Pre-season rugby training plan: 6–8 weeks to the first game

Pre-season decides how your whole season goes. Arrive at the first game fit, strong and used to contact, and you’re set for September to May. Arrive undercooked and you spend October catching up, usually while picking up niggles.

This plan is for adult amateur players. It assumes you have a job, your club starts training sessions a few weeks before the first fixture, and you can get to a gym two or three times a week. It explains the order of the work and the reasons behind it, so you can adapt it to your own dates.

How long should pre-season be?

We recommend 6–8 weeks before the first game, with 4 weeks as the minimum. Count back from the date of the first fixture, not from when your club starts training. If club training only starts three weeks before game one, your own pre-season should start well before that.

The research supports showing up. In elite rugby league, players who completed more of their pre-season sessions had lower in-season injury risk Windt et al. 2017. That’s an association, not proof that pre-season prevents injury, but the message for amateurs is clear: a consistent pre-season beats a heroic fortnight.

The first month should build load gradually rather than jumping straight to full volume. If you’re coming off a long break, the first week should feel too easy.

The order of the work

A recommended sequence (well supported in principle, though not trial-tested in amateur rugby) is:

1. Work capacity and size: higher reps in the gym (8–12+), aerobic base work, learning or relearning lifts.
2. Maximal strength: heavier sets of 3–6 on the main lifts, with conditioning moving to intervals.
3. Strength plus rugby-specific power: jumps, throws and fast lifts alongside heavy work, with game-like conditioning and contact preparation.

Each phase sets up the next, and planned phases beat unplanned training for building strength. The gym and running should match: in high-volume conditioning weeks, keep strength work in the 8–12 rep range; save the heaviest 1–5 rep work for blocks with less running, so the two don’t pull against each other.

A sample 8-week amateur pre-season

After the first block of contact training, take one lighter week for all demanding work. The first in-season week then uses lighter, higher-rep sessions as a recovery week.

Conditioning: build it on your own MAS

The most efficient way to set running targets is maximal aerobic speed (MAS): the slowest speed at which you reach your maximal oxygen uptake. Test it with a 1,600–2,000 m time trial (2,000 m matches MAS best). Shorter time trials overestimate it, so they need correcting Bellenger et al. 2015. Divide distance by time to get metres per second; every interval then becomes a distance for you.

Most hard conditioning should sit above about 92% of MAS, because time spent near maximal aerobic speed drives fitness gains Buchheit & Laursen 2013. A typical progression:

• Long intervals: 3 minutes at 93% with 3 minutes easy, then 90 s and 60 s efforts at 100%.
• Grids: 15 s at 100% and 15 s at 70%.
• 15:15 at 120%: 12–20 reps, adding reps before speed.
• 20:10 at 120%, then unpredictable versions with changing distances.
• Game-based conditioning, which for amateurs is mostly club training.

About four weeks before contact training starts, add rugby-specific repeated efforts: 3–6 second efforts over 5–20 m with about 20 seconds of easy recovery, including get-ups off the floor. Back-row players and centres get sprint plus contact plus get-up efforts in bouts of three. For more on tests, read our guide to the Bronco and Yo-Yo tests.

Keep hard running and heavy or explosive leg work at least 6 hours apart, ideally on different days. Aerobic training doesn’t blunt maximal strength or size much, but it can blunt explosive strength, mainly when it’s done in the same session Schumann et al. 2022.

Speed: short to long

Rugby speed is acceleration first. Players rarely sprint more than 20 m in one go, so 10–20 m starts are the backbone, progressing to 30–40 m top-speed runs later in pre-season, within the distances that suit your position. Sprint twice a week (three at most), with full recovery between reps. End a set when form breaks down or straight after a personal best. Keep at least one short near-maximal sprint every week, because hamstring strains happen at high speed and the muscles need regular exposure.

Contact readiness: the step amateurs skip

Late in pre-season, and after any break of three weeks or more, do 2–4 weeks of progressive contact preparation with your club: falling and break-fall skills, tackling on the knees, then shields, then walking pace, then jogging, then live. Live contact is only ever done at club training, with a coach. Strength work aimed at contact (neck, trunk, pushing and single-leg drive) prepares the body, but on its own it doesn’t make contact safe Burger et al. 2020.

Add neck work 2–3 times a week from the start of pre-season, and keep it going all year. Our neck strength guide has the progression.

The warm-up is part of pre-season

Build the habit now. A 15–20 minute warm-up of balance, landing, cutting, strength, neck and shoulder work, done at least three times a week, is what reduced injuries in community rugby research Attwood et al. 2018. See the rugby warm-up guide.

Testing: keep it simple

Test at the start of pre-season and again before the first game. A useful amateur battery: bodyweight, 10 m and 30–40 m sprints, a countermovement jump, a MAS time trial or the Bronco, and estimated maxes on the squat, bench and weighted chin-up from your training loads. Compare only with your own previous scores, and only count changes bigger than the test’s normal day-to-day variation.

Starting late?

If you have less than 4 weeks before the first game, compress the plan, but don’t skip contact readiness or the warm-up programme. Cut size work and some conditioning instead, build load steadily over the first few weeks of the season and accept that you’ll be playing into fitness. Joining mid-season? Take 2–3 weeks to rebuild before normal loading.

A typical week in the middle of pre-season

Every week needs at least one full rest day, and the hardest work (heavy lifts, flat-out sprints, plyometrics) is grouped on the same days with easier days between.

Fuel and sleep the work

Pre-season is the highest-volume period of the year, and under-fuelling is common in players trying to lean out at the same time. Match carbohydrate to the day’s training, eat protein at every meal (around 1.6–2.0 g per kg a day in total), and don’t start hard sessions hungry. Aim for at least 7 hours of sleep with a regular wake time Walsh et al. 2021. Frequent illness, low mood, repeated niggles or, for women, irregular periods are signs you may not be eating enough, and worth raising with your GP Mountjoy et al. 2023.