Develop your speed like Louis Bielle-Biarrey
The Fastest Player in French Rugby Right Now
If you've watched France over the past couple of seasons, you know the name. Louis Bielle-Biarrey has been impossible to ignore. The things he does with the ball in hand, the distances he covers, the way he leaves defenders standing, it's a level of speed that makes even experienced observers stop and watch.
But here's what's more interesting than just watching him be fast: understanding why he's fast, and what any rugby player, regardless of position, can take from that and apply to their own preparation.
Because speed is not fixed. It is not purely genetic. It is a physical quality that responds to training. Not everyone will become Louis Bielle-Biarrey. But every player can become meaningfully faster than they currently are.
Let's break down what makes him exceptional, and then get into what you can actually do about your own speed.
What Makes Louis Bielle-Biarrey So Fast
Acceleration capacity
The first thing that stands out is his ability to go from zero to high speed in a very short space. In rugby, the majority of your high-speed movements happen over short distances, typically under fifteen metres. You rarely get the kind of runway that allows you to reach your true maximum velocity. So acceleration off the mark, from a stationary or near-stationary position, is the speed quality that matters most in this sport.
Bielle-Biarrey is exceptional at this. He can take the ball in contact or at a breakdown and be at high speed within two or three strides. That's not just genetics. That's neuromuscular quality: the ability to produce large amounts of force very quickly.
Maximum velocity
What makes him particularly dangerous is that he doesn't just accelerate well, he also has an extremely high top speed. Once he's launched, he can sustain and even build his velocity over distances where most players are already decelerating. This combination of excellent acceleration and very high max velocity is rare.
Repeated high-intensity running
A speed quality that's easy to miss when watching highlights: his ability to produce those efforts repeatedly across eighty minutes. It's one thing to run fast on the first carry of the game. It's another thing entirely to do it in the sixty-fifth minute when you've already been through forty phases. Bielle-Biarrey's conditioning means his speed point doesn't drop significantly as the match progresses.
Running mechanics
He has clean acceleration mechanics: forward lean, low centre of mass, powerful ground contact, good projection horizontally. At max velocity he stays tall, relaxed, and efficient. His stride cycle is effective. These are things that can be coached and improved, not qualities you either have or don't.
Genetics
To be honest about it: he had a starting point. Natural fast-twitch fibre distribution, good anthropometry for speed. Not every player starts from the same place. But the ceiling for every player is higher than they think, and the work done in the gym and on the field raises it.
Part 1: Developing Your Acceleration
This is the speed quality with the highest return on investment for the largest number of rugby positions. Regardless of whether you're a prop or a winger, your most important speed moments happen in the first ten to fifteen metres.
Acceleration mechanics
The technical model for good acceleration is relatively consistent across the research and coaching practice. In the early phase of a sprint, you want to stay low. Your body angle should be inclined forward, your shin angle should be diagonal rather than vertical, and you should project yourself horizontally with each ground contact. Don't try to get tall too fast. Stay patient with your posture as speed builds.
The goal on each stride is to push hard into the ground and project forward. Ground contact times are longer in acceleration than at max velocity because you're producing more force. Prioritise quality of push over frequency of steps in the early metres.
Lower body strength work
Acceleration is fundamentally a force production problem. To accelerate quickly, you need to produce a lot of force against the ground in a short amount of time. That means the strength of your lower body directly limits your acceleration potential.
Bilateral compound movements in the gym, squats, deadlift variations, Romanian deadlifts, directly develop the force-producing capacity of the lower limb. Don't underestimate how much gym work for the lower body transfers to your first-step explosion on the field.
Power and rate of force development
Beyond raw strength, you need to develop your rate of force development: how quickly you can go from zero to maximum force output. This is trained through power work in the gym: explosive squats, trap bar jumps, clean derivatives, loaded jumps. It's also trained through sprint acceleration work itself.
The principle is simple. The more you train to produce force quickly, the better you get at it. Your nervous system learns to activate motor units faster and more synchronously. That's what explosiveness is at its most fundamental level.
Field sessions: acceleration work
Short sprint repeats of ten to twenty metres, from various starting positions (stationary, walking, slow jog). Work on your mechanics. Focus on the push. Rest fully between reps so that each one is high quality. Acceleration work needs freshness. Don't bury it at the end of a conditioning circuit.
Part 2: Developing Your Maximum Velocity
Not every position needs to develop max velocity as a priority. If you're a tighthead prop, your max velocity sprinting exposure in a match is very low. But from third-row onwards, and especially through the backline, max velocity becomes increasingly relevant.
What max velocity training demands
Max velocity sprinting is highly stressful on the body. The hamstrings in particular, along with the Achilles tendon and plantar structures, absorb significant force during ground contact at high speed. This type of work needs to be introduced progressively, especially if you haven't been doing it regularly.
Start with two or three max velocity runs per week. Don't rapidly increase that volume. The adaptation you're looking for takes time, and the injury risk from doing too much too soon is real.
Sprint distances
For forwards, max velocity work typically starts from around twenty to twenty-five metres. From that point you're approaching or reaching your peak speed. For backs and lighter, faster positions, extend this to thirty, forty, or even fifty-plus metres.
Mechanics at max velocity
At max velocity, the cues shift. You want to be taller than in the acceleration phase. Your trunk should be more upright. The focus shifts to the leg cycle: bringing the knee up, avoiding the shin swinging too far behind the body on recovery, and keeping the movement efficient and cyclic. Ground contact times are shorter. You're not pushing as long, but you need to apply force quickly in that brief window.
Building lower limb resilience
To run fast repeatedly without breaking down, you need to build the structural capacity of your lower body to handle the demands of high-speed running. This means specific work for the hamstrings in their lengthened positions: Nordic hamstring curls, Romanian deadlifts, lying leg curls with emphasis on the eccentric.
It also means plyometric work that develops your stiffness and reactive strength: pogo jumps, drop jumps, bounding, and hurdle hops. These develop the tendinous stiffness and the stretch-shortening cycle efficiency that underpin your ability to produce force quickly and repeatedly at high velocity.
Calf work, which is often skipped, matters here. The soleus and gastrocnemius absorb and produce significant force in every ground contact at speed.
Repeated sprint capacity
Being fast in one sprint is one thing. Being able to repeat that quality over multiple efforts across a match is what separates a genuinely useful speed attribute from one that disappears after the first twenty minutes.
Train this specifically: five or six sprints at high intensity over sixty to eighty metres, with controlled recovery between reps, rather than full rest. This is not purely a conditioning session. You're training your ability to reproduce speed under fatigue. Do it when you're fresh, not at the end of a hard training day. It needs quality to be effective.
The Position-Specific Reality
Not every player needs the same balance of acceleration and max velocity work.
For the front five, acceleration work over ten to fifteen metres is the priority. The occasions where a prop needs to hit true maximum velocity are rare enough that extensive max velocity training is probably not the best use of limited session time.
For third-rows and nines, both acceleration and enough max velocity capacity to contribute in open play are relevant.
For the backs, the full spectrum matters. Centres need acceleration and power through contact. Wingers and outside backs need the complete package: elite acceleration, genuine max velocity, and the repeated sprint capacity to use it all the way to the final whistle.
Know your position. Train accordingly. Don't copy the winger's sprint programme if you're a hooker. They have different problems to solve.
What to Take Away
Speed development for rugby is not about running laps. It is a skill, built through intentional mechanical work, supported by the force-producing qualities developed in the gym, and expressed on the field through structured sprint sessions that are placed intelligently in the training week.
Every position gets faster with the right work. The gap between where you are now and where you could be is almost always larger than players think, and most of it comes down to whether this type of work is actually in your programme.
