What the Indoor Rowing News knows about rugby could be potato-printed on a postage stamp; from what we could tell from our university days, it seemed to involve a lot of cross-dressing and vomiting in the college bar. Anyway; things have apparently changed a lot since then and professional rugby players are now some of the fittest sportsmen around. Not unsurprisingly then, the rowing machine is used extensively for cross-training, and was introduced to the English national side by Roger Uttley. This is a recent test workout for pro rugby players taken from www.fitness4rugby.com: 1. 1,000m row, 3 minutes rest 2. 750m row, 2:30 minutes rest 3. 500m row, 2 minutes rest 4. 250m row, 2 minutes rest 5. 750m row. At the end, record all the times for each interval and total them up. A target of sub-11 minutes has been set for the players. If you do have a crack at the test, and it's a pretty good piece if you're looking for a short interval-based workout, then there's a thread about it on the Concept 2 Forum: http://www.therowingcompany.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4979Another test for rugby players has come our way from Dave Reddin, the National Fitness Coach for English Rugby. He uses this test to monitor the England players who are limited in the amount of running around they can do. 1. 1500m row, 5 minutes rest 2. 500m row, 3 minutes rest 3. 250m rowA good aggregate time for the players is taken to be 6:55. Again, if you have a crack at this there's a thread at http://www.therowingcompany.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5016 to discuss your experiences.Also: interesting indoor rowing/rugby trivia: while there have been a number of top rugby players who have gone on to star in the indoor rowing world, most notably Roger Uttley and Andy Ripley, there was nearly traffic the other way, as the world's fastest ever indoor rower, Matthias Siejkowski, once had a trial/training with Leicester Tigers a couple of years ago. Cool, huh?