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I went to the basement, dusted off the scales I had avoided for many years and looked at the screen: 99.2kg. Throughout the previous eight years, I had dropped nearly 10kg. I had gone from being a official who was overweight and unfit to being slender and well trained. It had taken time, filled with patience, hard calls and focus. But it was also the commencement of a transformation that gradually meant stress, pressure and discomfort around the assessments that the authorities had enforced.

You didn't just need to be a good official, it was also about focusing on nutrition, appearing as a top-level umpire, that the weight and body fat were right, otherwise you risked being disciplined, getting fewer matches and finding yourself in the cold.

When the regulatory group was restructured during the 2010 summer season, the head official enacted a number of changes. During the first year, there was an extreme focus on body shape, weigh-ins and fat percentage, and required optical assessments. Optical checks might seem like a given practice, but it wasn't previously before. At the courses they not only examined elementary factors like being able to read small text at a specific range, but also targeted assessments designed for top-level match arbiters.

Some umpires were identified as colour blind. Another proved to be lacking vision in one eye and was forced to quit. At least that's what the whispers suggested, but nobody was certain – because about the results of the optical assessment, no information was shared in larger groups. For me, the optical check was a reassurance. It indicated expertise, meticulousness and a goal to enhance.

When it came to body mass examinations and body fat, however, I mostly felt disgust, anger and humiliation. It wasn't the examinations that were the difficulty, but the way they were conducted.

The initial occasion I was forced to endure the embarrassing ritual was in the fall of 2010 at our regular session. We were in the Slovenian capital. On the first morning, the umpires were separated into three teams of about 15. When my team had stepped into the spacious, cool assembly area where we were to meet, the management urged us to strip down to our underwear. We exchanged glances, but nobody responded or dared to say anything.

We gradually removed our attire. The evening before, we had been given clear instructions not to consume food or beverages in the morning but to be as depleted as we could when we were to participate in the examination. It was about showing minimal weight as possible, and having as minimal body fat as possible. And to look like a official should according to the standard.

There we were positioned in a lengthy queue, in just our underclothes. We were the continent's top officials, professional competitors, role models, mature individuals, parents, confident individuals with strong ethics … but no one said anything. We barely looked at each other, our gazes flickered a bit anxiously while we were called forward two by two. There the chief examined us from head to toe with an chilling look. Silent and attentive. We stepped onto the scale singly. I contracted my abdomen, stood erect and ceased breathing as if it would have an effect. One of the coaches loudly announced: "The Swedish official, 96.2 kilograms." I felt how the boss stopped, glanced my way and inspected my almost bare body. I mused that this is undignified. I'm an mature individual and obliged to be here and be inspected and assessed.

I alighted from the weighing machine and it felt like I was in a daze. The equivalent coach advanced with a kind of pliers, a polygraph-like tool that he started to squeeze me with on assorted regions of the body. The caliper, as the instrument was called, was cool and I jumped a little every time it made contact.

The coach pressed, tugged, applied pressure, gauged, rechecked, spoke unclearly, reapplied force and compressed my epidermis and adipose tissue. After each measurement area, he announced the metric reading he could measure.

I had no understanding what the numbers represented, if it was favorable or unfavorable. It took maybe just over a minute. An aide inputted the numbers into a document, and when all four values had been determined, the file swiftly determined my total fat percentage. My result was declared, for all to hear: "Eriksson, eighteen point seven percent."

What prevented me from, or anyone else, speak up?

Why couldn't we stand up and say what each person felt: that it was degrading. If I had spoken out I would have at the same time signed my professional demise. If I had questioned or challenged the techniques that Collina had introduced then I would have been denied any fixtures, I'm sure about that.

Certainly, I also aimed to become in better shape, reduce my mass and achieve my objective, to become a elite arbiter. It was clear you shouldn't be overweight, just as clear you should be conditioned – and sure, maybe the complete roster of officials required a professionalisation. But it was wrong to try to get there through a embarrassing mass assessment and an agenda where the most important thing was to shed pounds and reduce your body fat.

Our biannual sessions after that adhered to the same routine. Weight check, measurement of fat percentage, endurance assessments, regulation quizzes, evaluation of rulings, collaborative exercises and then at the end everything would be summarised. On a file, we all got data about our physical profile – pointers showing if we were going in the proper course (down) or incorrect path (up).

Body fat levels were grouped into five tiers. An satisfactory reading was if you {belong