What the Yo-Yo test is
The Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test is a shuttle-running test built for stop-start sports. Unlike the beep test, which is continuous running, the Yo-Yo inserts a short active recovery after every pair of 20-metre shuttles. Hard efforts on a clock, with incomplete recovery between them, is the pattern rugby keeps asking for.
How it works
Two lines, 20 metres apart. You run out and back to recorded beeps, so one shuttle is 40 metres: one beep marks the turn and one marks the finish. After each shuttle you get 10 seconds to walk or jog around a cone 5 metres behind the line and return to the start. The beeps come faster as the test goes on. Miss the pace once and you get a warning. Miss it again and you are out. Your score is the total distance you covered.
IR1 vs IR2
There are two versions. Level 1 builds to a maximal activation of the aerobic system through repeated efforts. Level 2 runs at higher speeds and tests how well you recover when the anaerobic system carries a large share of the work. In elite football, Level 2 separated international-level players from moderate elite players, and even trained groups finished within about three to eight minutes. Athletes at higher levels of competition score better on both versions, and both versions register training changes that a VO2max test misses.
What rugby players actually cover
Benchmarks you find online rarely say who was measured. The distances below are first-year averages from one New Zealand rugby development programme, players around nineteen years old, split by position and by whether they later earned a professional contract.
| Group | Average Yo-Yo IR1 distance |
|---|---|
| Backs who went on to professional contracts | 2065 m |
| Backs who stayed amateur | 1979 m |
| Forwards who stayed amateur | 1751 m |
| Forwards who went on to professional contracts | 1593 m |
Yo-Yo or beep test?
In elite footballers, distance on the Yo-Yo tracked the amount of high-intensity running the same players produced in real matches, while their laboratory VO2max did not. When the question is repeated match running, the Yo-Yo answers it more directly. The beep test stays the simpler tool for tracking aerobic capacity on its own, and its levels convert to a VO2max estimate.