Rugby strength training programme: the amateur player’s guide

Strength is the foundation of almost everything a rugby player does: hitting rucks, making tackles, driving mauls, accelerating off the mark and staying upright in a scrum. For an amateur player with a job, two club nights and a Saturday fixture, the challenge isn’t knowing that strength matters. It’s building a programme that fits the club week and keeps working from September to May.

This guide sets out how we build strength programmes for adult amateur rugby union players in Match Ready, and the evidence behind each choice. You can use it to write your own plan, or let the app do it for you.

What a rugby strength programme has to do

A good rugby programme does four jobs at once. It builds maximal strength, because gains in strength drive gains in power and speed, especially in weaker players. It turns that strength into power with jumps, throws and fast lifts. It prepares the body for contact and position-specific demands, such as the neck and trunk for front-rowers or top-speed hamstring work for wingers. And it keeps a player fresh enough to train and play well, which is the part most gym programmes ignore.

That last point is why rugby players shouldn’t simply copy a powerlifting or bodybuilding plan. Club training and matches already supply a lot of running, contact and fatigue. The gym has to add what the club week is missing, not compete with it.

How often should rugby players lift?

As a starting point for amateurs:

• Off-season: 3 sessions a week if you can fit them in. Heavy, fast strength best separates playing levels in research on rugby players Payne et al. 2025, and three sessions give you room to train it properly. Two is fine for busy players; gains are just slower.
• Pre-season: 2–3 sessions, falling to 2 as club training and conditioning ramp up.
• In-season: 2 sessions at most for players training twice a week with their club and playing every weekend. A third is useful for players who aren’t being selected.

Session count should come from your availability and training level, not your position. There’s no study showing props need more gym sessions than wingers. What changes by position is what goes into the session (see our guides to front row, second and back row and backs training).

When weekly volume is matched, two sessions a week build strength about as well as three Grgic et al. 2018. So if life only allows two, make them count: keep the main lifts heavy and don’t skip them.

The exercises that matter

Rugby strength comes from a small number of big movements done well and progressed for months. Every week should cover:

Olympic lifts (cleans, snatches) are optional. They’re useful once mobility and technique allow, but jumps and throws are the main power tools for most amateurs, and they’re far easier to learn.

How to structure a session

Order matters because fatigue kills speed. A high-rep set or a big workout before power work clearly lowers power output Sánchez-Medina & González-Badillo 2011, so the most complex and fastest work always comes first:

1. Warm-up: 5–10 minutes of general movement, then movements specific to the session. See our rugby warm-up guide.
2. Power: jumps, throws or Olympic lift variations, under 6 reps a set.
3. Main lifts: a squat or hinge plus an upper-body press and pull, 2–3 warm-up sets building to the work sets.
4. Supporting work: single-leg, hamstrings and upper-back.
5. Trunk and neck: about 6 minutes. Light neck and shoulder work can be paired into the rests between main-lift sets to save time.

Rest 2–3 minutes between heavy strength sets (3–5 for advanced lifters on heavy sets). Short rests of 30–40 seconds blunt strength and muscle gains, so keep them for conditioning circuits Schoenfeld et al. 2016.

Sets, reps and loads by training level

Your training age matters more than your playing standard. A strong National League forward who has never lifted properly is a beginner in the gym.

New to lifting (Foundation)

Start with a 2–4 week technique block: bodyweight and light loads, learning to squat, hinge, press and pull with good positions. Then move to the novice stage.

Novice (under a year of consistent lifting)

Novices progress fastest with simple linear progression: a few sets of 5 on the main lifts, adding a little weight every session until reps are missed. A classic structure alternates two sessions: squat, bench and deadlift one day; squat, overhead press and power clean (or rows) the next. Add about 2.5–5 kg a session on the squat and 2.5 kg on the presses, with smaller jumps as progress slows. When you miss reps for 2–3 sessions in a row, drop about 10% and build back.

Intermediate (1–3 years)

Intermediates need weekly rather than session-to-session progress. Block cycles work well in pre-season and 4-week waves in-season, for example 3×8 at 70%, then 8-6-5, 6-5-3 and 5-3-2, with the next wave starting slightly heavier.

Advanced (3+ years and a squat of about 1.5–2× bodyweight)

Advanced lifters add planned variation: undulating blocks, contrast pairs (a heavy lift followed by a jump), cluster sets and more rugby-specific power work. Strength is maintained while the emphasis shifts towards power.

How to progress without guessing

Two simple tools stop most amateurs going too heavy or too light.

Use a training max. Programme your percentages from 90% of your estimated maximum, not your best-ever lift. It keeps form good and progress steady. You can estimate a max from a normal set: 5 reps is roughly 87% of a one-rep max, 8 reps about 80%, 10 reps about 75%. People vary, so treat it as a range and only use sets of 10 reps or fewer.

Log reps in reserve. After each work set, note how many more reps you could have done. If your last set hit the target (within one rep), progress as planned. If you had 2+ reps more in the tank than planned, add about 5% on lower-body lifts or 2.5% on upper-body lifts. If you had 2+ fewer or missed reps, repeat the weight; if that happens twice, drop 5–10% and rebuild. Never change more than 10% at once Helms et al. 2018.

Turning strength into power

Power is trained across the whole load range. Jumps and throws use light loads, from bodyweight up to about 30% of your one-rep max on the matching lift. Bodyweight jump squats count as real power work for most field-sport players. Keep sets short: under 6 reps for jumps and throws, under 5 for Olympic lifts. Bar speed falls as reps build up within a set, and slow reps don’t train power.

Weaker players get most of their speed and power gains from getting stronger. As a rough guide, once your squat approaches about 2× bodyweight (about 1.5× for women), the emphasis can shift more towards power while strength is maintained.

A sample off-season week

For an intermediate player with three sessions available, Monday, Wednesday and Friday:

Each lift category gets one heavy, one moderate and one lighter exposure across the week. Hard lower-body work never falls on a club training night or a hard running day.

Fitting it around rugby

The club week is fixed; the gym flexes. A few rules keep the two working together:

• No heavy, lower-body or power work the day before or the day after a match. A light upper-body session the day before is fine in two-game weeks.
• The main strength session lands 2–3 days after a game, when match fatigue has mostly eased. See lifting after a match.
• Keep hard running and heavy legs at least 6 hours apart, ideally on separate days. Aerobic work alongside lifting doesn’t blunt maximal strength much, but it can blunt explosive strength, mainly when done in the same session Schumann et al. 2022.
• When pre-season conditioning is high-volume, lift in the 8–12 rep range; save heavy 1–5 rep work for blocks with less running. See our pre-season training plan.

Common mistakes amateur players make

• Changing programme every few weeks. Hold the main lifts for at least a full block. Most players need 2–3 months on the same main exercises to peak.
• Stopping lifting in-season. Strength tends to hold for about three weeks without training, then fades faster McMaster et al. 2013. Two short heavy sessions keep it. See the in-season gym programme.
• Too much volume, not enough intent. Push every rep up as fast as you can, even heavy ones; control the lowering.
• Skipping hamstrings and neck. They take minutes and they’re the first thing amateurs drop. See neck strength for rugby.
• Chasing size at the expense of speed. Track a jump or a 10 m sprint alongside bodyweight. If gains start slowing you down, shift the emphasis. More in gaining size for rugby.