Changing gears rugby warm up drill

The Changing Gears rugby drill is a highly versatile warm-up which promotes changes of pace and direction, as well as player fitness and awareness.

Rugby warm up drill to get changes of pace

Set up rugby drill

Randomly set out a stack of four colours of cones around a 30-metre square (use a smaller area to improve players' agility).

Each player starts on any coloured cone and runs from cone to cone in sequence (blue to green to red to yellow, back to blue for instance). Players start by jogging between the cones.

You then tell them to walk from blue to green, sprint from green to red, jog from red to yellow and run at 50 per cent of full speed from yellow to blue. Some players will therefore be sprinting, others walking. All the time they need to avoid each other.

Advance the drill

Make the game competitive by calling out a colour, while the players are following their colours sequences. All the players then have to get on to that colour cone as quickly as possible. Those who fail are out. Then start taking away cones to make the warm up drill harder.

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Click the link for a stopping and starting rugby warm up drill to improve players' agility and fitness.

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