She’s Gotta Try

This week on She’s Gotta Try, I break down what it actually takes to build muscle for rugby, using a real question from inside the Peerless Pack. I cover the three things you need for hypertrophy: training stimulus, protein, and fuel, and translate the science into something you can actually do around a normal life. Plus, the Peerless Pack intake opens on 17th August ahead of a new six week programme starting 31st August.

This week’s episode is the flip side of last week’s conversation about structuring your training week. This time it’s all about the eating around it. A Peerless Pack member asked me about meal timing for optimal performance and recovery, so I break down the basics of how your body actually uses fuel, the difference between aerobic and anaerobic energy systems, and why that matters for what and when you eat. I talk through the difference between fuelling a morning gym session and fuelling evening rugby training, share my own trial and error from this week including the big meal that went badly wrong, and cover what to do when you know you’ve missed your carbs during the day. As always, the message is simple: know your own body, test what works, and don’t let food rules take the fun out of playing.

I’m also offering five free check ins this week if you want a second pair of eyes on how you’re fuelling around training, to book yours the link is here - https://calendly.com/nutrition-laurapeerless/30min

New to rugby or coming from another sport and trying to work out how to train like a rugby player? This week I’m answering the three questions I keep getting asked by new Peerless Pack members: how many rest days you actually need, whether back-to-back training days are okay, and whether you can weight train on the same day as rugby. I walk through my own pre-season week as a real example, plus how to adapt all of it to your own life instead of copying someone else’s plan.

We won our league. We’re going up to NC1 after 14 years in NC2. And now the real work starts.

In this episode I go deep on Operation NC1 Ready, my 70 day countdown to Seaford Scarlets’ first NC1 fixture, and why I’m applying the exact same Tight 5 Method I coach my players with to my own preseason. I talk through what an optimal week looks like for me versus a baseline week, why fixed targets set you up to fail, and how building in a Plan A and a Plan B is the difference between all or nothing thinking and actually staying consistent. I also get honest about training through perimenopause symptoms, juggling two jobs and a growing business, and why this plan has to flex around real life instead of the other way around.

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t know what “enough” looks like for you, this one’s for you.

I had a proper hiatus last week. Three weeks of posting three times a day, onboarding new one to one clients and a Peerless Pack intake finally caught up with me, so instead of forcing out a podcast I wasn't proud of, I gave myself 48 hours off and came back with a head full of new content ideas, most of them straight from my own clients.

This week two of them had sevens tour on the calendar, and it got me thinking about how we actually navigate the chaotic, brilliant weekends that come with playing rugby. So in this episode I'm sharing my tour survival kit. Spoiler, it's not about packing fruit or hitting your protein targets. It's about permission, guilt, and how you get yourself back to routine once it's over.

I also drop a small teaser for next week's episode, where I'll be talking about my own journey into NC1 as a 43 year old prop. Stay tuned for that

It's launch week for the Peerless Pack — the last one before September — and I'm knee deep in it. So this week I'm talking about the thing my mate said to me that's stuck in my head all week: what you forget to do in July gets remembered in September.

I've taken on two new 1:1 clients this week, both women in their 40s finding their way in rugby, and like clockwork, they've turned up thinking they need to train six days a week, eat off a meal plan, say no to every social event and needed a cupboard full of supplements to get results. So today I'm unpicking all of that — what people think it takes, versus what actually works when you're a rugby player with a job, a life, and hormones that occasionally stage a coup.

Inside this episode: the 10-second boot reel that outperformed everything else I’ve ever made (and what that tells us), the 80/20 approach to food that actually sticks, why I will never write you a meal plan, sleep vs supplements, and the Kaizen mindset that's getting me preseason-ready one interval at a time.

The Peerless Pack opens for its last intake before September on Monday 6th July. If you've been humming and hawwing this is the one to stop humming and hawing about. DM me on Instagram @laurapeerlesscoaching or email [email protected] to get in before the doors close.

In this episode, I sit down with Holly Montabelli (known on Instagram as "The Rugby Midwife") to tackle a critical, yet often ignored, topic in our sporting community: pelvic health.

Holly opens up about their personal journey as a lifelong rugby player and midwife who experienced a prolapsed cervix and pelvic floor dysfunction while training. Together, we bust common strength-training misconceptions, discuss the immense physical demands placed on rugby forwards, and share the exact breathing and rehabilitation techniques needed to restore core stability.

We also dive into the cultural and structural challenges facing women's clubs today—from the normalization of urinary incontinence to the glaring lack of basic infrastructure, like sanitary bins in changing rooms. Tune in to discover how to identify key warning signs, seek the right professional care, and implement proactive team education to break down barriers and keep female athletes in the sport they love.

Find Holly on instagram @therugbymidwife

This week I’m taking a step back to answer a question that came up in my business mentoring group: what do I want to be known for? The result is a properly honest rundown of what sits behind the Peerless Pack and my coaching, from my childhood at the rugby club to why a no bullshit, common sense approach to nutrition and training matters more than ever in a world of conflicting advice and AI generated noise. I talk community over competition, fun over grind, and why keeping women in the game for as long as possible is the whole point. Like the sound of this, come join the Peerless Pack. Early bird sign up for the Peerless Pack opens 22nd June - contact me @laurapeerlesscoaching or [email protected] for more info.

This week I'm back on my own and we're getting into something that's been on my mind after a very normal, very human weekend involving three consecutive days of drinking.

This week I'm joined by Becky Jones, otherwise known as the Empower Coach, and honestly this conversation went places I didn't expect.

Becky is an anti-diet coach who helps women break free from diet culture and unrealistic beauty standards. She grew up being bullied in a small Yorkshire village, developed a disordered relationship with food at 12 years old, and spent her 20s fighting the messaging that her body needed to look a certain way to be accepted. Now in her 40s, she's turned that into a career calling out the systems that caused it in the first place.

We ended up talking about a lot more than food. We talked about what happened when my team won our league this season and got almost zero recognition from our club. We talked about being labelled "difficult" and "hysterical" when you ask for things that are completely reasonable. We talked about how women in sport are still being made to feel lucky just to be there, and what you can actually do when you're tired of beating your head against a brick wall.

In this episode we cover:

• Growing up in 90s diet culture and how it shaped us both

• Why "skinny talk" is making a comeback and why that matters

• The lack of recognition for women's grassroots rugby (and why 5,000 people clearly agreed)

• How to find your voice and set boundaries without blowing everything up

• Non-violent communication as an actual practical tool for dealing with institutions

• Why BMI is basically useless for rugby players

• The patriarchal systems behind diet culture and why Becky isn't shutting up about them

• And why community, not comparison, is what actually changes things

This one is for the women who've been told they're too much. You're not too much. The room is just too small.