Prof. Dr. Wolfgang I. Schöllhorn is the creator of the Differential Learning System. For many years he trained national and international athletes in different sports and his approach has been followed by leading football coaches including Guardiola, Klopp, Tuchel and Arteta.
He spoke to me about the approach, integrating it in football and a lot more.
In 1990, he received a Ph.D. in biomechanics from the University of Frankfurt. After having professorships and guest professorships around the world, he became a professor for training and movement science at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz in 2007. His work in the field of athletics, biomechanics, and motor learning has received several national and international prizes including the Performance Award of the International Society of Biomechanics for Differential learning (DL) and 2006 the “Deutsches Werkbund Label”.
Contact Dr. Wolfgang Schöllhorn via email on wolfgang.schoellhorn@uni-mainz.de
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[Applause] today was such an informative discussion with Dr Wolf Gang Schon he is the original founder creator of the differential learning training approach and it is being used across a lot of uh spectrums however he is the person who started it and this kind of approach has been used by the best
Coaches in the World by Pep Guardiola by klopp by Thomas TRL by Etta by a lot of clubs he has consulted um Sporting Lisbon Benfica Barcelona he’s done a lot in life and um I’m very grateful to him that he took time out to explain how the differential learning differential
Training can be applied to football and across a lot of other sports so go in tune in to this 1hour podcast and I’m sure it’s going to make you imagine a lot of things that you already do how you can improvise on it so go ahead and enjoy super excited about today’s
Podcast it is with a very very high-profile guest someone who’s renowned worldwide in the coaching fraternity a famous quote if we want to have extraordinary performance we need to train extraordinarily and this is said by today’s guest Professor Dr Wolf Gang Schon he’s the creator of the differential Learning System for many
Years he trained National and international athletes in different sports in 1990 he received a PhD in biomechanics from the University of Frankfurt he’s also been a professor for training and movement science at the yanes Gutenberg University in minds and his work in the field of Athletics biomechanics and motor learning has
Received several National and international prizes delighted to have you thank you for joining how are you I’m fine thank you for your invitation brilliant so before we go into your famous Learning System can we get to know about you as a person your background and your journey so
Far okay uh how much time do you have you’re the boss uh yeah well I would say I’m a curious person uh which just was able to keep the a child’s curiosity uh so this was uh actually my driving force from the from the beginning so yes you you said it already
U I had this PhD in in biomechanics because with this PhD I wanted to combine Sports and physics uh which which I studied but very soon I realized that biomechanics is not everything it’s giving you a perfect diagnosis uh but it’s not helping you um for changing uh movement behavior and this
Was the reason why I started to study a new NE physiology and pedy as well um I could have gotten a PhD there too but this was no more necessary because actually uh I was studying in the morning and during the day and in the evening I was coaching my
Athletes and this was a big Advantage because there I already could apply all my theoretical knowledge immediately to my athletes and yes after a very short time um I got three Junior charm Champions uh in Drag and field one was in 100 meter sprint the other was in 110 M hurdle 100
100 hurdle and the other was in the castlin and one characteristics of this was that they never did um strength train weightlifting training uh which is very unusual in um in Sprint and uh in parallel we had to consult for more than 10 years um a lot of national teams
Mainly the German national teams in all throwing events in the castan in hpon um sometimes also basketball came handball players came and uh very soon the football teams came from Barcelona because uh we had a cooperation with Barcelona University and at the University there was pulo teaching foot
Paul and he was very interested in in this approach and I think to a certain Um part it was it became part of um the training in in in baa this was already before 2000 um and yeah slowly I started to think about um the deeper connections with this the interesting part for me was that mainly I was a coach for more than 20 25 years uh
And I was looking afterwards for a theory which could explain what I was applying uh to my athletes all the time so it’s it’s the opposite it’s not normally what science is doing they are developing a certain Theory and then you have to construct uh the environment in
Order to get a verification no it was first the Practical experience and a lot of friends applied this as well very successfully uh and then I started to um yeah look for the theory uh interestingly in parallel already other groups copied this um with another name U and they added something but the
Chinese would say um only good things are copied yes um well meanwhile I think it’s quite often discussed it’s a little bit more discussed with another with other names uh but nonetheless it’s spreading and I think it’s spreading because it’s a theory which is based on physics which is based on
Neurophysiology um and a lot of pedagogy is coming in into the theory where I would say there is a big difference in in the development historical development of these theories because uh Central Europe Germany France Switzerland Austria they have an enormous I would say U basis in pedagogy
Uh whereas other countries mainly um yeah it’s UK UK Nations they don’t have this and they are now discovering this as new and for us it’s mainly a copy what what they are doing um because yeah we need to learn English but not all the English people learn any other languages
And this is why a lot of English people are I would say just ignorant um about other developments but they they are I would say really 200 years ahead of of of the other things so there’s a lot of I would say making public um European Central European pedy uh combined with
Uh this differential learning which which you mentioned already uh and this was one major part there as well uh for the development of the theory that actually I wanted to develop something new and in order to develop something new you need to know what is the the common uh training Training Method and
Before I really started to to apply this to my athletes um this would be interesting as well I would say I started as a gymnast uh I became Too Tall then I played Olympic handball was member of a of a state Team U I injured my niece during this training then I
Switched to D castlin yeah uh I’m also became member of of a State team and then I became a bob SL where I became wise European champion and German Champion uh and nonetheless although although I had this um experiences also with my athletes I first tried this differential learning method by myself
And this I tried with a new uh movement and this movement was Krate so I asked National coach in in Kate whether he could teach me this Kate but I had one condition I only wanted to have him once a week and the rest I want to do by
Myself and this is why U I was used by learning an instrument I learned for more than 10 years OBO uh and in when you learn an instrument you normally see your teacher only once a week and the rest you have to do by
Yourself uh so I did this in in Kate and yes within two years I almost got the the black belt it was the last brown belt uh but then I knew okay it’s working and From This Moment On I applied this and by the way um same experience had uh the the German
National coach in discus throwing in the beginning of 2000 he said in the beginning yeah the theory sounds very nice but now I want to know um where how the pr practice looks like uh we did 20 minutes exercise with him and then he said okay I’m convinced from now
On the national team will train in in a differential way and this was quite impressive for me because he was world record holder and he still is um and I didn’t know what what I could teach him after 40 Years of of discus experience but yes it worked and I would say most
Of no all the predictions which I made 1999 uh meanwhile are verified uh we just recently showed a new verification that the resonance works so um yes I’m confident that this will continue there’s so much uh tried and tested stuff over here you know you have experimented so much and uh it’s amazing
To know that you have tried it across so many sports and it has been successful so that brings me to my next question what exactly is the differential learning approach well it’s um I would say a summing up of the knowledge of all the successful coaches which I knew
Already so I would say actually it’s nothing new uh a lot of coaches uh have applied this but they used I would say a different terminology of this yeah uh and they do they only applied it to single athletes in a lot of of different ways and because of my physics
Background I was able to summarize this so the major idea is that we are actually only learning from differences right okay some other call this meanwhile trial to trial variation but the the story behind this is quite old um I only know the the Greek vers uh
The Greek and and the Chinese version the Greek said you never step into the r twice and the Chinese said the only constant is variety so although we knew this for more than 2,000 years there was no consequence on our training process okay I already can hear the the
Excuse yeah when we never repeat um what do we have to change U because also when we are repeating we are not repeating identically uh yes this is part of the theory later but uh learning from difference this means that when you do a movement pitching and in um Cricket when
You when you throw the ball uh very often a coach is telling you what is wrong so actually the coach sees a difference and instead of telling you you should not do this we amplify this uh problem yeah and by amplifying this problem we increase uh we call this the
Fluctuations and by increasing this we cause a bigger difference between two subsequent movements okay which means okay you uh the first time you have to um emphasize the the shoulder and the second move you have to emphasize the the right knee and the next you have to
Emphasize the the finger uh Etc so the system has a possibility to compare two subsequent movements and by comparing two subsequent movements the system can get additional information yeah okay and this is normally what what we experience every morning when we dress up so in the beginning we feel the close but then
It’s all the time repetition and we lose this feeling for the for close as soon as I remind you to to this then you start again to feel it but you only feel it when you change something right so when I when I press you the
First time on your cheek okay you feel it the second time the reaction is much lower the third time even lower and then there’s almost no more adaptation to this so we knew for long that our neurons actually are developed for uh yeah I would say differences right so
Instead of waiting until these differences will occur by coincidence ents uh we said no from the beginning we have to uh increase this differences and yeah all the studies show this meanwhile that this lead uh leads to much um higher acquisition rates and even higher learning rates afterwards and then you
See a lot of parallels that actually this is how little children are learning yeah uh and one one major thing which U and which we know from neurophysiology uh as well is that we are always taking a lot of information from the difference for example when we uh watch an object with
The right eye and with the left eye then we see this flipping left and right yeah and the difference of these two pictures is used by our brain to calculate the distance and the same we have uh with the ear when the sound is coming from the right ear shortly after this it’s
Heading the left ear and this time time difference is used by our brain to give the orientation where the sound is coming from so there’s a lot of I would say neurophysiological evidence for this but yeah unfortunately or for me fortunately uh no one took advantage of
This and this is what we actually introduced and this is I would say only the the top of of this variation because actually we knew forever that learning needs variation right the the problem is that most apply this variation only step by step and do many repetitions U and this is what we
Meanwhile found that when you switch all the time then we have an additional effect uh on on our brain and this is the reason why meanwhile we are looking to apply this in in disease diseases fogal Donia or in parkinsonians or multiple sclerosis and we have already
First evidence that there are uh quite successful effects and this is yeah again because it’s based on physics and neurophysiology and not by some master theories yeah and from a from a coaching perspective uh what do you think are the problems with the current traditional training approaches well I would say the major
Problem is that they are not very effective okay you you can learn with this uh but actually it’s hoping that it will it will work and my classical example for this is normally okay when you teach a class and this is why it’s very interesting for
Classes as well in in school and when you teach a class mainly with two or three exercises then normally only two or three maybe five students become better but the rest uh it doesn’t respond on this and um side effect of this is that the whole glass becomes very similar
Yeah and this is actually where this method is coming from that the repetition for the whole class is actually coming from military because in military you had to march in the same step lengths and everyone knows okay the front row the tallest one they have very
Small steps and the last row the the smallest one they March in in huge steps so this method Works only for the mid row yeah and we simply have transferred this to school so only three or four people will respond on this and the rest
Uh will be the same but they will not um develop their own their individual strength uh in this and this is what we see meanwhile when we apply this to groups that in groups uh we get a much bigger variety in Solutions but all of them increase the
Performance and this is I would say mainly what we are looking for in sports uh we want to improve the performance in general and not only for individual athletes and this is what we knew and in Germany that in the former East German area they applied exactly this
Military style and they had only always in every discipline they had only one two or three top athletes and then they had a huge gap we knew for example in in in German in in West Germany uh to be able to participate in in the CH championships you needed to have 7,000
Points in order to be within the 50 best in East Germany you couldn’t have uh had 50 athletes of this performance I think with uh the fourth uh the fourth and best of of East Germany had already 7,000 points yeah so you see already a
Lot of of examples um yeah why why and where it it it had worked and where not it’s quite an eyeopener because it is true that in a coaching setting coaching setup you have only a few athletes who actually shine so this is interesting now because we have majorly a football
Audience footballing audience how do you apply the differential learning approach into practice specifically in football um well this is the questions which I was asked in 2000 and 200 three and was invited to Portugal uh and one of these uh persons copied this uh with another name uh mainly I would say the
Simplest way would be you have to look to the videos of Pedro mandona um he is spreading all these exercis and mainly it’s based on on exercises which are applied by tol by Guardiola because um we consulted them um I would say in in the most simple way you have
Different areas where you can start with so you can start in the technical area you can start in the Tactical area and you also can apply this in the uh metabolism area um in the technical area this is where we started in a systematic way uh for example that you do the go
Shooting movement with the left arm on top then the right arm on top the next is circling with the head the next is placing the the uh standing leg far away from from the ball far in front far before the ball uh you can head the ball
With the inside with uh with the front inside with only with the front with the outside also with the heel uh this these are just a couple of examples of this then you can vary the approach you can jump on on the left leg you can jump on
The right leg uh and then you can combine all these things uh the same we we did in in ball reception so you can stop the ball not only with the foot you can uh stop the ball with the knee you can stop the ball
With the back you can stop the ball uh with the with the calf uh so you and you can turn turn all the time uh you can uh stop the ball 90° uh turn to the right 90° to the left you can stop it with the outside with the
Inside okay then you can apply this within the game so we play the modern term is small-sided games uh you do the small-sided games and everyone has to lift up the left arm okay meanwhile they realized okay it’s quite uh important to keep the arms away because otherwise you
You get a penalty uh when when when it’s set but uh when we introduced this this was not of interest because they had another rule nonetheless when you move for example both arms on top you get a completely different activation of the trunk muscles this is biome mechanics
You have completely different levers so when you vary all the time and you can um align this by ball possession so when the ball possession is changing you have to change the the body position and always the the um processing team has to announce the type of movement they they
Have to do okay and then you can increase the difficulty as well that okay you divide the the field into different zones so in zone one you’re allowed to have three contacts in the middle Zone you have two and the last Zone only one and when the ball
Possession is changing then the tasks and the zones are switching as well yes so you and and then you can divide this into squares and then and whatever uh so actually it’s mainly always to yeah I think the English term for this is to challenge the athlete as soon as the
Athlete is able to to to uh cope with this exercise you have to switch because every repetition is normally boring for our neural system right and this is what you very often hear from Little Children when you repeat the things the children ask okay what can we do yes do you have
Any any suggestion so and and this is why I would say the the width of this effects is much broader than Sports this is what we meanwhile apply in school as well uh that by learning languages it’s actually the same so very often I um asked okay how do you learn languages
Yeah okay you you need to know the word but what is the perfect English is it Oxford English is it Indian English is it American English even in in United States Boston English and and Texas English is completely different but the interesting part and this has been studied already in parallel without our
Knowledge uh and not dependent on differential learning that when you vary this languages when you try to simulate them then you learn the language much better and another thing is when what we feel immediately when you have different types of movements it’s causing different emotions and when you learn a language
In a different emotional context you have exactly the same effect so actually we I would say we are trying to activate the brain in very different are areas um and this is what we are testing in in the meantime as well that what type of influence uh is given by the emotions
Training with different emotions being aggressive being cool uh being lazy uh or what what happens with different music yes and this is why we we always do in parallel and actually this is where I was coming from in the in the beginning we uh we study methods how to diagnose these
Changes and meanwhile we are using this machine learning approaches deep learning algorithm my coworker Dr host uh is is quite leading in in in this area that we are looking for methods how we can change a gate pattern right and first um okay we it’s very easy to identify a person by one
Ground contact but within this one ground contact we are able to uh identify also the type of emotions we are able to identify the type of fatigue the grade of fatigue and we also can see um what type of music they are listening to so when we see all these effects on a
Movement which has been repeated millions of times we can imagine what the effect is actually in in in football games when when uh when the audience is is crying to you uh okay the day before on Friday I had something different to eat and by the way this is what we we
Started six years ago uh we went to India to uh oir where our students are learning the Indian philosophy uh ioa and yoga because we know that in in this with this methods we can simulate uh I would say similar brain state which we achieve in differential
Learning and these brain states are much more effective for learning than what we know from uh in in western hemisphere so this last part that you mentioned about yoga so would you say that um football coaches football clubs they should Implement a yoga program within the within their football
Curriculum well in general I wouldn’t recommend for everyone the same so I would say it’s just a method because our students also go to China and learn TCM and chiong uh and what we learned in in India as well is there are many methods of yoga yes so uh only the the classical
I would say in western hemisphere mainly they only know the asanas yes the different positions but this is only the beginning beginning of this and this is what actually TL took over and and uh when he left Chelsea he went to India for two months uh Yoga Retreat uh so
Slowly this is coming and this is what we we what I’m looking for is what are the commonalities between differenti learning yoga and um uh TCM tradition Chinese medicine orong and actually all of these are leading to a very similar brain state right now I would say it’s it’s a
Different culture um and what we meanwhile would say Okay differenti learning is the beginning uh but then you can continue with the more advanced methods in yoga and and chiong uh but there are a lot of different varieties to help the people and and colleagues of mine have shown that all these uh
Approaches cause change anatomical changes in the brain and yes it’s not only for footballer it’s also for children in school um but it’s always about to certain content don’t do it in a too ambitious way um what we saw a lot in in in India as well that they are
Very flexible and and they really go for competition with these asanas and actually this is not I would say what what I was looking what I’m looking for it’s mainly for health it’s um helping the athletes to cope with the body and and with the exercise and we did some
Studies on this so when you do different learning in front of Med mathematic lessons they learn mathematics better and the same happens when you do it afterwards so for me it’s meanwhile it could replace warming up um it always it also could replace uh cooling down uh pH
Okay so for me it’s mainly looking for methods which are helping us to maintain or to improve our performance and we shouldn’t I would say go only to to the country borders and do you reckon that uh differential learning approach can be applied in goalkeeping and Fitness
Training in football because a lot of those uh activities are done in isolation yes I would say um a lot of um European coaches are applying this meanwhile but uh goalkeeping um training uh I would say is already very versatile but none nonetheless as soon
As or as long as a coach is watching you from outside and is telling you what you are doing wrong yeah you have possibilities to change right so when you instead of telling them what is wrong you see it’s a kind of fluctuation it’s a deviation of what
They have in mind and the deviations they always have the chance to learn so actually we we call this in in in physics term it’s an instability and an instability has the characteristics that you only need a small amount of energy to change the state so instead of making this mistake
Smaller and this goes for more than 20 years or normally it does it’s not successful because the athlete doesn’t feel we tell the athletes okay increases so for example in in in football when we go to tactics when they play this this 442 uh uh system normally they are
Equally distributed in in the four lane now we say okay try to do to move both to to a side and try to solve the problem from this initial condition or move all to one side because very often or sometimes by coincidence this can happen in competition as well right very often you
See this in um yeah I would say in in this uh fast break uh offense things that the defense doesn’t know how to respond because they were never um training this and this is where where actually it was coming from okay it’s it’s normal in in track and field but in
In tactics it’s the same so make the situation as difficult as possible in order to challenge the the the athletes and then during competition it’s no more problem so the competition becomes actually almost relaxation I get that yes yeah I I I get that makes makes complete sense and also
Are you aware of any reputed coaches within football who use your approach yeah I know some official ones um it’s tol we consulted him 2009 uh he’s now coach in in Bavarian Munich but I think it’s only part of his huge uh knowledge uh also Yun Club in
Liverpool is is applying this and especially his physiotherapists are applying this uh some of his then Guardiola he is applying parts of this uh but he learned it by his coach from U pako from Spain he was a coach of pako then I talked to arteta from from
Arsenal uh the same um in Portugal I consulted Benfica I consulted sporting also PTO I consulted Bara Barcelona Paris was there also meanwhile nman the term National coach applies this as well but for me even even more interesting is that a lot of coaches have applied this
For long but they didn’t talk about this okay because they say it’s my secret and when I tell you about my secret you can be eat me so a lot of coaches are keeping this for their secret and only when they are I would say successful enough then they
Can stay with this the names you have taken of the coaches I mean they are huge so I’m sure there’s a there there’s definitely something great happening with your approach if coaches of that magnitude are following it and also but I I think I think these coaches use this
Because they are extraordinary so what I realized in the meantime is okay they tried this in the first without knowing that there is something um behind this yes but they did they went for this risk and this is what I what I normally said as a coach and athlete as well no
Risk no fun yes okay you have to risk something to to to go for this and and actually yeah to be honest I WR this already 1992 1993 in Andra frankfur uh only in the area of of sprinting running and this is what I said already 1992 that the future of football will
Become much faster you need to have sprins and this is okay the top team started with uh sprinters in the offense and then the next team followed with sprins in the defense and you you saw as well that meanwhile the I would say the average contact time in football
Decreased from 1.8 seconds to 0.7 seconds so the game became much faster it became a a single contact game very often uh and just by Thinking of U pursuing this approach by repetition it will be I would say an infinite process so I would say when you
Uh some people state that you need 5,000 repetitions for a single technique when you calculate all the different techniques I would say you’re 80 years old when you have automized all these exercise but with 80 years you don’t have the muscles for for for fast movements anymore so it doesn’t make
Sense to do these repetitions there’s one exception the exception is when you have a person who has an I would say enormous need for safety for control then they need some repetitions and this what what we very often U say U again my my uh beloved
Example in in ch with Children what are we doing with children when we bring them to bed very often we read we read books to them and normally or very often they are asking for a book which they know because knowing about what will come is giving you a feeling of safety
And this is necessary in order to fall asleep okay now it’s the same in in athletes now when someone is psychologically very stable then we can vary in the motor area quite a lot but when they are psychologically instable then we need to come up with repetition
To give them the safety but only for a certain time until the safety is there and then we can continue right this is I mean this is such a deep topic you know like there’s these are things that happen on a daily basis but we don’t really look at it that way for
Sure and I’m grateful that you have you have shed light on all this but also can you shed some more light on something called stochastic resonance which is a big thing in your in your approach actually this is a a term coming from physics and mainly it’s
Reflecting I would say the problem uh of Publications because in the beginning we tried to publish our approach with the term noise yeah uh or fluctuations and in physics noise is a very abstract term which mainly can be described as deviation from a given value yeah now when we submitted our first Publications
Then we had mainly psychologists as reviewers and they said this cannot be noise because noise is in their opinion very limited uh in a frequency domain with white noise yeah now when you come from physics you know that frequency can only be determined when you have equal
Distant Sate now in training we we don’t have this sometime we have five minutes break two minutes break one minute break so we used the term entropy and instead of using the term Noise We satisfy the rer and set stochastic resonance uh so the first is stochastic or stochastic perturbation
Yeah stochastic means U this is also coming from from physics it’s almost arbitrary okay almost I say because most of us say or understand arbitrary when we when I ask you to tell me the first 10 numbers in an arbitrary sequence you would start
With five seven 3 six and so on so a very I would say wild structure but from a stochastic point of view you also could say 1 two 3 four 5 6 Seven 8 nine 10 this is also stochastic so in order to provide I would say my colleagues the bridge how
To analyze these movements we use this term sastic right okay and then later we realized okay that in the beginning a lot of colleagues interated this okay now you can do everything unfortunately uh one podcast from United States uh is is telling the same and and it’s an an intentionally misunderstanding
Misinterpretation uh no you cannot do everything because we we knew already from the beginning every coach knows this okay when you have for example very fast movements fencing or volleyball they should not do swimming bicycle riding or running because this is actually slowing down your movements
Right this is uh um this has uh much longer ground contacts it’s activating completely different muscle uh structure so and and I know a lot of professional athletes they have a contract that they are not allowed to do these Sports okay okay so we knew okay when a
Shot putter is doing bicycle riding or uh swimming or cross country skiing then it’s decreasing the performance which means that it has to be an Optimum and Optimum curve always in in in physics means that it’s a Resonance of two signals yeah Resonance of two signals in
This case means the coach is coming up with a stochastic sequence of exercises and the athlete is responding with a certain amount of fluctuations right which can be described with st with noise as well yeah now in the beginning 20 years ago it was uh quite risky but okay meanwhile
Even in physics everyone is using this that the stochastic noise of the athlete has to be adjusted to the noise of the coach so this is the reason why I said from the beginning that actually the coach has to take care of having enough noise in the system so when you have an
Athlete who is jumping all over you have to reduce the noise now when someone is staying only with uh repetitions then you have to increase the noise so from the beginning it was an adjustment of two signals and and actually this is what I’m always teaching in in in my courses that the
First task of a coach is to read the athlete so what is the athlete doing and by reading the athlete it helps a lot and this is uh developed by a friend of mine Tera andit it’s called action type system or moving preferences movement preferences
Where you can see in in terms of their movements how they will respond or how you have to talk to them so some people they are more horizontal um they say okay give me the information I will find my own structure others which are more vertical they need a clear structure
From the beginning MH some people need to be motivated by competition some are only be motivated by uh by a relationship so we do it for the group and the others do and you cannot change them and this already gives you I would say just a first hint how versatile
Actually or differential the language should be as well you need to talk in in in different languages and with different exercises to where because it’s very individual and this is what we found in in more recent thing as well I mentioned this already it’s not only individual it’s also
Situative and this is coming again back to your old culture in in yoga it’s a difference whether you do the treatment in the morning or you do the treatment in the afternoon or in in in the evening so actually it’s mainly only building a bridge to very old knowledge which have
Been I would say covered from a lot of military guys uh which were very ambitious uh following a certain success no in differential learning you need to read the athlete the athlete is talking to me and dependent on the response of the athlete I have to adjust my
Exercises U for an Optimum outcome from this entire thing what was most bewildering was that for an athlete play playing a certain sport it could be detrimental playing playing other sports and and you said it’s in their contract so is are you aware is there anything in football like for footballers are there
Any particular sports that they should avoid that could you know maybe have a detrimental effect on their performance um no it’s always about the doses I would say they could do every sports but you shouldn’t do all sports for a long time so I would say swimming
Is good in in in in the offseason or um we call this Bing because swimming is uh swimming labs and and uh real conditioning training but when you just go to the water and swim a little bit around for relaxation there is no problem with this um a similar thing is
Normally with with cross country skiing um I would say CrossCountry skiing you shouldn’t do for too long okay uh because it’s yeah it’s known in muscle physiology when you do Endurance Sports it’s actually destroying your fast retrival muscles right and and you need them and this is again what what you see
In the meantime in in football that because it’s getting faster you have more sprinters in there which have to be replaced after 70 80 minutes because the fast P fiber muscles are not that enduring and I’m really waiting for the moment when football is changing to The Exchange system like in handball where
You can exchange all the time in order to increase the speed even more or like in ice hockey at the moment you have I think five players which you can replace and I’m really waiting for the moment uh when they increase the speed even more by replacing all the time uh with
Without any limit limitations it’ll become such a more entertaining sport that way but also um you know you have mentioned a couple of sports now what are what’s your opinion of gym for footballers then because gym can also be kind of considered a sporting activity uh what do you mean with with
Chim you mean so basically you mean weightlifting or yes weightlifting weightlifting uh it’s a way it’s a way how you can increase the variety of exercises but you need to know exactly what what you do um I know a friend of mine he came from East Germany um Martin
Sust now he is retired from from Gratz University but dependent on the hill equation it’s very sensitive which method you in in strength training you apply to the athlete so depending on on on the initial level you need to apply completely different exercise series to the athlete to improve them so I would
Say that there’s a lot of potential to be developed there as well but my point in in differential training was actually a more private thing yeah okay in parallel when I studied Sports and physics my uh mind was okay maybe I will become a teacher in developmental
Countries for example in Africa or South Asia or wherever and they don’t have any money so you should not put too much effort in equipment and then I thought okay look to Nature now when you look to Nature a cheetah the fastest animal which which we know is never doing squats or bench
Press or whatever okay actually our I would say Nature has given us everything to get all these forces so when you and this is I would say one advantage of of my Biome mechanical background when you look to muscle physiology in combination with the lus so you can lift up the the right
Arm with the flexed elbow then you have a very short lever but when I do the same with an extended arm the lever is much higher and the force of the Del muscle has to increase now you can notice this is f equals m time a this is
Mainly the M which is changing now when you change the a you can do it in a slow way you can do it in a fast way yeah then you produce also different force and now when you combine a longer lever with a higher acceleration you can
Produce all the forces which you need and this is what we we did in Sprint running for example normal Sprint running is with bend elbow yeah okay what what’s going to happen when you let them sprint with extended arms with extended elbow and then when you not
Only let them run in this way but let them run with um abduct Ed uh elbows and then let them run with abducted elbows and extended elbows yeah then you have an enormous force on the trunk muscles you have to compensate this with the leg muscles uh and then you get all the
Stimula which you need actually uh for for this adaptation when you do this in in different uh surrounding uh heill up heill down in in curves left and right and actually there’s nothing else and when you observe a cheetah they are doing the same okay they are fast but
They when they are in in in direct competition with a lion they have no chance but line is not that fast so in order to build up muscles you get stronger but this has been done very often in in in Sprint they have to build up muscles to become a sprinter but
Meanwhile do you see that they are getting more thin yeah because they realized okay when I build up muscle I have to carry this weight yes and this also for me a misunderstanding in in in the history because originally the sprinters they were quite thin okay then the American sprinters realized in
Sprinting I cannot make any money but I can do it in football now in football I need the weight so they started to increase the weight and the others just observed they became stronger and stronger so we have to copy this right so I would say you need to understand
Why someone is doing a certain thing and with respect to health it’s also an advantage when you apply all the forces always to the whole system jumping in different Direction jumping in different length you always have uh you always put load on all the systems on the bones on cartilage on
Tendons on uh tissues on ligaments on muscles and this is one reason why a lot of um injuries happen happen because in these biomechanical categories we have different times of adaptation now when you look to muscles muscles adapt within four to six weeks uh the ligaments and tendons uh
Ligaments and um soft tissues they adapt within six months but the codage and Bone they need about one year to adapt so when you build up a muscle for two or three months yeah the bone is already lacking for about two years and when you have this discrepancy you get the
Injuries okay and this is why um I love to have all things in most cases together which doesn’t mean only playing because only playing is boring um for long term as well no for me okay you can play but um you can do Sprint training you can do uh weightlifting for
Distraction for mental distraction as well and to put different load and one advantage is as well when when you do weightlifting training then you get a certain muscle soreness which I don’t think is necessary but with this muscle sness the next day you train the technique in a different way the same
With the tactics you are much slower we know when you are in a very high level of muscle soreness we have changes in muscle forces for two weeks so this is what what I always have in in in in my mind bu a these differences it’s also about health and
And a friend of mine Harbert Wagner from from salsburg he did a study in in volleyball players where they applied differential training and they had much less injuries over the season right so actually it’s it’s a very good prevention as well this is you you you have basically been able to back
Up your theory with facts and that’s why the credibility is so much so much more now I understand that your some of the best coaches in the world are following your your theory you have Guardiola klopp TL Etta but uh do you feel the need to try and make even more coaches
From around the world aware so are you doing anything to promote differential learning amongst national football federations or clubs yes uh but I’m I’m not trying to convince anyone yeah I can offer this if they take this uh okay it’s fine I will support them I will help them uh because
Actually we are uh advancing this Theory more and more uh but I’m offering this more in in terms of courses one thing but this was one reason why we uh started our master program in movement well-being five years ago uh just in February we will go to India again uh
For for two months the same to China to Shanghai uh and in April next year 1 of April we will start with our new master program yeah which is mainly online uh and the new master program will be about Innovative coaching in high performance Sports where we really include all these
Knowledge from different areas we also include how to deal with digital uh uh media uh how to found a company in in the management uh area in the health area we are trying to include this all there and while we were founding this uh master program we saw that there are a
Lot of Master programs all over the world but they are mainly about performance diagnosis so they can perfectly diagnose and I would say our thing is supplementary when you have to diagnosis what do I have to do in order to bring them to another state yeah and yes very
Often I’m uh invited by clubs to uh educate their coaches um and yes it’s uh spreading more and more step by step I was going to come to part of what you mentioned so a one hour podcast is never going to be enough for you to ever do
Justice to such a such a wide big uh and effective topic so for coaches for athletes for anyone related to sports if they wish to you know uh get deeper knowledge through your teaching in this field what can you like tell us where exactly they can access any kind of
Course any kind of program any kind of online offline learning well um I’m a professor uh in Germany uh I’m paid by taxes which means that all things which I produce are available on on Research gate so these are the the um the Publications they are
All open uh PDF uh when you want to have an immediate uh access then you should just look for differential learning uh in football you will find a lot of uh links there from different areas uh we are offering time bytime courses uh where you can apply and but I think the
Best way is that U this associations are organizing um lectures Series where I can come U or with with a friend of mine uh for two or three days not in order to have this only theoretically but to see it in the practical sense and this is what I did in in Sporting
Lisbon in benf Lisbon and in basa that I go there uh we mix up theory and practice uh we have this discussion for one day one or two days then we have a break and after two or three months I come again and then we we solve the the
Questions and and problems which Ure there as well and this is a very big advantage that that I always get uh feedback and can develop my thee even further and uh part of when I did some research on this so I found something on a website called Hub soccer where yes
Where you’re basically there’s there’s you on video explaining a lot of things so is that a good entry level option for coaches who just want to get a basic idea yes I would say for basic idea yes but you’re now reminding me that I told
Them to uh offer a new uh lecture on the Tactical training and maybe I should use the time for during the holidays to to do this finally but no it’s I would say it’s a good introduction a good beginning um in the theoretical area but again the the page from Pedro mandona uh
He is offering a lot of videos uh uh and and on exercises which they apply meanwhile in in differential learning awesome this brings us to the the end of an amazing chat and I’m ever so grateful to you because you have given just nearly an hour of of your time on short
Notice despite the channel not being really really huge and uh that shows shows your humility and yes it’s been a wonderful chat it has been it’s going to be very useful to all the serious coaches who will be listening to the entire uh podcast because there’s so
Many ideas at least when I heard the as I was listening to you there there are so many ideas I have of how my next session is going to be so yes thank you so much for your time and thank you very much it was my
Pleasure and I wish you good luck with your Channel
1 Comment
Phenomenal podcast, I love listening to Prof. Schöllhorn! Greetings from a grassroots trainer. Thank you for the podcast!