Do you have to be big to play rugby? In Tarbes, Mathieu Loumagne dismantles the greatest lie of weight training

In Tarbes, rugby is a living memory. A culture you catch in childhood and that never lets go. Even when Stado Tarbes Pyrénées Rugby files for bankruptcy, even when the stands fall silent, something remains. A stubbornness. A loyalty. Mathieu Loumagne is one of its contemporary embodiments.

At 32, this son of the town does not coach a team. He prepares bodies. Since 2018, in his ATP gym, 500 m² devoted to strength and conditioning and athletic development, he watches, corrects, builds. With one fixed idea: modern rugby no longer rewards mass, but the ability to produce and repeat power.

“Rugby remains a tactical and strategic sport, but players have to be well prepared to handle the impacts“, he explains. It stands to reason.

“When you see the South Africans or the Fijians, there is all that power coming off every single one of their actions. You have to be able to answer them.“

Mathieu Loumagne

His own path matches that demand. A master’s in STAPS, the French sports science degree, an expert in physical and mental preparation since 2015, Loumagne learned his trade in gyms, on pitches, and on himself. A regional-level powerlifter, a competitive weightlifter at federation level, a CrossFit athlete ranked in the French top 50 and the European top 150, a trail runner who finished the Grand Raid des Pyrénées (43 km, 3,400 metres of elevation gain), he belongs to that hybrid generation which refuses to be boxed in. And, above all, he played rugby for more than ten years. Long enough to understand what the sport demands. Long enough, too, to see what it still does not know.

“Power is the relationship between mass and speed. In rugby, we talk about momentum. A player who is massive but has no speed will not necessarily be powerful.” The verdict is beyond appeal. In the amateur divisions, and sometimes beyond, the confusion persists. Weight training has become an end in itself, a reassuring ritual. But an illusion.

Stereotypes

“We all think professional rugby players are built like wardrobes and that they spend hours working their pecs and their arms. Those are stereotypes that date back ten or fifteen years.” On the pitch, the punishment always arrives. Later in the match, when bodies slow down. “As soon as there is movement and speed, heavy teams tend to suffer. They find it harder to get around.”

What Loumagne argues for is a different hierarchy. Cardio first. Coordination next. Running technique last. “If you don’t have the cardio, the engine, you won’t be able to repeat efforts. Cardio remains the basis of rugby.” One word keeps coming back: athleticisation. A way of giving the body back its primary function: moving efficiently.

In his gym, the point is not to manufacture impressive silhouettes, but athletes capable of transferring their qualities onto the pitch. Muscle building exists, but as part of a broader process. “Pure weight training is complementary. Athletic development, on the other hand, is inseparable from rugby“, he says with conviction.

Since ATP opened, more than 1,500 athletes have followed his methods. Rugby players, but also boxers, footballers, triathletes, swimmers. All of them facing the same reality: the modern elite no longer tolerates physical approximations.

Functional training

In this Tarbes gym, he offers “nothing but functional training“, far from the volume-driven logic inherited from bodybuilding. “We develop strength, power, coordination, running technique. Lower-limb work is essential, but not in classic weight-training mode. We put the emphasis on the ability to produce speed.”

The season sets its own rhythm. Far from the fantasy of permanent training, preparation follows a precise logic. “To develop a physical quality, you need at least four weeks. The cycles run from four to eight weeks. After that, the work is mainly about maintaining the level and avoiding injuries.”

Because modern strength and conditioning is also an art of restraint. Overloading a player means exposing him. Weakening him instead of strengthening him. “During the season, we mostly do preventive strengthening. The neck, the hamstrings, the lower back, core work. The aim is to avoid fatigue and injuries.” Loumagne also notices cultural differences. The dominant nations understood the importance of this all-round preparation earlier.

In France, the gap built up for a long time, particularly among youngsters. “Players should be introduced to athletic development very early. I have seen a huge number of careers ruined by a lack of physical preparation.” His ambition is not to transform rugby. Only to serve it. To give it bodies capable of meeting its new demands.

In his argument, he also insists on a persistent confusion, the one between weight training and performance. For a long time, gyms shaped silhouettes before they built athletes. He does the opposite. He starts from movement. From its quality. From its repetition. “It isn’t an exercise that makes you more powerful, it’s a process, he sums up. We work on neuromuscular qualities, speed, the ability to repeat sprints. It’s qualitative work.“

Observations from the field

That precision changes everything. It alters the very perception of training. Where some seek exhaustion, Loumagne seeks efficiency. Where others pile on the loads, he doses the adaptations. The body is not a machine to be worn out, but a system to be refined. This approach was built over time, fed by his own experiences and his observations in the field. He has seen players progress quickly. Others disappear, held back by avoidable injuries. The conclusion has stayed with him. It persists: “Strength and conditioning, especially at the top level, is largely about maintenance and managing training volume to avoid injuries.”

That logic also applies to the France squad, where the preparation windows are too short to transform a player deeply. “In ten or fifteen days, you cannot develop a physical quality. You can only maintain what has been built at the club.” The responsibility therefore shifts further upstream. To the academies. To the youth age groups. To those years when everything is still possible. “Young players are very malleable. It is the ideal moment to develop coordination, running technique, core strength. They have an enormous capacity to learn.“

Resilient, adaptable

That, in his view, is where the future of French rugby is being played out. Not in a quest for ever more impressive frames, but in the development of complete players. Resilient. Adaptable. In his gym, some dream of turning professional. Others simply want to last. He promises nothing. He prepares. He adjusts. He supports.

In Tarbes, while the historic club has not survived its financial troubles, Mathieu Loumagne carries on his work in the shadows. Without noise. Without nostalgia. He does not manufacture “more impressive” rugby players. He manufactures “rugby players who are more ready“.