Miss Rhead writes...

After a good night's sleep at the academy and a hearty breakfast, we were ready for our second day of training. It started with a circuits session in the gym, which we were lucky enough to share with some of the Springboks, who use the academy as their base. After the circuits we then competed six challenges to try and earn points for our four sub groups. This was followed by a pool based session in an Olympic sized pool to give our muscles a chance to recover. Today was noticeably chillier than yesterday and there was a chance of rain forecast - this was a shock given the brilliant sunshine we had yesterday.

We were then rewarded with lunch before "building our temple" and identifying what our objective is going to be for the coming season. The team decided on "100% in everything". We then turned our attention to building the temple pillars by identifying the qualitities to support our ambition. After discussions and a vote we settled on; camaraderie, selflessness, tenacity, to be ambitious and discipline. We then thought about our practical cornerstones that will help achieve the objectives.

Today's training session was contact to help us prepare for our first match tomorrow, against Somerset College. The first hour was outside with a mixture of contact drills and games following a contact warm up session. We then spent an hour inside using the 4G pitch where we split into forwards and backs to fine tune the technical aspects of our game.

The staff had a surprise in store because they had booked the cryogenic chamber, the only full body unit in South Africa, to help promote recovery. It only freezes the outside 1mm of your skin but tricks your brain to divert blood to your vital organs, so that when you emerge, the 'super blood' targets any aches, pains or injuries to promote recovery. We needed to go in for our three minute session at -120C with two of our team mates. To calm everyone's nerves, Mr Fraser and Miss Rhead put themselves forward to go first and Harry J. was brave enough to join us as we entered the first chamber wearing dry swimming kit and protection for the extremities. This chilled us down to -60C for thirty seconds, it was very cold, but this was only half the story because it was about to get even colder and we then spent two and a half minutes at -120C with the song lyrics "it's going to be ok" playing through the speakers. We made the mistake looking at the countdown and still had 1 minute, 52 seconds to go. So we kept moving and then emerged back into the hall (which seemed pleasantly warm) to get dressed and reassure everyone else that it really was worth it! Everyone accepted the challenge, safe in the knowledge that the staff wouldn't ask the team to do anything that they weren't prepared to do themselves.

There was then time for packing and dinner before our evening entertainment - a team quiz and a chance to earn more points for our sub teams. Our chilling experience combined with an intense day of training will hopefully mean a goodnight's sleep before our first match and a chance to work towards giving 100% in everything.