New measures include capping the number of full games for England internationals at 30 per-season – reduced by two – and the number of involvements greater than 20 minutes for all players at 35.
Mandatory five-week post-season rest (two weeks' absolute rest, and three weeks' active rest) and guaranteed in-season breaks were also stipulated, among other tweaks.
Whether these steps go far enough to prevent burnout, or merely paper over cracks, is debatable.
Of most interest from an international perspective is the intention to rest England's entire World Cup squad from their July 2020 tour of Japan and the Pacific Islands.
Only those who play 20 or fewer matches in the 2019-20 season will tour, ruling out the vast majority of England's squad.
England's contingent for the 2021 British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa will also be rested from one test in that year's November internationals.
While, for now, this is a three-year domestic scheduling agreement, resting England players en mass from future tours is sure to continue.
Such a development would clash with World Rugby vice-chairman Agustin Pichot and his vision for a 12 team World League event, touted to be played across the new July and November international windows each year from 2020.
The idea behind Pichot's concept is to bring more meaning, and thus generate more revenue, in those test windows.
England's plans effectively threaten to devalue the World League proposal before it gets off the ground.
Marketing matches where leading players are regularly missing could prove a difficult sell.
In the absence of chief executive Steve Brown, RFU professional rugby director Nigel Melville gave a non-committal, lukewarm response when asked his view on Pichot's plans for the test game.
"We've read about it like you have but we don't know any more so we'll wait and see," Melville said.
"We don't know what it is so it is hard to say. At the moment, as we sit here, our position is we've built our season around [the] San Francisco [agreements] which remain in place.
"There's another competition being talked about but we don't know the details commercially, player welfare wise, until we know more…"
The World League concept is viewed favourably by Southern Hemisphere nations struggling with on-going financial challenges and the constant fight to retain leading players.
"It's always good to look at options, look new ideas," Melville said. "The Six Nations is fantastic. People have talked for a long time about the July and November window being a bit different but nothing has really come of it.
"New ideas have again come on the table and some we've already heard before. It doesn't surprise me to look at those. Commercially is it better? Potentially. Does it impact on players? Potentially. So you've got to balance all those things up."
Another feature of the announcement was confirmation Lions tours will drop from 10 games over six weeks to eight games over five weeks; the further squeeze leaving no room for preparation and raising questions around the future competitiveness of the highly-valued collaboration.
