Tag Archives: referee training

5 summer holidays fitness tips for referees

Posted on by

5 summer holidays fitness tips. When the season is over you might want to relax, but don’t get too relaxed. Take a different approach, because that will get you in a different vibe.

What I did right after the summer break? I did some walks on the Scottish island Skye and went to The Hague’s beach for stand up paddling. This s0-called supping is great fun and will also train lots of different muscles. In this article you’ll get some great advice by fitness experts, like the Dutch pro referee fitness instructor.

Jan SUPping

The 5 summer holidays fitness tips

Here’s how to start with some excercises after a period of physical inactivity.

  1. Don’t do specific training sessions for 3-4 weeks. That’s the advice by Dutch referee fitness instructor Hilco de Boer. The idea behind it is: you give your mind and body a rest. Because your thoughts will be focused on other things than training sessions and games. “You’ll give your mind and body the time to recover from the season.”
  2. Measure how you improve. You could weigh yourself after you came back from the holiday and set yourself a goal for the coming weeks. Another way to get statistics how your performance improves is time your runs and see how you get faster after each training session.
  3. Go back into excercising gradually. Don’t start with a heavy training session. Just give your body a chance to build up the strength. After a holiday it’s not used to the heavy training sessions from before the summer break anymore.
  4. Eat in moderation. Don’t continue with holiday excesses like overeating and drinking too much. Yeah, they are mostly always there. It’s good to have a few weeks of relaxation – don’t forget to take psychological rest -, but now is the time to get back in your physical routine.
  5. Don’t start with running immediately, do some other sports. It’s good for your body to do some other sports before you ease into running again. Go cycling, play some football yourself or ask some friends to do a tennis or squash game. That’s also the advice from referee fitness instructor Hilco de Boer. Because when you do other sports, you’ll give your mind a good rest and different thing to focus on. When you want to start training again, the start gradually with running with this pre-season tips for referees.

Tips via Hilco de Boer, Run Washington, Lifestyle Asia and Slimforce.

What do you do during the summer break? Please share it below.

Jan and one of the summer holidays fitness tips: doing a different sport

Referee training session: the pyramid run

Posted on by

This week I completed my first full training session after my broken ankle. One day later: no ankle pain, only sore legs. It feels great.

Sharing this happy news on Facebook I got asked what kind of training session I did. That triggered me, because how referees train in other train, could be interesting for everyone in the refereeing community. Please let me know what your training sessions look like.

Mine started with a warm-up session: some easy running around the football pitch for about 15 mintues. Then the heavy task began. As the trainer says: “Competition starts again next weekend. This excercise will let you know how good your physical condition and endurance is. It will show you if you’re ready for the second part of the season.”

Then we began with the so-called pyramid run. We – around twenty referees present – started on the baseline (see red line in picture added below). The trainer has placed pilons each ten metres over a distance of hundred metres. The idea: sprinting to the 1st pilon, endurance back. Endurance to second, endurance back. Sprinting to the third and other uneven pilons, endurance back. Even pilons endurance both ways to recover from the sprint.

When we reached pilon ten in endurance mode, we did the same again starting at ten now with sprinting, nine endurance, eight and all other even ones sprinting, etc.

referee-training-session-pyramid-run

Referee training session: pyramid run. Photo: Paul Flannery (Creative Commons)

It was a very heavy one, I can assure you. After the pyramid run we needed to do six 30 meter sprints, with a short period of rest between them. Then cooling down and a nice and hot shower. Luckily my ankle was doing great during this referee training session. What a feeling to be back on the football field again.

Please share your ideal training session? Does your RA have material on it’s website? Please send me some links.