Off the Pitch Training

Steve Schafer, DRA for East Albuquerque, talks about more training ideas for staying in shape off the pitch.

Off The Pitch

I’ll bet you weren’t expecting me to write about swimming as training for being a soccer referee. I swim once a week for about 45 minutes. Swimming is a great low impact, total body workout. The upper body does most of the work, but the legs do a lot too. Most of my workout is freestyle lap swimming. I also do a few laps with swim fins to stretch the ankle joint and strengthen the legs. Finally, I finish up with a few laps of breast stroke. The frog kick of the breast stroke really works the inside of my legs, helping me avoid injuries from AR side stepping. Also, my bad shoulder (bike crash) no longer hurts when I raise the AR flag.

I swim at the KAFB pool. I have also swam at several of the city pools http://www.cabq.gov/aquatics/indoor-pools . All of them cost less than $3 to swim. Check with each pool for lap swimming schedules (they usually change during the summer).

A resource I have found very useful is total immersion swimming http://www.totalimmersion.net/ . Their ideas about swimming really simplified things for me. I also recommend their book http://www.amazon.com/Total-Immersion-Revolutionary-Better-Faster/dp/0743253434 .

See you on the pitch,

Steve Schafer