Four cones, a stopwatch and a lot of silence after the finish line: as it does every summer, the Bronco has once again become the first real test of pre-season. This week, Ange Capuozzo came out on top at Stade Toulousain.
Capuozzo runs 4’20 back from holiday
Stade Toulousain returned to training with a trip against the clock, and it was the Italy international wing who came out with the best time: 4 minutes 20 seconds on Tuesday, under the whistle of strength and conditioning coach Laurent Thuéry and with David Mélé cheering him on, as reported by Le Rugbynistère. That matches the time set a year earlier by his team-mate Paul Costes.
For a player coming off several weeks’ break, the performance shows how demanding the exercise is.
1,200 metres, five sets, no break
The set-up is simple: four cones in a line, at 0, 20, 40 and 60 metres. The player starts on the line, runs to touch the 20-metre cone, comes back, goes out to 40, comes back, goes out to 60, comes back. That makes 240 metres, and the set must be repeated five times without any rest, for 1,200 metres in total. The result is the time, nothing else.
The exercise was introduced to the All Blacks by their head of strength and conditioning Nic Gill, who has used it for more than fourteen years. What makes it distinctive is not the distance but the number of changes of pace: thirty accelerations and thirty decelerations in a single effort. “It involves a lot of changes of direction, deceleration, turning, then acceleration,” Gill told the British website Coach, adding that the test remains “a good indicator of rugby fitness”.
4’08, 4’12, 4’20: the benchmarks
The best time reported so far belongs to Gloucester centre Seb Atkinson, at 4 minutes 8 seconds. With the All Blacks, who have used the test longest, the record is shared by fly-half Beauden Barrett and scrum-half Cam Roigard, both at 4 minutes 12 seconds.
| Benchmark | Time |
|---|---|
| Seb Atkinson (Gloucester) | 4’08 |
| Beauden Barrett and Cam Roigard (All Blacks) | 4’12 |
| Ange Capuozzo (Stade Toulousain, this week) | 4’20 |
| Professional backs | 4’20 to 4’45 |
| Professional forwards | 4’50 to 5’10 |
The gap between forwards and backs is easy to explain: every time he brakes, a 118 kg prop pays a higher price than a 90 kg wing.
The Yo-Yo, the 30-15 and MAS: what the other tests measure
The Bronco has one flaw: it tells you nothing about the ability to repeat efforts broken up by recovery, which is the reality of a match. Other protocols cover that.
The Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test strings together 2 x 20-metre shuttles paced by beeps, with ten seconds of active recovery between each, and a speed that increases in stages until the athlete drops out. A study by University of Bath researchers on amateur rugby referees, published in 2023 in the International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching, concluded that the Yo-Yo better reflects the real demands of a match, and above all that scores on the two tests are not interchangeable: ranking well on the Bronco does not mean ranking well on the Yo-Yo.
The 30-15 Intermittent Fitness Test, designed by physiologist Martin Buchheit, alternates thirty seconds of running with fifteen seconds of recovery, at 8 km/h in the first stage and then 0.5 km/h faster at each following stage. Its value lies not in the ranking but in the final speed reached, which is then used to calibrate interval sessions for each individual.
MAS, maximal aerobic speed, remains the baseline measure: it is the lowest speed at which an athlete reaches maximal oxygen uptake. It is measured with continuous protocols such as the half-Cooper or the Vameval, and can also be estimated from a Bronco time.
| Test | Format | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Bronco | 1,200 m in five sets of 20-40-60 m, no break | Endurance and tolerance to changes of direction |
| Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery | 2 x 20 m shuttles, 10 s recovery, increasing stages | Ability to repeat high-intensity efforts |
| 30-15 IFT | 30 s running, 15 s recovery, starting at 8 km/h | Reference speed for calibrating training |
| Half-Cooper, Vameval | Continuous running | MAS, aerobic base |
Why these times are coming out now
The timing makes sense: French professional squads are in the middle of building up their workloads. USAP staggered their return in three waves on 13, 20 and 27 July, and at Toulon Baptiste Serin summed up the summer in one sentence in an interview with Rugbyrama: “We’re running a lot more than last year.”
The regulations add another reason to take these times seriously. With the return to eight replacements in the Top 14 and Pro D2, clubs need players who can last eighty minutes, and they have raised their endurance standards accordingly over the summer.
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