Starting out in rugby can feel like a whirlwind. New players, whether they’re eight or thirty-three, often struggle to master the foundational movements required to play effectively and safely. It’s a common issue to feel a step behind teammates or unsure where to begin your training.
Fortunately, mastering a few core rugby skills can rapidly accelerate your progress and boost your confidence on the field. The accompanying video, featuring Ben John, “The Rugby Trainer,” breaks down five essential areas: passing, tackling, rucking, kicking, and fitness. This guide further expands on these crucial techniques, offering deeper insights and actionable advice to help you excel.
Mastering Essential Rugby Passing Techniques
Accurate passing is the lifeblood of rugby, allowing teams to maintain possession and exploit gaps in the defense. For beginners, the focus isn’t on fancy spin passes, but on consistency and precision. The goal is to ensure the ball travels exactly where you intend, every time.
Key Principles for Accurate Passing
Establishing a consistent starting and ending point for your pass is paramount. Begin with the ball positioned firmly on your hip, which provides a reliable anchor for your throw. This ‘hip start’ ensures that regardless of where you catch the ball, you can quickly reset to a powerful and accurate throwing position.
Additionally, aim to finish your pass with both hands pointing directly at your target. This follow-through ensures maximum power and direction, preventing the ball from veering off course. Maintaining a relaxed posture, free from tension, allows for a fluid and powerful motion, improving your overall passing accuracy.
Practical Passing Drills for Beginners
To build fundamental passing proficiency, integrate these drills into your rugby training routine:
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Drill 1: Stationary Target Practice
Set up a cone or target approximately five meters away, aiming for a height around your waist. Stand on your toes, taking small, continuous steps as if walking on the spot. From this dynamic stance, start the ball on your hip, drive through the pass, and point your hands at the target. This drill emphasizes maintaining balance and consistent form.
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Drill 2: Walking Pass Progression
Progress from stationary passing by incorporating walking. Create a two-meter ‘gate’ using cones. Walk through this gate with small, controlled steps, ensuring your hands finish behind you to account for your forward momentum. The objective is to time your pass to coincide with your walk, maintaining accuracy while on the move, which closely mimics game situations.
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Drill 3: Catch and Pass Integration
This drill combines catching with passing, simulating real game scenarios. While taking small steps, toss the ball up underhand, slightly outside your body, with the hand closest to your intended passing direction. Catch the ball, quickly find your hip by turning your elbow over, and immediately execute the pass. This develops quick hands and the ability to transition from receiving to distributing the ball.
Essential Rugby Tackling Techniques for Safety and Effectiveness
Tackling is a critical defensive skill in rugby, requiring precision and courage. For beginners, prioritizing safety alongside effectiveness is key. Proper body alignment and head placement are non-negotiable for preventing injuries and executing powerful, game-changing tackles.
Foundational Tackling Principles
Always aim to get slightly to the outside of your opponent’s shoulder rather than tackling directly from the front. This crucial adjustment allows you to keep your body straight and align your head safely behind the tackle, minimizing exposure. An effective tackle requires your body to be aligned straight through the opponent, driving forward without twisting your torso or knees.
Furthermore, ensure your lead foot lands close to the opponent, with your knee staying aligned and not twisting inward. As you make contact, squeeze your head tightly against the ball carrier’s body. This secures your head, protecting it from impact, rather than leaving it exposed by trying to pull it away.
Developing Your Tackling Game with Drills
Practice these rugby tackling drills to build confidence and refine your technique:
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Drill 1: Step and Hit Drill
Start one step away from a tackle pad in a ‘hunting position,’ leaning slightly forward on your toes. If tackling with your right shoulder, step forward with your right leg, drop your height quickly, and drive through the pad. Initially, use a taller pad to practice your height drop before moving to lower pads like a chop tackle pad, allowing for gradual adaptation to different contact levels.
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Drill 2: Decision-Making Tackle Drill
Increase the space between you and the pad, requiring an extra step to close the distance. This drill introduces decision-making on which shoulder to tackle with based on your approach angle. Use cones (e.g., white and blue) to designate approach paths. If you approach from the left, use your left shoulder and left leg; from the right, use your right. Chop your feet as you approach, drop your height, and project yourself through the tackle, chasing your feet to maintain drive.
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Drill 3: Footwork and Angle Tackle
This drill uses a pole or obstacle to simulate a defender forcing you to work around them. It hones your footwork and decision-making on which shoulder to tackle with. Maintain a low ‘hunting position’ and chop your feet to close space, avoiding big strides that make you vulnerable to being stepped. Ensure your leading foot lands in the middle of the pad to control the contact and drive effectively.
Optimizing Rugby Rucking for Possession and Momentum
Rucking is essential for securing possession at the breakdown, ensuring your team retains the ball and maintains attacking momentum. The primary objective is to drive over the ball, securing it for your side while preventing the opposition from contesting or turning it over. Effective rucking requires getting into a low, powerful body position quickly.
Core Principles for Effective Rucking
Approaching the ruck with a low body height is crucial. Visualize “landing the plane” by bending at your knees and hips, brushing your knuckles on the ground just before contact. This pre-set low position allows for a powerful drive upwards and forwards. Simultaneously, chop your feet, keeping them underneath your body. This ensures you are always on your feet and can continue driving through the ruck, rather than sinking or diving over the ball.
Furthermore, understand the offside lines at the ruck: you can place your hands on your side of the ruck, but never on the opponent’s side, as this will result in a penalty. Developing a technique called “dropping an anchor,” where you place one hand on the ground behind your back foot as you swing into position, helps you get around defenders and into a strong, low rucking stance quickly and efficiently.
Rucking Drills to Dominate the Breakdown
Incorporate these drills to improve your rucking prowess:
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Drill 1: Ground Start Drive
Begin on the floor next to a tackle pad, in a low, almost crouched position. With your lead foot close to the pad, step back slightly, lean forward, and keep your hands up. From this low stance, drive horizontally through the pad, maintaining your low height as if moving through a tunnel. Focus on chasing your feet and keeping them underneath you, ensuring a powerful and continuous drive through the contact area.
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Drill 2: Anchor and Drive
Set up cones (e.g., red and white) to define different approach angles to a tackle pad. As you approach a designated cone, use the “dropping an anchor” technique. Place your hand on the ground behind your back foot to pivot quickly and get into a strong, low body position for the ruck. This minimizes wasted time and ensures you arrive at the breakdown early and powerfully, ready to drive through the pad and contest for possession.
Developing Rugby Kicking Skills for Tactical Advantage
Kicking in rugby is a versatile skill used for territorial gain, attacking space, or restarting play. For beginners, a simple approach focusing on contact and follow-through is most effective. The key is to strike the ball with a hard, straight foot and maintain balance.
Fundamental Kicking Principles
Two essential tips govern effective rugby kicking: kick with a hard, straight foot and focus on timing. The ‘hard foot’ refers to making solid contact with the ball using a firm ankle and straight foot, ensuring power and direction. Rather than swinging your leg as hard as possible, concentrate on precise timing of your foot connecting with the ball. This synchronization, rather than brute force, is what generates distance and accuracy.
Additionally, distinguish between grubber kicks and kicks out of hand. For a grubber kick (a low, rolling kick), angle your foot with ‘thumbs down,’ striking the ball downwards. For kicks out of hand (higher kicks), use a ‘thumbs up’ foot position, pointing the ball upwards towards your target. Always follow through your kick, stepping towards where the ball is going, much like a golfer follows their shot.
Kicking Drills for Precision and Power
Practice these drills to build your rugby kicking repertoire:
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Drill 1: Grubbers for Ground Gain
Set up a target box about 10 meters away. Slightly lean forward with your ‘thumbs down’ foot position. Place the ball where your non-kicking foot would be. Kick through with a hard, straight foot, stepping through and walking towards the ball. Maintain balance on one foot for five seconds after the kick, ensuring your body is aligned. This drill focuses on low, accurate kicks that roll along the ground, useful for attacking the try line or putting pressure on the opposition defense.
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Drill 2: Kicking Out of Hand
Similar to the grubber drill, but this time adopt a ‘thumbs up’ foot position, aiming the ball slightly upwards. Balance on one foot, place the ball where your non-kicking foot should be, and kick through with a hard foot. Practice throwing the ball up to yourself, catching it, and immediately kicking out of hand. This develops the coordination needed for clearance kicks or tactical kicks over the defense, moving through the ball with continuous momentum.
Rugby Fitness for Injury Prevention and Peak Performance
Rugby demands a unique blend of aerobic and anaerobic fitness. For beginners, simply running long distances isn’t the most effective approach. Instead, focusing on interval-based training that mimics the stop-start nature of a rugby game is crucial. This type of training not only improves performance but significantly lowers the risk of injury, especially to hamstrings and groins.
Building Your Rugby Engine
Professional rugby players rarely run continuous 5K or 10K distances in training. Their fitness regimens are built on interval training, incorporating sprints, jogs, walks, changes of direction, and wrestling-based movements. This varied approach builds an ‘engine’ that can manage the fatigue levels experienced during a match, ensuring you perform consistently throughout the game.
For beginners, it’s vital to build your capacity gradually. Avoid going from zero to max sprints immediately. Instead, start with controlled, sub-maximal efforts and progressively increase intensity over several weeks or even months. This progressive overload strengthens your muscles and cardiovascular system, making them resilient to the explosive demands of rugby.
Progressive Fitness Drills
Structure your fitness training with these progressive interval drills:
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Session 1: Capacity Building (6-7/10 effort)
Focus on maintaining a fast stride for several weeks to build your aerobic base. For example, run from a starting line to the halfway line and back, or from 5 meters to 22 meters and back, maintaining a consistent effort level (around 6-7 out of 10). You should be puffing and challenged, but able to maintain the pace for all repetitions without complete exhaustion. This session builds your fundamental ‘engine’ and endurance for repeated efforts.
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Session 2: Increased Intensity (8/10 effort)
After building your capacity, gradually increase the intensity to an 8 out of 10 effort. This means running the same distances (e.g., to the 22-meter line and back) noticeably quicker than in Session 1. The goal is to push your pace, making it harder than the previous session, but still maintaining it for the prescribed number of reps. An example might be completing a 5m and 22m shuttle in 14 seconds, followed by a short rest, then repeating.
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Session 3: Top-End Speed & Power (9/10 effort)
This session is for players with a solid fitness base, built over an eight-week block or more. It focuses on pushing top-end speed and intensity, around a 9 out of 10 effort. An example is sprinting from the goal line to the 22-meter line within a 15-second window, resting for the remaining time, and then repeating. This type of high-intensity, short-duration work simulates game-day sprints, crucial for explosive plays and preventing common injuries like hamstring strains and groin pulls.
Developing these core rugby skills and foundational fitness will not only enhance your performance on the pitch but also foster a deeper understanding and enjoyment of the game. For those ready to accelerate their development, consider exploring the free seven-day training plan or the Academy offered by Ben John, “The Rugby Trainer.” These resources, often featuring insights from professional players like Sam Warburton, provide structured programming, personalized feedback, and additional drills to help players of all levels achieve their rugby aspirations.
Tackling Your Core Rugby Skills Questions
What are the main skills a beginner should learn in rugby?
As a beginner, you should focus on five core rugby skills: passing, tackling, rucking, kicking, and fitness. Mastering these will help you play effectively and safely on the field.
What is an important tip for beginners learning to pass in rugby?
For accurate passing, always start the ball firmly on your hip and finish the pass with both hands pointing directly at your target. This ensures consistency and precision.
How can I tackle safely in rugby as a new player?
To tackle safely, aim to get slightly to the outside of your opponent’s shoulder and keep your body straight, with your head safely behind the tackle. It’s crucial to squeeze your head tightly against the ball carrier’s body.
What is ‘rucking’ and why is it important in rugby?
Rucking is an essential skill used to secure possession of the ball after a tackle, preventing the opposition from taking it. It involves driving over the ball with a low, powerful body position.
What kind of fitness training is best for new rugby players?
Beginner rugby fitness should focus on interval-based training that mimics the game’s stop-start nature, rather than long-distance running. This helps build an ‘engine’ for repeated efforts and reduces injury risk.