Neck Training for Rugby
The only sport with a fully published neck training protocol and measured outcomes — plus the scrum, which has no equivalent anywhere else.
Rugby is the only sport with a completely specified, published neck training protocol and measured outcomes: three sessions a week for six weeks, weighted harness extension and lateral flexion plus weighted isometric flexion, with load autoregulated to a perceived exertion of eight to ten. The training group improved on every measured direction; the control group declined on every one. The scrum adds a sustained axial-compression demand that no other sport produces.
The protocol, in full
Rugby has something no other sport on this site has: a published trial that reports its entire neck programme rather than describing it in general terms. This is that programme.
Population. 39 uninjured amateur male rugby union players, mean age 20.1, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Exercises. Weighted head-harness isotonic extension. Weighted isometric flexion. Weighted head-harness isotonic lateral flexion, left and right.
Frequency. Three sessions per week for six weeks.
Isotonic progression:
| Weeks | Sets × reps |
|---|---|
| 1–2 | 3 × 10 |
| 3–4 | 3 × 8 |
| 5–6 | 3 × 6 |
Isometric flexion progression:
| Week | Prescription |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2 reps × 40 seconds |
| 2 | 2 × 30 seconds |
| 3 | 2 × 20 seconds |
| 4–6 | progressive decrease to 4 × 5 seconds |
Load selection. Autoregulated against a ten-point scale, targeting a rating of 8 on the first set, 9 on the second, and 9–10 on the final set.
Hamlin MJ, Deuchrass R, Elliot CE, Raj T, Promkeaw D, Phonthee S. Effect of a 6-week exercise intervention for improved neck muscle strength in amateur male rugby union players. Journal of Sport and Exercise Science, 2020. DOI 10.36905/jses.2020.01.05.
Results. Left lateral flexion improved significantly (p=0.02). Extension and right lateral flexion likely improved (p=0.07). Between-group improvements: extension 13.5 kg, left lateral flexion 13.5 kg, right lateral flexion 13.8 kg, flexion 7.1 kg.
And the control group declined on every single measure — flexion, extension, and both sides of lateral flexion — over six weeks, in season, in young athletes doing everything else normally.
Two things worth noticing about that protocol
Flexion is trained isometrically while everything else is trained dynamically. That is a deliberate choice and a defensible one: flexion is the least load-tolerant cervical direction, with joint reaction forces rising steeply beyond roughly 15°. Training it isometrically removes range from the equation. See flexion.
The isometric progression runs backwards from intuition. Hold times fall from forty seconds to five across the block while load rises — a deliberate shift from endurance toward maximal force. Most people assume the progression is to hold longer each week. This protocol does the opposite, and it worked.
What the scrum demands
The published protocol addresses the general strength case. The scrum is a separate problem and nothing in the literature addresses it directly.
Sustained axial compression with the spine in a braced, near-neutral position. A front-row forward in a scrum is transmitting large forces through the cervical spine along its long axis, held for seconds at a time, repeatedly across a match. That is not flexion, extension, lateral flexion or rotation — it is compression, and none of the standard training directions load it.
The engagement is the dangerous moment. Catastrophic cervical injury in rugby is overwhelmingly associated with scrum collapse and with the engagement, where axial load arrives suddenly and the neck may not be in a position to accept it.
What follows practically: technique, binding, and the scrum engagement laws are the interventions with real evidence behind them, in the same way tackling technique is for American football. Neck strength contributes to the capacity to hold a braced position; it does not substitute for the position being correct.
This site does not have primary sources on rugby’s scrum law changes and the injury data surrounding them. That gap is stated rather than filled with an approximation.
Programming
Use the published protocol above. It is specific to this sport, it produced measurable results, and it is one of the very few evidence-based neck programmes that exists.
Adjustments worth considering:
Add rotation. The protocol trains extension, flexion, and lateral flexion. It does not train rotation, which the tackle and the ruck both load. Manual resistance is the practical answer.
Run it pre-season if possible. Six weeks of three-times-weekly neck work fits better before the season than during it, and the control-group decline suggests the strength gained is worth protecting once acquired.
Forwards and backs have different exposures — the scrum demand applies to a subset of the squad — but the general strength case applies to everyone who tackles, which is everyone.
Maintain in season. Two sessions a week maintained beats three abandoned. The adherence finding from the military literature — where only 29% trained regularly and those who did roughly tripled the effect — applies to a rugby squad exactly as it does to aircrew.
What is not established
Whether any of this reduces injury. The Hamlin trial measured strength, not injury outcomes. The 2024 systematic review found no studies at all assessing whether neck resistance training changes concussion incidence, in rugby or anywhere else, and found no significant effect on head acceleration. See head impact.
An observational study has reported that neck strength deficit is associated with concussion risk in high school rugby union and league players. Association is not causation, and neck strength travels with training age, conditioning, experience, and coaching quality — all of which independently affect injury exposure.
The honest position: train the neck because it reliably builds strength, because untrained necks measurably get weaker across a season, and because cervical capacity matters in a sport that loads the neck constantly. Not because it will prevent a concussion, which nobody has shown.