Prevention of injury must be your first priority when designing a refereeing and touch judge fitness programme. The increasing intensity of modern rugby demands a high level of total fitness built on a foundation of strength, balance, flexibility and aerobic fitness.

Simply running or cross training to develop your fitness is a recipe for injury

Strength to support your arms and legs is provided by your trunk, and if this is a weak link, injuries such as groin and hamstring strains and lower back pain are inevitable.

Exercising core stabilisers with a swiss ball can help reduce your chances of developing lower back pain

Swiss Ball exercises will add variety to your programme and provide options for a variety of strength and flexibility exercises that will reduce your injury potential.

A general strength programme, starting with a Reebok Resistance Tube will also help your performance, particularly the demands of directional change and moving backwards.

Flexibility is often a missing link in a training programme, and one reason may be the fact that it lacks the dynamism of strength, agility and conditioning drills. It becomes more important as age increases and is continually proven to reduce the risk of injury for multiple-sprint sports.

Another aspect of training that should not be ignored is balance; although it is an incidental benefit of most training drills, specifically training balance will improve your agility and durability.