This makes no sense to me.

[Taff]

Something odd has happened in the last year. When I started reffing about 4 years ago, I trained hard - regular jogging, near daily visits to the pool and gym. Last year, I bought a 2nd hand treadmill as it was cheaper than paying for gym membership. I used it religiously and felt OK during games - not perfect but not bad either. I'm an ex 2nd Row - I'm not built for speed, but I was happy with my fitness level.

In a nutshell, the last 2 years have been manic for me. I'm self-employed (office based - so I don't even get exercise in work) and my best mate and employee has been off work with the cancer. Bluntly for the last 2 years I've been doing the work of 2 men and something had to give last year especially. Sadly that something was the gym / treadmill / reading and clarifying laws etc. In short I didn't do any. None; and I'm not exaggerating. Apart from regular visits to RR.com I didn't even look at the lawbook. So, as you can imagine I started this season with a real sense of panic. :frown:

The daft thing is ... I feel better not worse - both mentally and physically. It makes no sense at all, but I don't struggle with keeping up with 95% of play, the assessors reckon my fitness isn't an issue and I don't get those nasty "Oh shit" law query moments any more. OK, I couldn't keep up with the 18 year old centre today who intercepted the ball in his own 22 and sprinted the full length of the pitch, but I wasn't that far behind him and I don't reckon I would have been much faster even when I was in my prime, and that was probably nearly 30 years ago now. If someone can explain it, please do ... because my experience just flies in the face of all logic.

 

[Taffy]

Taff, could it be ingrained knowledge from the last few years on the brain front?

Slowly over time,the brain absorbs the information and the calls become second nature.

I remember someone telling me a while a while back that after a while, your arm will go out immediately when playing advantage. I never believed him, but he was right, but it took a while............just a thought........

Fitness front physically, search me........

 

[Blackberry]

You haven't been bitten bitten by any spiders while visiting research establishments have you?

 

[Adam]

One of our very high level assessors talks about fine-tuning your referee 'auto-pilot', and it generally takes 50-100 games. Maybe you've hit that point?

Not worrying about all those law minutiae is probably due to confidence gained in your own refereeing. While it is nice to have chapter and verse for every possible situation, you know the relevant bits for almost every match situation. You also have the confidence that you roughly know what it should be in the "oh poo" situations, and can manage/sell the call accordingly.

As I've developed as a referee, I get a lot more benefit from 30 minutes reviewing my previous game performance, discussing it with my coach and colleagues, and formulating an action plan.

Additionally, I don't see how treadmill training and 'jogs' actually help fitness for refereeing. My experience is when I've been (half) marathon training during the season my speed off the mark is slower and my muscles take longer to react as I have been training my slow twitch muscle fibres hard, and my muscle composition has altered accordingly.

 

[Daftmedic]

As above. For explosive actions the Muscles use a cocktail called adenosine Tri-phosphate (ATP) and is very anaerobic in nature.
Also if your refereeing training all the time. Your body needs to rest and repair.

 

[Phil E]

You haven't been bitten bitten by any spiders while visiting research establishments have you?

A spider exploded in my kitchen this morning........







I found out later it was a Jihadi Long Legs! :biggrin: :bday:

 

[crossref]

in LSRFUR for any fitness question from a ref the answer from our guru seems to be 'do more interval training' :wink:

 

[Dan_A]

Just a thought but if you are really manic at work are you also eating less? My work went through a mad phase recently and I was so knackered when I got home from work that I often had a quick sandwich instead of a larger cooked meal. I dropped half a stone and it shows in my overall fitness.

 

[FlipFlop]

Regarding the law issue - I think that once you stop reading the book, you stop thinking in too much detail about the law, and start to use it more as a framework. So you get fewer questions, and feel better about it. And the game flows better.

Then with the game flowing better, and less "energy" spent wondering if law X.d.2) was broken, you follow the patterns of play better, so spend less energy, need to sprint less. So you appear fitter.

And finally - given all the sh!t off the park, you are probably enjoying the refereeing as your downtime - so that happiness/relief/release/whatever is helping you enjoy the games more. Which feeds back into the fitness issues and law issues.

 

[SimonSmith]

I'd agree.

My bet is that you're 'seeing' the game as a referee very differently than when you started. Possibly a bad example but:
Think of the match as a jigsaw puzzle.
When referees start, they tend to concentrate on each piece of the puzzle in isolation, and worrying about how that single piece fits to another piece next to it.
The more games you do, the more of the puzzle you start to see. When you're operating at a good level, you can see a whole puzzle - how the various bits all fit together and what the picture is mean to look like. You retain the ability to look at an individual piece, but the context of the piece and the ability to see how it fits in is critical.

 

[Dixie]

A spider exploded in my kitchen this morning........
I found out later it was a Jihadi Long Legs! :biggrin: :bday:

That's an insect!

 

[Lee Lifeson-Peart]

That's an insect!

Etymology, Entomology and Pendantry all in one joke (plus response). epper: