Strength training for rugby backs: half backs, centres and back three

Backs need to be strong, but strength for a winger looks different from strength for a prop. You want force you can apply quickly, at speed, without carrying muscle you don’t use. You also cover the most ground: in amateur club rugby, half backs run about 79 metres per minute of playing time, inside backs about 75 and outside backs about 73, against about 64 for the front row Olsen et al. 2023.

This guide covers numbers 9 to 15, split into half backs, centres and the back three. The basics of sets, reps and progression are in our rugby strength training programme.

Half backs (9 and 10): engine and repeat speed

The half backs’ emphasis is aerobic fitness and repeat speed. Half backs cover the most metres per minute of any group in amateur club data Olsen et al. 2023, and scrum-halves in particular are rarely out of the play, so they get the highest aerobic priority:

• Extra interval work based on maximal aerobic speed, including the shortest work-to-rest repeats such as 15:15 and 10:20.
• The smallest share of size and contact-preparation work.
• Acceleration and change-of-direction work, because most of their sprints are short and reactive.

Fly-halves sit between scrum-half and centre: more aerobic work than a centre, more contact preparation and shoulder work than a scrum-half. Fly-halves make plenty of tackles in the modern game, so they get the extra shoulder volume too.

Centres (12 and 13): power, deceleration, contact

Centres carry into contact, make big defensive hits and need to stop and change direction at speed. Their emphasis is power, deceleration and contact:

• Power: jumps, throws, hang cleans or pulls for experienced lifters, and contrast pairs (a moderately heavy lift followed by a jump) for level 4+ players.
• Deceleration: lowering-focused leg work, landing drills and planned change-of-direction drills progressing to reactive ones. Lateral work matters: knees and ankles are trained sideways and in rotation, not only forwards and back.
• Contact preparation: neck work 2–3 times a week, shoulder robustness and low-tackle strength (hip hinge, split stance, trunk endurance).
• Repeated efforts in pre-season: sprint, contact, get-up, in bouts of three Glaise et al. 2024.

Centres also get near-top-speed running every second week if club training doesn’t provide it.

Back three (11, 14, 15): speed and hamstrings

Wingers and full backs have the emphasis top speed, hamstrings and strength without size. Hamstring strains happen most at top sprint speed, and a previous strain roughly doubles the risk of another Enoka. So the back three’s programme is built around two things: exposure to top speed, and strong hamstrings.

Top speed

Rugby players reach top speed at about 30–40 m. Top-speed work uses 30–50 m runs at 90–100% with full recovery, often as “in-and-outs”: a 20 m smooth build-up, 20 m flat out, then ease off over 20 m or more. Only the flat-out metres count. Every week keeps at least one short near-maximal sprint exposure, and if club training gives no near-top-speed running that week, add 3–4 runs at 90–95% over 30–50 m.

Keep the week’s flat-out sprinting 4–5 days before kick-off (Tuesday for a Saturday game). In the last 2–4 days, at most a couple of smooth runs at about 95%, and no personal-best attempts. No flat-out sprinting for 2–3 days after a game.

Hamstrings

Train hamstrings mainly as hip extensors (Romanian deadlifts, hip extensions, cleans), with leg curls a small part. Nordic curls are the exception and are done weekly. Back three and centres get the full eccentric dose: about 2×4–6 Nordics plus single-leg Romanian deadlifts once or twice a week, all year. Programmes that included the Nordic hamstring exercise halved hamstring injury rates in a meta-analysis of 8,459 athletes van Dyk et al. 2019.

Introduce Nordics gently. The first sessions cause soreness and a few days of lost strength, so start in the off-season or pre-season at low volume, never in the 72 hours before a match.

Strength without size

Muscle mass depends mostly on training volume, while heavy weights (about 85–90% of max, sets of 2–4) raise strength best with less size gain Schoenfeld et al. 2016. So back-three players build strength from short, heavy, low-volume sets, for example 4 sets of 4 at a 4–5 rep max with more than 3 minutes’ rest, or 4–6 sets of 2–4 at 85–90%, in sessions under an hour. Pair that with plenty of jumping and bounding: strength carries over to sprint speed at every level, and repeated jumps over distance (bounding) carry over too.

Diagnosing your speed

Acceleration and top speed are different qualities. A rough guide, checked against your own retests rather than norms:

• Slow over the first 10 m: more strength and explosive work: standing long jumps, single-leg hops for distance, short hill sprints and light sleds. Resisted sprints improve acceleration, though not clearly more than plain sprints Petrakos et al. 2016.
• Quick off the mark but slow at top speed: more reactive, short-contact work: speed bounding, hurdle rebound jumps and overhead medicine ball throws.

For backs, resisted sprints stay light: runs no more than about 20% slower than normal, and only if technique holds.

Sample in-season sessions

Conditioning for backs

Backs and half backs get the highest conditioning targets of any group, set for the busiest passages of play rather than the average. Short game-like drills of 1–5 minutes run at about 2–2.5 times your game-average intensity Reardon et al. 2017, built from your own maximal aerobic speed so you aren’t held to professional numbers. In-season, club training covers most of it. More in our conditioning tests guide.

Contact still matters

Backs face fewer collisions than forwards but often bigger ones, at speed. Every back does neck work at least twice a week, shoulder work twice a week and low-tackle strength. In women’s rugby, backs face more severe collisions, so the full neck dose applies to every position. See the neck strength guide.

Testing speed properly

Speed is easy to measure badly. Time your 10 m and 30–40 m sprints the same way every time, on the same surface, from the same start position. Stopwatch, phone and timing-gate results differ unpredictably, so only compare like with like, and treat changes in a 10 m time under about 0.04 seconds as noise even with gates. Test speed fresh, at the start of a session after a full warm-up, never after lifting or conditioning.

Common mistakes backs make

• Avoiding the weights to stay light. Short, heavy sets build strength without much size, and stronger players accelerate better.
• Turning sprint sessions into fitness sessions. Sprints need full recovery between reps; conditioning is a separate job.
• Never running flat out between games. If club training doesn’t take you near top speed, add a small dose. Hamstrings need regular exposure.
• Doing Nordics only when something feels tight. They work as a regular, low-volume habit, all year.
• Racing much faster teammates in every rep. Run flat-out reps alone or with players of similar speed, with 20–30 m of clear space to slow down.

Plyometrics for backs

Backs need reactive, springy legs, so plyometrics matter more for them than for most forwards. Progress through the levels: light reactive work (skipping, ankle bounces), then jumps up onto a box and broad jumps, then low hurdle hops and low depth jumps, and finally high-intensity drills and single-leg bounds. The only real gate for the hardest level is solid landing technique. Keep plyometric sets short and fresh, with plenty of rest, and in-season, players who train twice and play don’t need extra plyometrics; club training and games supply them.