Fitness is key to Premiership refereeing
I am often asked how fit do you need to be to referee in the Premiership?
Well today’s football is very high tempo and players are more like athletes and surprisingly games seem to increase in their intensity during the second-half rather than slow down as most of us would think.
My fitness is tied in closely to my lifestyle, with periods of rest and consuming the correct foods and liquids playing an important part.
However I want to share with you the physical demands of being a referee. Every Monday morning, the Premier League’s sports scientist emails me a weekly training programme, which will take into account matches during that week etc.
Over a seven-day period I will undertake sessions covering; high intensity; speed endurance; agility; weights and stretching of muscles; recovery/warm down.
Each session will last no longer than one hour in order to obtain quality rather than quantity. The object is to maintain fitness levels without feeling fatigued, therefore it is most important to allow muscles to rest in between sessions.
During matches my fitness and movement is monitored via video and a specialist company called ‘Prozone’ analyses my entire movement using pre-determined speeds to assess how far I ran, distance from the ball, number of sprints etc.
I have just received the data from my recent game Fulham v Man Utd and it goes into some depth. What this information shows my fitness coach are areas that I need to address, i.e. stamina, explosive running etc.
The game went up a gear in the second-half which meant I had to cover more ground than I did in the first-half, also my sprints increased and my HI running rose. The last few minutes of this game saw Ronaldo sprint from the half way line to score the winning goal and Fulham’s claim for a penalty turned down.
As the referee I had to ensure I was fit enough to be in close proximity for both decisions even in the last minutes of the game.
The days of refereeing from the centre circle have long gone – see you down the gym!
