Contact is coached in person, on a pitch, by someone watching you. This page is here to make that coaching land faster, not to replace it. Rugby AI does not score tackles and never will. We cannot see legality, head contact, or force from a phone, so we do not guess at them. Do not practise contact alone or with a friend who has not been coached.
Guides / Contact / Neck and shoulder mobility
Contact
Guide
Neck and shoulder mobility
Slow, unloaded range of movement. Nothing here uses weight, a band, a harness, or another person pushing against you, and that is a deliberate limit rather than a simplified version of something else.
Read this before the drill
This page is mobility only: moving your neck and shoulders through their own range, slowly, with nothing resisting you.
It is not neck strengthening and it is not neck conditioning. Loaded neck work in players who are still growing carries its own injury risk, and doing it alone does not make it safer. Harness work, partner resistance and bridging under load are not on this site and will not be added because somebody asked nicely.
What good looks like
- Every movement is slow enough that you could stop it at any point
- You stay inside the range that feels normal, and never push into the end of it
- Your shoulders stay down and relaxed while your neck moves
- You are breathing normally throughout, not holding your breath
The drill
- Sit or stand tall, shoulders relaxed and down.
- Turn your head slowly to look over one shoulder, then the other. Five each way.
- Tip one ear towards one shoulder, slowly, then the other side. Five each way.
- Lower your chin towards your chest and bring it back up. Five times.
- Roll your shoulders backwards ten times, then forwards ten times, big and slow.
- Reach one arm across your chest, hold for fifteen seconds, then swap.
Space
Anywhere you can sit or stand upright. No equipment of any kind.
When to stop
Stop if anything is painful, or if you feel dizzy or numb, and tell a coach or an adult rather than working through it. This page cannot tell you whether something is wrong and it is not going to try.
Contact is taught, not scored.
Solo and contactless. Contact itself belongs in coached training.
