An essential element of successful rugby performance is to accelerate, change direction quickly and deceive the opposition. This requires development of speed and agility.

In rugby, the ability to accelerate, decelerate and change direction is more important than simply achieving high speed

How can speed and agility improve my performance?

Speed and agility training is an integral part of training for all top players, and can help you successfully perform the following rugby movements…

• Evading tacklers
• Catching attackers
• Retreating to referees commands
• Avoiding injury
• Lineout movements
• Catching passes and much more…

To analyse this element of fitness we need to consider the components of speed and agility separately. These are:

• speed strength - force required to facilitate acceleration and deceleration
• agility - ability to explosively brake, change direction and accelerate again
• technique - combination of posture, leg action and arm action