then