The coach behind the rules

Aaron Parry

Aaron is a qualified strength and conditioning coach. He has been the S&C coach for RAF Rugby, Peterborough Rugby and S&L RFC, worked for Northampton Saints Community, and completed placements with Bedford Blues and Newcastle Falcons. He has appeared as a guest on podcasts and has hosted them.

That mix matters. Professional environments show what good looks like: planned weeks, monitored players, strength kept all season. Amateur and services rugby show what actually happens: players with jobs and families, two club nights, a Saturday fixture, and nobody to adjust the plan when the week goes sideways.

The RAF Rugby work is in the app directly. The timed match-day warm-up, the high-low template for two-game weeks, the top-up sessions for players who aren’t selected and the three-tests-a-season approach all come from the RAF Rugby preparation plans.

Why Match Ready exists

Most amateur players get one of three things: a generic gym app that ignores rugby, a PDF programme that ignores their week, or nothing. None of them know that you trained hard on Tuesday, slept badly on Wednesday, or have a cup game on Saturday.

Match Ready starts from the club week. It plans around your training nights and fixtures, by position, and adjusts each session from a quick morning check-in. It also takes the safety side seriously: a head injury return that follows England Rugby’s timeline, pain and red-flag guidance, and an honest approach that never claims an exercise prevents injury.

How the coaching rules were written

Aaron built Match Ready on a written set of coaching rules: more than 500 of them, each tied to its source. They draw on peer-reviewed research, governing-body guidance from England Rugby and World Rugby, position statements, classic strength and conditioning texts, and his own coaching practice.

• Every rule names its evidence and how strong it is: a study, a consensus statement, governing-body guidance, professional practice, or coach’s method.
• Disagreements are settled in writing. In 84 places where respected sources disagree, the rule says what each source says and which way the app goes, and why.
• A science review checked the rules against current research; where the evidence had moved on, the rule was rewritten.
• Untested numbers are labelled. Practical defaults such as readiness cut-offs are marked as practice and will be reviewed after the first season.

You can read a summary of the evidence on the science page, and every guide on this site lists its references.

What Aaron won’t do

No injury predictions. No risk scores. No claims that neck work prevents concussion or that a warm-up makes you injury-proof. No telling you you’re fit to play after a head injury: a doctor decides that. And no guilt-tripping copy when life gets in the way of a session.