Mark Chisholm was certain 2008 would be his year. He was big, fit and strong. He’d served his four-year Wallaby apprenticeship. Yes, 2008 was his time. But it wasn’t.

A 70m try was the result of this Chisholm burst against Wales last year. A 70m try was the result of this Chisholm burst against Wales last year.
Images: Stefan Postles

Queensland lock James Horwill got the nod from Robbie Deans and Chisholm was shunted back to the Australia A team. He watched from the wharf as the Tri Nations sailed by and Horwill solidified his spot onboard with a string of bullocking performances. Chisholm, it seemed, had missed the boat. But his reprieve arrived in the form of the Spring Tour. With Horwill injured and Vickerman gone, Chisholm snuck into the squad. His brief was to get more aggressive, get more involved, become a “pest” on the field. He delivered. He played all five Tests and notched a 70m solo try against Wales.So perhaps 2009 will be Chisholm’s year. With Vickerman in Europe, Australian rugby needs a ball-winning lock who can play with the aggression and athleticism of a back-rower. Chisholm has those ingredients. He’s still fit, he’s still strong, and he’s very, very big. Here’s his winning program

Early Iron

“Generally during the pre-season we try to hit every major body part, so we’re looking at the upper body, the back, the core and the legs. During this period we’re looking to build up our body mass, so we’ll do a lot of hypertrophy work – higher reps, higher sets, muscle- building stuff. We’re getting up around 10-15 reps per set, and we’re doing three to four sets, perhaps with a fifth as a back-off set.“On the chest we’re looking at a normal barbell bench press and a dumbbell or barbell incline. For the back we’re doing a prone row or a seated row combined with a lat pull down. And for the shoulders we’ve got our lateral raise, front raise and bent-over rows. So they’re the main groups for your upper body. We also do a lot of work on our core – hanging knee raises, hanging pikes. Then on our legs we get into the squat, whether that’s the basic free weight squat, a box squat or even the scrum truck if we want to get rugby specific.”

Varying Speeds

“While we’re in the hypertrophy phase packing on the muscle mass, we can mix things up by varying the speed of the movement. Often we’re looking at doing eccentric loading (the lowering phase of the movement; extending the muscle under load) of up to four seconds, but if we’re going to slow down the movement that much, we’re going to have to back-off the weight.“When we’re in the high-loading phase – high reps, multiple sets – the eccentric slowness isn’t as important. But when we’re getting down to those lower reps, around eight or below, we’re really looking at slowing the movement down so we’re putting the muscle under stress for a longer period of time.“See, the way to build muscle mass is to put your muscle under a certain amount of load over a period of time. So with eccentric work you’re doing less reps, but still putting the muscle under stress for that same amount of time. For example, you can do ten reps which takes, say, 30 seconds (two seconds down, one second up) or you can slow that down to, say, six reps that take five seconds each, three seconds down, two up.”