Special topics

The German Sport Science Association – Section Football had its annual meeting at Ruhr University Bochum from 28.-30.9.2017.

I attended the conference and the important slides from the one and only english presentation from the one and only Aaron Coutts about “Developing athlete monitoring systems for football: theoretical foundations” are shown below.

The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) was created to evaluate movement pattern quality for athletes as it thought that poor neuromuscular control increases the risk of acute injuries (8).

Based on this idea, the FMS would therefore serve as the basis for more complex movements (21) and consequently would be useful to identify functional movement deficits such as muscular imbalances/asymmetries (30), flexibility deficits (mobility) and balance or stability (5).

The following slides were presented on Day 3.

Day 3 of the World Conference on Science and Soccer started with some Talent Identification. Below are some slides from the first session.

The following slides will display some of the content of the second day of the World Conference on Science and Soccer that I have visited.

As mentioned in previous post, I have attended the World Conference on Science and Soccer.

Beside presenting myself I visited a couple of session/presentations, of which I took some pictures.

Since Wednesday I have been at the World Conference on Science and Soccer at Rennes (France).

As part of every conference, delegates can submit their research as a poster that are hang up in a separate room for visitors.

Below are (nearly) all poster of the conference.

Dear coaches,

I was approached by some of you with regards to testing data of goalkeepers (and field players). As some of you might know, there is not a lot of data on goalkeepers in the current literature.

The following articles were (originally) conference presentations at the "2nd Aspire Sport Science Conference on Monitoring Athlete Training Loads".

It was a fantastic conference and the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance released an open-access special-edition. HERE is the link to the publisher website and therefore ALL papers.

However, below are the one with regards to a team sports/football environment.

I was able to attend the annual DFB International coaching conference in Germany from the 25th – 27th of July.

The main theme of the conference was “Analysis of the EURO 2016 and current competences of coaches”.

More than ~500 coaches attended the conference. The pictures below was taken during a coffee-break.

The 21st annual congress of the European College of Sport Science is about to start on the 6th of July. The congress is going to be at Vienna and will last until the 9th.

I was able to collect the abstracts published on the ECSS website with regards to a football context.

Please find the abstracts below (and I hope I have not forgotten some).

I have already posted some keynotes/slides from various presenters of the training load conference HERE.

I was able to attend the 2nd Aspire Academy Sports Science Conference this week. The main topic of the conferences "Monitoring Athlete Training Loads - The Hows and Whys".

Sessions included:

•  Load monitoring - History and future directions.

• Monitoring training loads in:
  • endurance sports
  • strength/power sports
  • team sports
  • young/developmental athletes
• Technology for load monitoring
• Modelling training loads
• Load monitoring and injury prevention

HERE is a link to the conference program.

Below you will find some "interesting/take-home/conclusion/key messages" of presentations.

I have updated the section consisting of the functional movement screen and how it was applied in football.

The World Congress on Science and Football 2015 has just started with an impressive presentation of 20 years of F-MARC from FIFA.

The Congress takes place in Copenhagen until Saturday and I am very happy to also a present some of my work later this day.

Recovery from games or simply (intense periods of) from training is a major focus for footballers. One part of recover is colloquially called “ice-bath” or “cold-water immersion”.

A more scientific/medical term used is “cryotherapy” which originates from the Greek “cryo” (meaning cold) and “therapy” (meaning cure).

Cryotherapy does not necessarily imply the usage of cold-water only, ice packs as well as cold-air chambers are also categorized under cryotherapy. However, and from a practical perspective in football teams, I will focus on cold-water immersion as this is the most practical (and probably the most utilized) form of cryotheraphy.

What are the performance parameter/indicators that divide between successful and unsuccessful teams?

Is there a link between ball possession and winning?

Are attacking 3rd entries related to shots on goal and game outcome?

Just in case you missed the groin pain conference at Aspetar a couple of weeks ago, HERE you can find all videos/presentations from the conference.

Youth players are not miniature adults. However, there seemed to be limited research with regards to actual game/match analysis. As a result the physical/physiological demands of the game and therefore possible resulting training guidelines are very limited for specific age/maturation groups.

Thanks to Chris Hausswirth posting nutritional aspects for football players online, I felt some pressure to polish up this section on my website.

With the new season on its way, I feel it is warrant to have a closer on how games affect consecutive performance on a) training, but also on b) the next match or training as the players will be fatigued from a match.

Generally, the training week is scheduled around games with the purpose to be fully recovered from games and training for the following match. Most of the teams have a “regular” football calendar, which gives two games within 8 days – for example Sunday and (the following) Sunday, which I will refer to as a regular schedule (RS). However, many teams also play three games within 8 days (and therefore have a congested schedule (CS)), due to National Cup, Champions League and Europa League games. In addition some players will need to perform for their national side – or just play college soccer, it might be same – (I hope the reader might forgive me for the slight sarcasm, however, there are many congested schedules in college soccer). As a consequence the greater demand will elevates the stress opposed on players (14).

This is a special post with regards to the FIFA World Cup 2014 as its different environmental conditions at each stadium (temperature and humidity) were fairly often debated in the press already.

Generally, Brazil’s average daily temperature during this time of the year is warmer than many other countries. Research from international matches in Qatar under hot environment significant favored the Qatari team showing the influence/advantage of heat accustomized teams (1 - see references below).

In sport science terms, getting accustomized to a hot (and/or humid) environment is called heat acclimation, which was a topic of interest for many years for exercise physiologists, especially for sporting events such as Tour de France or for military purposes.

With the FIFA World Cup 2014 around the corner, the national players are still in training and competition mode and all players will compete in at least three games (however, everyone is hoping for seven).

However, this post is not about these players, its about the other players that are not present in the World Cup, enjoy their vacation and most likely do not train (at all, or at least have reduced their training).  The question here arise how the players react to a reduced training load or no training load at all? Of course I do not necessarily meant to talk about the injured players.

In the scientific literature, the partial or complete loss of training-induced adaptation, in response to an insufficient training stimulus (17 - see references below) is called detraining (and here it seems obvious that injuries can also be seen as a kind of detraining as well). Detraining is a common phenomenon in sports (also basketball (3)) and the term “use it or loose it” seems to be proven right.

Coaches that are involved in talent identification (TID) or any other selection process in youth football have had experienced the problem of deciding/accounting if and how age and maturation affected their selection.

What does that mean?

There are two major problems that are connected.

Stretching is a commonly used tool in pre-match preparation as well as in rehabilitation. There are different stretching techniques, which might benefit one or the other purpose. A good example here would be the utilization of static vs. dynamic stretching in a pre-match warm-up or to increase range of motion in a flexibility session.

While the research mainly focused on the muscle (and even more on its force producing capability), it seems relevant to ask what actually happens during stretching and which part of the muscle-tendon unit (which includes the tendon, the connective tissue or myotendinous junction (MTJ) = the part in which the “muscle turns into the tendon (1)” and the muscles) is stretched? Anecdotally it was believed that stretching would alter tendon length, which would therefore cause instability to a given joint and further increase injury risk?

This is more of a random post, however based on some discussion/comments I have received over social media after posting some warm-up of FC Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Zenit FC, Schalke, Manchster United, the Spanish National team and elite youth teams of different nationalities.

The statements were about the content of the warm-ups of the teams. Furthermore, I would like to give some thoughts about different issues that might influence the approach to develop/do a warm-up.

Hi everyone,

I have updated two sections:

1. Asymmetries/dysbalances in football players
2. Proprioception/balance in football players

Injuries and therefore injury prevention is a big topic in football, especially with regards to knee injuries (10, 34 - see references). The (fast and repeated) knee extensions during kicking (also shown in its correlation with isokinetic measurements (26)), seem to have an effect on the muscles influencing the knee joint. However, also the antagonist (flexion the knee - the hamstring muscle perform a lot of work during motions in football such as sprinting (24, 33, 39). The activity of the hamstring muscles during kicking was also correlated with isokinetic strength measurements (26) showing the importance of the knee flexors as well.

So how does football and its training influence the knee joint and possible injuries with regards to the quadriceps and hamstring muscles?

Having a preferred kicking and jumping leg it would seem obvious to have a stronger and a potential weaker leg.

From a technical and tactical perspective it seems interesting to have dominantly left footed players (like Robben), playing on the right and vice versa (like Ribery). However, are there any consequences with regards to a health (injury/injury prevention) or performance perspective?

Before I start to elaborate on this topic it seems warrant to give some clarification about proprioception which will then forms the base for understanding balance.

As the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) was used in different sports, I have dedicated a "special topics"-page to this topic and its utilization in football.

The following homepage update will display some thoughts underpinned with scientific knowledge about the (un)importance of anthropometry in football.

I have decided to dedicate a little bit of time to elaborate on the topic, after being in different (football) environments seeing different sizes and shapes of footballer, but also (and especially) due to talking to US college coaches with regards to recruitment of new players and the need of being able to play “physically” or “being able to rise up to the challenge”. 

Besides the need to define terminology here, to me playing physically could mean:
Being able to perform to a high (physical) standard for the duration of the match (90 or 120 minutes) or in other words, players are fast, strong, having a high aerobic and anaerobic endurance to cover great distances and are able to recover quickly from intense periods in the match.

However, as it seems my interpretation is not always shared by coaches and/or the coaches link different abilities/attributes with “playing physically” (possibly) meaning being physically “present” – resulting in recruiting players that are 1.90 m tall (around 6’3 feet) and build like American Football players. Obviously I am exaggerating now, however, I hope it helps to make the point.

So my question was always – Are you looking for footballers or for athletes that are tall, strong, fast and know the rules of soccer/football? Obviously the response was, “we want tall, strong, fast footballers!” – which is a good point, however also lead to great discussion of “small” (< 1.80 meters or 5’10 feet) football players.

As it seems there are a good questions to ask:
Is anthropometry an important attribute of football players?

If it is, then for who?

Please click HERE to read the homepage update or visit: Special topics - Anthropmetry

We have updated our website with a huge article about performance analysis/performance indicators.

Basics of stretching in football.

What is better active vs. passive recovery?

FS-Free content online - go to recovery

Injury prevention check list for football is now online.