Bronco test split calculator
The Bronco is won and lost on pacing. Enter the time you want to run and this gives you the split you need to hit at the end of each of the five rounds.
Five rounds of 20m, 40m and 60m shuttles — 240m per round, 1,200m in total. The calculator divides your target evenly across the five rounds, which is the strategy that produces the fastest time for almost every player.
Have someone call your split at the end of each round. Knowing you are four seconds up after round one is the difference between a controlled test and a blow-up.
| End of round | Cumulative split | Distance covered |
|---|
Round one should feel controlled and slightly frustrating. If you are more than three seconds under your round-one split, you have gone out too hard and it will cost you more than it gained.
What the number means
Why pacing is the biggest lever
The Bronco is four to six minutes of near-maximal work with twenty-five decelerations in it. Going out hard on round one does not bank time — it empties you for rounds three, four and five, where the damage compounds. Players who go out too fast routinely finish twenty to forty seconds slower than an evenly paced version of themselves.
That is a bigger improvement than most players get from a whole pre-season of conditioning, and it costs nothing.
The other two levers
Once pacing is sorted, the aerobic base is what raises the ceiling, and shuttle-based repeat-effort intervals train the turns. Straight-line running does not prepare you for twenty-five decelerations. The full Bronco guide covers all three.
Common questions
How long is each Bronco round?
What should my round-one split be?
Related
Bronco test guide
Protocol, indicative times, and the three things that actually make you faster at it.
OpenRugby league program
Where the Bronco sits in a league pre-season, and what the rest of the week looks like.
OpenRugby union program
Set-piece strength and aerobic-strength endurance, built in sequence.
OpenOr let the app do it every week
Train Smart runs this calculation continuously — recalculating your working weights, your conditioning paces and your load every session, without you opening a calculator.
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