Rugby Speed Training: Getting Faster Over 10, 20 and 40 Metres

Rugby is won in the first ten metres. Almost nobody in a match runs far enough for top-end speed to matter much, and almost everybody accelerates from a standing or walking start dozens of times. That distinction — acceleration versus maximum velocity — is the whole of speed training, and treating them as one thing is why most players do a lot of running and get no faster.

Two different qualities

Sprinting has two distinct phases, and they are trained separately because they are limited by different things.

Acceleration, roughly the first ten to twenty metres, is about how much horizontal force you can put into the ground from a low body position. It is limited by strength and by mechanics — you are leaning forward, driving back, with your feet landing behind your centre of mass.

Maximum velocity, from roughly thirty metres onward, is a completely different mechanical problem. You are upright, and the limiting factor becomes how quickly and forcefully you can put a foot down beneath you rather than how hard you can push back.

For rugby, acceleration is worth vastly more. A winger might hit top speed twice in a match; every player accelerates from standing dozens of times. Training predominantly for top-end speed is training for the version of the sport you are not playing.

The rules that make speed work actually work

Three, and violating any of them turns a speed session into a conditioning session that makes you slower.

Full recovery between reps. Sprinting is a maximal effort and it needs near-complete recovery. As a rough guide, a minute of rest per ten metres sprinted. Twenty-metre sprints on ninety seconds is not speed work; it is conditioning, and it trains you to run slowly for longer.

Low volume. Total sprint distance in a speed session should be modest — a few hundred metres of actual sprinting. Once quality drops, the session is over, regardless of what was planned.

Fresh legs. Speed work goes at the start of a session after a warm-up, never bolted onto the end of a gym session or a team run. Sprinting fatigued is how hamstrings go.

Which do you need?

Why the gym makes you faster

Acceleration is a strength problem before it is a technique problem. You are trying to apply large horizontal forces into the ground in a very short contact time, and how much force you can produce is the ceiling.

The lifts that transfer most are heavy squats and hinges — the posterior chain does the work of driving you forward — and explosive variants like jumps and throws that teach you to express that strength quickly. This is why the third block of an off-season programme adds explosive work on top of the strength built in the first two. The twelve-week off-season plan structures it, and the full training year explains where it fits.

The practical implication: if you are not strong, sprint drills will not make you fast. Build strength first, then teach yourself to express it.

Mechanics, briefly

Technique matters, but it is worth being modest about how much of it can be self-coached from a page.

For acceleration, the reliable cues are: push back rather than reaching forward, stay low for the first several steps and rise gradually rather than popping upright, and drive the arms aggressively. The single most common error is standing up too early, which converts an acceleration into a slow start to a jog.

For top-end, the cue is to strike down beneath your hips rather than reaching out in front. Overstriding — reaching the foot forward — actively brakes you and is a common hamstring mechanism.

Beyond that, get someone to film you from the side and compare. It is more useful than any written description.

Everyone wants to be faster over forty metres. Almost every metre that decides a rugby match happens in the first ten.

How often, and where it fits

One dedicated speed session a week in the off-season and preseason. In-season, the acceleration work largely happens inside team training, and adding a separate session on top of two club sessions and a match is usually more load than it is worth.

Place it early in the week, on legs that are not sore, and never the day after a heavy lower-body gym session or the day before a match. If your week is already full, the correct answer is to replace a conditioning session rather than add to the total. Building your week covers the sequencing.

Hamstrings

Worth its own paragraph because sprinting is the single most common mechanism for hamstring injury in rugby, and the risk is largely manageable.

The things that reduce it: a genuine progressive warm-up rather than a token one, building up sprint exposure gradually rather than doing maximal work in the first session of the year, eccentric hamstring strength work in your gym programme, and stopping the session when quality drops rather than pushing through.

If you have had a hamstring injury before, you are at meaningfully higher risk of another, and returning too early is the main reason. The return-to-play framework covers the graduated stages, and the mobility routine handles the hips and ankles that feed into it.