Premier League referees share tips to stay fit during lockdown

Premier League referees share tips to stay fit during lockdown. In this story you’ll get tips from referee Craig Pawson, AR Lee Betts and you’ll get the daily routine of Anthony Taylor.

Both Craig Pawson and Lee Betts shared their tips in an online learning by The FA (embedded below in this post).

Structure your days

Bring structure to your days. “Make sure each day what your plan is”. Craig Pawson does lots of medium-intensity training to keep his legs moving. He also makes time to train in the house. His advice to the referees watching the online session is to create a daily or weekly routine.

Below you’ll get to know what a day looks like for EPL referee Anthony Taylor.

Try new types of training

“I’m doing lots of training in the house as well that I’m not normally doing. Yoga training, flexibility training. Lots of CORE exercises“, says Craig Pawson.

“It’s an ideal opportunity to do training that you wouldn’t normally do.” Because normally there are games coming up, his excuse to not do any yoga sessions. He laughs. “At the moment, I got no excuse”.

In the blog post about staying fit during corona you’ll get tips for yoga sessions and other new types of training.

Find time for other referee-related activities

Premier League assistant referee Lee Betts totally agrees with Craig Pawson. “We got a lot of additional free time at the moment. I like to structure the day the best I can, like everybody else”, he says. “The priority is at home with the family. But at the same time after physical training, I like to spend 1 hour on referee-related activities. They are quite varied.”

But what kind of referee related activities? Lee Betts sums up:

• Do some online offside drills. “These are quite commonplace over the season anyways, but I like to maintain that.”
• “Law refreshers”. FA Learning suggests to read one chapter of the Laws of the Game a day or per week. Feel free to do my latest LOTG quizzes or read the 2020-2021 LOTG changes.
• Self-analysis. “Watch previous games or clips. Look at things that got well, things that could go better.”

“The overall aim is to keep as sharp as possible”, Lee Betts says. He wants to be best prepared as one possibly can be. 

Daily routine of a Premier League referee

The Daily Mail spoke with Anthony Taylor, who’s volunteering for NHS. Great long interview with the referee from Altrinchem. As Lee Betts spoke about getting yourself a good daily routine, this is a nice example in the newspaper. Check below what Anthony Taylor’s  day looks like.

• 6am: Get up
• 7-9am: Go for run with Monty
• 10am-midday: Homeschool the kids
• Midday-1pm: Lunch
• 1pm-2pm: Training
• 2pm-4pm: More homeschooling
• 4pm-6pm: Training
• 6pm-7pm: Dinner
• 7pm-10pm: Netflix and Cards Against Humanity
• 10pm: Bedtime

What do EPL referees normally do? Check-out normal season preparation by Premier League Referees.

FA Learning online development session

The FA Learning Development session is on YouTube and you can watch it below.