Evasion skills warm-ups and games

Evasion is a fundamental movement skill. Players use in pretty much all their activities, without necessarily focusing on the specific skills they need.

Without becoming too bogged down in the technical requirements, you want to improve your players starting and stopping, balance, change of direction and acceleration. With that comes an awareness of space, time, teammates, the opposition and the ball.

There are three approaches you can take: Work on general movement skills, develop a specific movement skill (like a side-step or spin) or pose problems for the players to discover their own movement solutions.

Underpinning this, you need to understand your own players’ capabilities and limitations.

Here are some warm-up exercises where you can place a little more emphasis on how the players respond to movement cues and clues. Nearly of all of them include a ball.

Go-forward evasion goes to one of the main rugby principles of why we want better footwork – to go forward towards the opposition try line. This exercise builds up to game-like scenarios, so you can just use the first activity for your warm-up if you want.

Evasion is means you need to evade something. Step to the edge creates a visual clue of what to avoid. Players have to adjust to what’s in front of them, while still going forward.

If you want something a bit more chaotic, an old favourite of mine is Reaction squares. This has the players stopping, starting, changing angles, bending down and looking for space.

Finally, here’s a bunch of games and competition to up your players’ heart rates while developing evasive movement skills: Fun footwork games for really energised practices.

Go-forward evasion

in Footwork and evasion, Rugby drills

Ball carriers have a better chance of beating tacklers if they are going forward and changing their angles. Encourage players to do this, even if they are facing two or more defenders. MORE

Step to the edge

in Footwork and evasion, Rugby drills, U10+

The receiver often takes a pass just before being tackled. If he can get to the edge of the defender, he might break through or offload the ball in contact. Work on that valuable skill with this session. MORE

Reaction squares space them out

in Footwork and evasion, Practice plans

Use “reaction squares” to get players moving into space with the ball in their hands. This is a fun activity and elements can be part of the warm-up to other sessions. MORE

Fun footwork games for really energised practices

in Footwork and evasion, Rugby drills

Look at this great and more advanced version of a game we call Nevada Smith. Plus, have a look at Evasion Triangles as well, which could be a progression from this exercise. MORE