We've taken six of the world's top athletes
to find out what it takes to make a true Olympian...
Now we're working, come on!
- ..testing, analysing... - Dig deep, come on!
..going behind the stats of an elite athlete
as we push their bodies to the max.
(ANATOMY OF A RUGBY PLAYER)
The physical demands of rugby sevens
are absolutely enormous.
It's an incredibly fast game, played at incredible pace.
They are the complete package, they are strong,
they are lean and they are powerful
across the entire body.
Tom Mitchell is Team GB's captain
and one of rugby sevens' leading point-scorers.
He led his country to a stunning silver medal
at the Olympic Games Rio 2016...
Tom Mitchell!
..in sevens' first appearance at the Games
and his explosive combination of agility,
speed and strength make Tom
one of his sport's true superstars.
Growing up, being a lover of sport as a kid,
you watch the Olympics, realising
that's the pinnacle of sport.
We brought Tom to our cutting edge sports lab
to face one of his toughest physical challenges so far.
As a sevens player, his anatomy has to excel
in almost every measurable area.
The games are fast and brutal, two seven to ten minute
halves of quick-passing, full-impact,
hard-charging action.
He may be near the pinnacle of his sport,
but if Tom has any weakness, we'll find it.
So, just how close to peak performance is he?
The type of muscle groups, really, for rugby sevens,
is almost entirely global.
They require speed, for sprinting.
In addition, they're doing a lot of tackling.
Big biceps, triceps, shoulders, pecs and to bring those
together, you have to be incredibly strong
throughout the core.
(ROOM IN USE)
(DO NOT ENTER)
Before we really put Tom's physiology to the test,
we need to see the anatomy that lies
beneath the surface.
The Dexa scan will give us the data we need
to see how much of Team GB's
captain is power-producing muscle.
When we look at the body composition of an average
American footballer, they have a fat percentage of 15.3,
a Premier League footballer is 12.5, but Tom is leaner
than them both at 12.3%.
The interesting thing that we see in Tom
is that he's very lean.
There's a lot of muscle mass with very little fat mass.
Only 12.3% of his total body mass is made up of fat
and that's very, very low, particularly for someone
who is carrying 85 kilos at 177cm.
You have to live a different life,
you have to stay in when you might want to go out.
You can't just have a lazy takeaway,
you need to make yourself proper food all the time
and for some people, that's not the life they want to live,
but the rewards are great.
We get to represent our country on the biggest stage.
(DYNO)
The dynamometer test is a measure of strength
and it's also a measure of strength endurance.
So what we should see here, is Tom with very high strength.
Why is that important?
Because strength underpins power, power underpins speed.
Of course, what we have to factor in here, is
that Tom is carrying an injury, so I think, here,
we'll actually see that unmasked.
The dyno will really put Tom's key muscle groups
of hamstrings and quadriceps to the test.
These are the drivers for everything he does
on the rugby field - running, kicking and tackling.
So what I'm going to get you to do, when I say, "Go,"
is to bring your foot back behind your knee
and then extend out as hard as you can to push
against the resistance.
Three, two, one, let's go! And push, push, push!
Pull, pull, pull! Push, push, push!
Pull, pull, pull! Push, push, push!
Last one, pull, pull and relax.
Tom's training involves continual work
on his quads and hamstrings,
the power behind his every move during a game.
The unrelenting pace that sevens is played at,
combined with the kind of impact most of us
would only feel in a car crash,
means a powerful leg musculature is essential
in the modern player.
But after the biggest tournament of his life,
is Tom still firing on all cylinders?
Push, push, push, pull, pull, pull!
Push, push, push, pull, pull, pull! And relax.
Well done, good stuff! Excellent stuff.
Tom's results show some impressive
power-output figures.
His right leg quads generating 106 newton metres,
but his left leg producing a huge 134.
These results tell us that he is strong,
and you can see that just by looking at him -
his incredible physique.
He's very strong in the quadriceps
and he's very strong in the hamstrings
so that ratio is very, very good.
Playing rugby, that's a huge demand on your body.
We joke often in training that we're going to be
in a pretty bad way when we're old men, but the reality is
it does take a toll on your body.
You spend the weekends lying around cos you're sore
and you're icing because you have to, if you want to
try and get out on the training field the next week.
You know, there are things that do really affect your life.
(SPEED)
Rugby sevens is an invasion game.
It's the ability of a player to take the ball and break through
a defence in order to score a try.
Speed is of the essence.
And so what we're expecting to see here,
is that Tom should be carrying very high speed
which is all part of this package of performance.
In the sprint test, Tom will use many of the same
muscles as the dyno, but instead of torque, it's raw
speed that we're measuring.
Rugby sevens has some of the fastest men on the planet
outside of a 100m final, but just how will Tom measure up?
Make sure when you get to that last gate,
you do not slow down, you run straight through it.
Three, two, one, let's go!
Push, push, push, all the way through!
We're testing Tom over short, explosive distances
clocking not only his five and 20m splits,
but also his ground contact time.
Because in sevens, speed is everything.
Look at this run coming from Rosco Speckman!
Well, here goes Iles!
Look at that!
Well, he's not going to be caught now, is he?
Despite breaking his left ankle a year ago,
it's not holding Tom back.
Time for the analysis.
The 5m sprint time, your best time is 1.15,
so not too bad at all.
Yeah, quite happy with that.
Tom's speed is certainly one of his major assets
and although his 20m time of 3.08 seconds
is below the quick men of the 15-a-side game,
his ground contact results are the headline grabber.
Only three 100ths of a second outside a world-class sprinter.
When we analyse the contact time,
what that's telling us is power.
It's about Tom's ability to strike the ground
and accelerate off the ground.
Because, invariably, in rugby sevens,
it is about acceleration from either zero velocity
or otherwise, standstill, or very low velocity
to very, very high speed as quickly as possible.
My main strength on the field is my ability
to use my feet and my agility to beat
defenders, to create space.
Tied in with that is my acceleration, the ability to
move quickly across the ground and change direction quickly
is something I use in the game all the time.
(UP CLOSE)
I played a whole load of sports when I was younger,
I was mad into football,
I played cricket at school, as well, loved playing
basketball, tennis.
Fortunately, my dad was into his rugby,
took me up the local rugby club when I was eight
and I'm pretty glad he did, cos I've loved the sport.
Compared to some of the other guys, I'm fortunate in our
squad, we've got a huge number of athletes.
Some guys that are big and push a lot of weight in the gym
and have a lot of power, other guys are incredibly quick,
so I'm kind of in the middle somewhere
and try to have a bit of everything.
I guess perhaps that's my strength.
If there was another sport that I could play
it would be basketball, I'd love to play in the NBA.
I watch some of those guys like Lebrun James.
The athleticism and the skill and the speed
that they play with,
I'd love to have been able to emulate that
but I'm a few inches too short for that game, I think.
(COGNITIVE)
Performance is not just about the body,
it's about the interaction between the body and the brain.
Effectively, the brain is the central controller,
it's telling us what to do.
So, for Tom, he's having to make decisions at incredibly
high speeds in very, very pressurised environments.
Very difficult thing to do.
Cognitive ability is vital to maximising
the body's physical function.
But it's not just about relaying instructions.
In a game situation, Tom has to absorb,
process and interpret huge amounts of data, fast.
OK, Tom, we're going to do a series of tests
and these are going to look at your brain function.
By testing Tom's pattern-recognition skills,
we can evaluate both his spatial awareness
as well as his ability to make the right decisions quickly.
Rugby sevens has been called human chess,
a game of the brain as much as the body.
Reaction time is critical for any player,
but especially a team captain.
Can Tom make the correct calls quickly when it really counts?
How did you find that?
Yeah, it does mess with your mind a bit.
Your average reaction time is quicker
than Jenson Button's one.
I'll take it, I'll take that!
These results for Tom are absolutely outstanding,
particularly around response time.
And, in fact, what we see is a better response time
than we expect from Formula One drivers,
so it really tells you how important this area is for Tom,
but probably tells you something about Tom.
What really makes him elite is the ability
to make those split-second decisions,
which is what makes him one of the best
try-scorers in the world.
(FORCE)
The countermovement jump test and the drop jump test
are really markers of power.
Because we're looking at height jumped,
they're also a measure of power-to-weight ratio.
In other words what you are trying to be
is as light as possible, but as powerful as possible.
The force test will focus on Tom's calves,
quads, adductors and glutes
measuring how quickly he can move
from muscle extension to contraction
to achieve maximal force in the shortest possible time.
Maximal effort, keep your hands on hips,
as high as you possibly can,
and then land and hold that position.
Three, two, one, maximum effort here.
Good stuff, and jump.
Good stuff, well done, excellent.
Whether it's competing for possession or breaking through
the toughest of defences, the modern sevens player,
needs the ability to unleash maximum power
instantaneously to make those big match-saving tackles
as well as try-scoring runs.
Two, one, good and go!
Good stuff, well done and relax.
The contact times are really, really good.
Again, comparable to some Olympic athletes we've had in.
A drop jump contact time of 0.21 seconds,
combined with a flight time of almost half a second,
are in the same zone as an Olympic high jumper
and Tom's not even at full fitness.
Because we know Tom is carrying an injury,
I think the interesting thing for me is that we can
compartmentalise this into two areas -
one is the sort of psychology and the other is the physiology
and the performance.
From a psychology perspective, it shows you
what Tom is all about.
He is the captain of Team GB,
he is a leader, he is tenacious, he is driven
and I think that really tells you everything
you need to know - that despite the injury,
he undertook the test.
The constant battle that we face as rugby players
is robustness, the ability to train day in, day out
and maintain a healthy body throughout a tournament.
In its Olympic debut, rugby sevens proved to be one
of the most exciting and explosive sports in Rio.
To excel at the highest level, it needs the complete athlete
and Tom's speed, strength and mental firepower
set him apart even among the elite,
showing just what's behind the anatomy
of an Olympic medal-winner.
I mean, Tom is an incredible specimen.
You only need to take a look at him to see that.
He is an elite athlete, he has strength,
he has power, he has speed, he has agility.
Is he going to go the distance?
Oh, my word! Tom Mitchell!
The standout thing is actually his ability
to operate under pressure, to make decisions
and that will be the difference between winning and losing.
The thing is about being a professional athlete,
it's not your nine to five,
there's not really a clocking off time.
So, you go home, you think about what you're eating,
you're thinking about how much sleep you need that night.
That can be a tough thing to adjust to at the beginning,
but once you're into it and you realise why
you're making those sacrifices,
then it just becomes part of your life.
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