to find out what it takes to make a true Olympian...

Now we're working, come on!

- ..testing, analysing... - Dig deep, come on!

..going behind the stats of an elite athlete

as we push their bodies to the max.

(ANATOMY OF A RUGBY PLAYER)

The physical demands of rugby sevens

are absolutely enormous.

It's an incredibly fast game, played at incredible pace.

They are the complete package, they are strong,

they are lean and they are powerful

across the entire body.

Tom Mitchell is Team GB's captain

and one of rugby sevens' leading point-scorers.

He led his country to a stunning silver medal

at the Olympic Games Rio 2016...

Tom Mitchell!

..in sevens' first appearance at the Games

and his explosive combination of agility,

speed and strength make Tom

one of his sport's true superstars.

Growing up, being a lover of sport as a kid,

you watch the Olympics, realising

that's the pinnacle of sport.

We brought Tom to our cutting edge sports lab

to face one of his toughest physical challenges so far.

As a sevens player, his anatomy has to excel

in almost every measurable area.

The games are fast and brutal, two seven to ten minute

halves of quick-passing, full-impact,

hard-charging action.

He may be near the pinnacle of his sport,

but if Tom has any weakness, we'll find it.

So, just how close to peak performance is he?

The type of muscle groups, really, for rugby sevens,

is almost entirely global.

They require speed, for sprinting.

In addition, they're doing a lot of tackling.

Big biceps, triceps, shoulders, pecs and to bring those

together, you have to be incredibly strong

throughout the core.

(ROOM IN USE)

(DO NOT ENTER)

Before we really put Tom's physiology to the test,

we need to see the anatomy that lies

beneath the surface.

The Dexa scan will give us the data we need

to see how much of Team GB's

captain is power-producing muscle.

When we look at the body composition of an average

American footballer, they have a fat percentage of 15.3,

a Premier League footballer is 12.5, but Tom is leaner

than them both at 12.3%.

The interesting thing that we see in Tom

is that he's very lean.

There's a lot of muscle mass with very little fat mass.

Only 12.3% of his total body mass is made up of fat

and that's very, very low, particularly for someone

who is carrying 85 kilos at 177cm.

You have to live a different life,

you have to stay in when you might want to go out.

You can't just have a lazy takeaway,

you need to make yourself proper food all the time

and for some people, that's not the life they want to live,

but the rewards are great.

We get to represent our country on the biggest stage.

(DYNO)

The dynamometer test is a measure of strength

and it's also a measure of strength endurance.

So what we should see here, is Tom with very high strength.

Why is that important?

Because strength underpins power, power underpins speed.

Of course, what we have to factor in here, is

that Tom is carrying an injury, so I think, here,

we'll actually see that unmasked.

The dyno will really put Tom's key muscle groups

of hamstrings and quadriceps to the test.

These are the drivers for everything he does

on the rugby field - running, kicking and tackling.

So what I'm going to get you to do, when I say, "Go,"

is to bring your foot back behind your knee

and then extend out as hard as you can to push

against the resistance.

Three, two, one, let's go! And push, push, push!

Pull, pull, pull! Push, push, push!

Pull, pull, pull! Push, push, push!

Last one, pull, pull and relax.

Tom's training involves continual work

on his quads and hamstrings,

the power behind his every move during a game.

The unrelenting pace that sevens is played at,

combined with the kind of impact most of us

would only feel in a car crash,

means a powerful leg musculature is essential

in the modern player.

But after the biggest tournament of his life,

is Tom still firing on all cylinders?

Push, push, push, pull, pull, pull!

Push, push, push, pull, pull, pull! And relax.

Well done, good stuff! Excellent stuff.

Tom's results show some impressive

power-output figures.

His right leg quads generating 106 newton metres,

but his left leg producing a huge 134.

These results tell us that he is strong,

and you can see that just by looking at him -

his incredible physique.

He's very strong in the quadriceps

and he's very strong in the hamstrings

so that ratio is very, very good.

Playing rugby, that's a huge demand on your body.

We joke often in training that we're going to be

in a pretty bad way when we're old men, but the reality is

it does take a toll on your body.

You spend the weekends lying around cos you're sore

and you're icing because you have to, if you want to

try and get out on the training field the next week.

You know, there are things that do really affect your life.

(SPEED)

Rugby sevens is an invasion game.

It's the ability of a player to take the ball and break through

a defence in order to score a try.

Speed is of the essence.

And so what we're expecting to see here,

is that Tom should be carrying very high speed

which is all part of this package of performance.

In the sprint test, Tom will use many of the same

muscles as the dyno, but instead of torque, it's raw

speed that we're measuring.

Rugby sevens has some of the fastest men on the planet

outside of a 100m final, but just how will Tom measure up?

Make sure when you get to that last gate,

you do not slow down, you run straight through it.

Three, two, one, let's go!

Push, push, push, all the way through!

We're testing Tom over short, explosive distances

clocking not only his five and 20m splits,

but also his ground contact time.

Because in sevens, speed is everything.

Look at this run coming from Rosco Speckman!

Well, here goes Iles!

Look at that!

Well, he's not going to be caught now, is he?

Despite breaking his left ankle a year ago,

it's not holding Tom back.

Time for the analysis.

The 5m sprint time, your best time is 1.15,

so not too bad at all.

Yeah, quite happy with that.

Tom's speed is certainly one of his major assets

and although his 20m time of 3.08 seconds

is below the quick men of the 15-a-side game,

his ground contact results are the headline grabber.

Only three 100ths of a second outside a world-class sprinter.

When we analyse the contact time,

what that's telling us is power.

It's about Tom's ability to strike the ground

and accelerate off the ground.

Because, invariably, in rugby sevens,

it is about acceleration from either zero velocity

or otherwise, standstill, or very low velocity

to very, very high speed as quickly as possible.

My main strength on the field is my ability

to use my feet and my agility to beat

defenders, to create space.

Tied in with that is my acceleration, the ability to

move quickly across the ground and change direction quickly

is something I use in the game all the time.

(UP CLOSE)

I played a whole load of sports when I was younger,

I was mad into football,

I played cricket at school, as well, loved playing

basketball, tennis.

Fortunately, my dad was into his rugby,

took me up the local rugby club when I was eight

and I'm pretty glad he did, cos I've loved the sport.

Compared to some of the other guys, I'm fortunate in our

squad, we've got a huge number of athletes.

Some guys that are big and push a lot of weight in the gym

and have a lot of power, other guys are incredibly quick,

so I'm kind of in the middle somewhere

and try to have a bit of everything.

I guess perhaps that's my strength.

If there was another sport that I could play

it would be basketball, I'd love to play in the NBA.

I watch some of those guys like LeBron James.

The athleticism and the skill and the speed

that they play with,

I'd love to have been able to emulate that

but I'm a few inches too short for that game, I think.

(COGNITIVE)

Performance is not just about the body,

it's about the interaction between the body and the brain.

Effectively, the brain is the central controller,

it's telling us what to do.

So, for Tom, he's having to make decisions at incredibly

high speeds in very, very pressurised environments.

Very difficult thing to do.

Cognitive ability is vital to maximising

the body's physical function.

But it's not just about relaying instructions.

In a game situation, Tom has to absorb,

process and interpret huge amounts of data, fast.

OK, Tom, we're going to do a series of tests

and these are going to look at your brain function.

By testing Tom's pattern-recognition skills,

we can evaluate both his spatial awareness

as well as his ability to make the right decisions quickly.

Rugby sevens has been called human chess,

a game of the brain as much as the body.

Reaction time is critical for any player,

but especially a team captain.

Can Tom make the correct calls quickly when it really counts?

How did you find that?

Yeah, it does mess with your mind a bit.

Your average reaction time is quicker

than Jenson Button's one.

I'll take it, I'll take that!

These results for Tom are absolutely outstanding,

particularly around response time.

And, in fact, what we see is a better response time

than we expect from Formula One drivers,

so it really tells you how important this area is for Tom,

but probably tells you something about Tom.

What really makes him elite is the ability

to make those split-second decisions,

which is what makes him one of the best

try-scorers in the world.

(FORCE)

The countermovement jump test and the drop jump test

are really markers of power.

Because we're looking at height jumped,

they're also a measure of power-to-weight ratio.

In other words what you are trying to be

is as light as possible, but as powerful as possible.

The force test will focus on Tom's calves,

quads, adductors and glutes

measuring how quickly he can move

from muscle extension to contraction

to achieve maximal force in the shortest possible time.

Maximal effort, keep your hands on hips,

as high as you possibly can,

and then land and hold that position.

Three, two, one, maximum effort here.

Good stuff, and jump.

Good stuff, well done, excellent.