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Big doesn’t have to mean slow
Helping heavy rugby players move better at grassroots level.
The question coaches rarely ask about their bigger, heavier players isn’t whether they are fit enough. It’s whether they have ever actually been taught to move.
Every grassroots rugby coach has a version of the same conversation. A bigger player — someone who can genuinely hurt the opposition when they get hold of the ball, dominate contact and make their presence felt physically — is struggling when the game opens up. They look heavy-footed getting off the line. They labour back into position after a tackle. They fade, visibly, as the match becomes more physical and more chaotic. And the coach, watching from the sideline, concludes that the player needs to get fitter.
Sometimes that conclusion is right. But in a lot of cases, fitness is only part of what is going on, and adding more running to a player who already moves poorly is not going to solve the underlying problem.
I have worked with plenty of players over the years who were labelled as slow or unfit when the issue was something different entirely. Nobody had ever taught them how to move. They had spent most of their rugby career relying on size and physical presence, and had never been given the opportunity to develop the movement patterns, the coordination, the body control, that would allow them to use what they already had far more effectively on the pitch. More running didn’t change that but deliberate movement practice did.
At grassroots level, where coaches are time-poor, facilities are limited, and players are balancing rugby around work and family, this distinction matters enormously — because the solution doesn’t require expensive equipment or complex programmes. It requires a shift in what you prioritise and why.
1. The movement problem: what most coaches are solving the wrong way
When a bigger player moves poorly, the default response is to make them work harder. More conditioning. More running. More time spent grinding through fitness work at the end of training. That instinct is understandable — it looks like a fitness problem, and conditioning feels like the obvious fix. But there is an important distinction between a player who cannot move well and a player who has not yet learned to move well, and how you respond to each situation is entirely different.
Here is what tends to happen when coaches lean too heavily on conditioning as the solution. Heavier players who already work at a high physical cost spend even more time fatigued, and when players are fatigued, posture drops, reactions slow, and movement becomes less efficient. They are getting tired, but they are not getting better at moving.
Heavier players who already work at a high physical cost spend even more time fatigued
The question worth asking before you add more running is: have these players ever actually had the opportunity to move well? Many bigger players arrive in adult rugby having relied on physical advantage — size, strength, the ability to run through contact — throughout most of their sporting lives.
The movement patterns that other players have accumulated over years simply are not there yet. That is not a fitness problem. It is a movement experience problem, and it responds to a very different kind of intervention.
2. Speed is a skill: and skills are developed through practice, not punishment
One of the most useful reframes available to coaches working with bigger players is recognising that speed is a skill, not simply a product of fitness. It develops the same way passing develops, the same way defensive understanding develops — through deliberate, repeated practice over time.
Players do not run themselves into becoming faster any more than they tackle themselves into becoming better decision-makers under pressure. If speed is a fitness quality, the answer is more conditioning. If speed is a skill, the answer is practice — and you do not need to take over the entire session to deliver it.
Five minutes at the start of a warm-up, done consistently across a season, compounds into something meaningful. The activities that build movement skills do not need to be complicated. A marching drill held with good posture. A wall acceleration hold where the player feels what it means to lean and drive. A short race over five metres. Simple tools, no equipment, very little time. What they require is consistency.
When a player is focused on winning a race rather than analysing their own technique, they often produce better movement than they do in any technical drill. The pressure of competition removes self-consciousness and demands instinctive action. For bigger players who have convinced themselves they are slow, a genuine competitive reason to accelerate can unlock something that coaching cues alone will not reach.
WHAT COACHES CAN DO THIS WEEKAdd five minutes of movement work to the start of your warm-up and protect it every session.
Pick two drills — a marching variation and a short competitive race — and run them consistently for a month before changing anything.
The goal is not technical perfection. The goal is regular exposure, repeated until the patterns begin to feel natural. |
3. Short distances: where the game is really won for bigger players
When most coaches think about speed in rugby, they picture a winger with open space ahead of them. The reality of what the game actually demands — particularly for bigger players — looks very different.
- A forward getting off the defensive line to close down the gain.
- A player reloading from a breakdown to get back into position before the next phase.
- Chasing a kick. Closing down a ball carrier in a tight channel.
Most of those efforts happen within five to fifteen metres, and most are decided not by top-end pace but by the quality of the initial movement: the first step, the decision, the body position.
That is genuinely good news, because improving acceleration over short distances is far more achievable than dramatically improving top-end speed. The goal is not to turn props into wingers. The goal is to make players more effective in the specific situations they face every week.
The practical implication is to design movement activities that reflect what actually happens in the game. Defensive line starts. Breakdown reload runs. Short kick-chase scenarios. The closer the context to what players recognise from playing, the more it transfers.
Coaches often overcomplicate this. Wall drills, falling starts, partner races over short distances, and competitive accelerations in small groups are simple tools that have a genuine impact when used regularly. The issue is almost never a lack of knowledge. It is a lack of consistency.
Movement and speed do not exist in isolation. Players who can produce more force relative to their bodyweight will generally accelerate more effectively
4. Strength underpins speed: but simple beats complicated every time
Movement and speed do not exist in isolation. Players who can produce more force relative to their bodyweight will generally accelerate more effectively, tolerate the physical demands of the game better, and move with greater efficiency overall. For bigger players, improving relative strength is often one of the highest-leverage interventions available.
The mistake coaches make is assuming this requires sophisticated equipment, periodised programmes, or expertise in advanced methods. At grassroots level, it requires none of those things. It requires basic exercises, performed with decent technique, repeated week after week.
- Split squats and step-ups for single-leg strength.
- Goblet squats and loaded carries for total body strength.
- Medicine ball throws and jumping and landing work for explosive capacity.
This is not a complicated list, and it does not require a gym. It requires commitment and repetition, which is what produces adaptation at any level of sport.
The biggest gains at grassroots level almost always come from programme consistency rather than programme sophistication. A simple plan followed every week for six months will produce more meaningful change than an advanced programme followed with enthusiasm for six weeks and then abandoned.
5. Confidence: the piece most coaches never address
There is something that tends to go unaddressed when coaches discuss the physical development of bigger players, and it matters more than most people realise. Some of these players have spent years being told — explicitly or implicitly — that they are slow. Eventually, many of them begin to believe it.
When a player believes they are slow, they stop moving freely. They become hesitant. They pull out of accelerations before fully committing, hold back in races to avoid embarrassment, and carry themselves in a way that confirms the very label they have been given.
Confidence is not separate from movement quality — it shapes it directly. Players who trust their bodies commit fully to accelerations. Players who doubt themselves hold back, which means they rarely access what they are actually capable of, regardless of how much physical development has gone into them.
Confidence is not separate from movement quality — it shapes it directly
This is why the environment coaches create during movement work matters as much as the content of the sessions. Competition builds confidence. Small victories accumulate — winning a race, closing ground on a faster player, recovering first — and over time they change how a player carries themselves on the pitch.
Design competitive activities that give bigger players a genuine chance to succeed. Those small moments compound, and the player who once believed they were slow starts to move like someone who doesn’t.
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THE REALITY OF GRASSROOTS COACHINGNone of this requires a programme redesign or expensive equipment.
Add movement work before training and do it every session. Introduce simple strength exercises and keep doing them across the season. Design competitions where bigger players can win.
The players labelled as slow have often simply not had enough practice moving athletically. Give them the opportunity, give them consistency, and you will be surprised by what follows. |
Finding the balance
The barriers to implementation are much lower than most coaches assume. You do not need specialist equipment, a gym, or hours of additional training time. You need a clear sense of what you are trying to develop and why, the discipline to do the same simple things consistently, and the patience to let adaptation happen over weeks and months.
The players carrying the label of being too big or too heavy to move well are, in many cases, simply players who have not had enough of the right kind of practice.
- Give them the movement experience they have been missing.
- Give them the strength foundation that makes athletic movement possible.
- Give them a competitive environment where they can succeed and build confidence.
Big doesn’t have to mean slow. It just means they haven’t yet been given the opportunity to prove otherwise.
Key takeaways
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Want to use this with your players?
If you work with grassroots rugby players and want a practical, ready-to-use resource to develop their movement and physical qualities, get in touch about the Rugby Grassroots Movement Programme. It is designed specifically for coaches working with limited time and limited facilities, and gives you everything you need to start making a difference straight away.
Email: isaac@trainathletesgetpaid.com
Instagram: @trainathletes
Drop me a message and let’s talk about how to get your players moving better.
Isaac Leung
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