Typical Day
Ralph Rugby starts his Tuesdays the same way every week. He gets up at 6:00AM and has a big breakfast of a protein shake and a six-egg white omelet. Ralph will be burning a ton of calories in training today, so he needs to keep it light and high-energy, but also filling.
He saves carbs for loading up the night before a game. It takes a night of sleep for his body to process the carbs and store the food as energy to use the next day.
Trust us; it's all very science-y.
After breakfast, Ralph hops into his car and drives off to team practice an hour away. When he gets to the field at 7:30AM, he's happy to see his teammates. He's come to think of them as family. There are thirty guys on the team, even though only fifteen can officially play during a game. This leaves plenty of room for substitutes if anyone gets injured.
This is rugby; if someone doesn't get injured, it's a miracle.
Next is the weigh in, where everyone goes over their nutritional intake and their physical fitness. If a player's sick, his training will be modified for the day to give him time to recover. Maybe he'll only have to do a hundred squats instead of the usual two-hundred—that sort of thing. There isn't much whining (or as Ralph's overseas teammates call it, whinging), because rugby certainly isn't a sport for moaners or groaners.
At 10:00AM, the team watches films of their previous game and goes over the mistakes that were made, making sure to focus on solutions to them at the next game. It's typically no one's fault; the guys who screw up always get a hard time from their teammates, until it's their turn to screw up. Their coaches go over strategy. Ralph's impatient and is raring to go already.
An hour later, the team heads to the weight room for strength training until lunch. They lift some seriously heavy weights to build muscle as quickly as possible. Ralph often feels like Hanz and/or Franz during this time and does the shtick with his buddy Shawn Scrum: "We are going to pump, you up," they say in unison, clapping on the pause and smiling wide for the imaginary un-pumped-up interlocutor.
Classic.
Ralph and Shawn have been best friends and teammates since they started playing rugby together as kids in third grade. They've both wanted to be top players on a pro rugby team all of their lives. They were elated when they got to play the game in college together (both on rugby scholarships).
Now, even though they're only making a couple hundred bucks a game, their goal of winning the Rugby World Cup is getting closer. Now that rugby's in the Olympics, they might have a chance to represent their country, win gold, and promote their sport to America all at the same time. Talk about winning.
In the meantime, both Ralph and Shawn are trying to get noticed by recruiters overseas, where the real money is and where the sport is taken seriously. If they can stand out, maybe one of them could get picked. Ralph hopes it's him.
At lunch, the guys pound the protein with mountains of beef, chicken, and pork, with a little salad thrown in to appease the team dietician. They drink protein shakes and lots of water—no sense in getting dehydrated. Again, this job's all about those precious calories.
After some much-needed digestion, at 1:30PM guys form two teams and scrimmage each other for the rest of the afternoon. This is Ralph's favorite part of the day—he lives for the game, so actually getting to play it and (technically) get paid for it is a dream come true.
Unfortunately, he gets hurt in a pileup around 3:15PM. It isn't serious, but even a sprain could take him out of Saturday's game. The team doctor takes a look at him and orders him straight into an ice bath. The other guys laugh and tell him to walk it off, but that's just to make him feel better—albeit in a very weird way. Ralph isn't taking any chances.
The team doctor checks him out again after the bath, gives him some ibuprofen, and advises more rest. If the leg looks okay tomorrow, then he's in for practice. Otherwise he'll have to sit out and possibly miss the weekend game.
He goes home at 5:00PM and eats a big steak for dinner. Seriously, these guys never stop eating. Ralph takes the doctor's advice and spends the evening watching international matches on ESPN Seventeen. He'd usually exercise once more before bed, but he needs to make sure he'll be playing on Saturday. You never know, maybe an overseas scout will be there. Ralph needs to be in tip-top shape at all times.