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This article delves into Frans Bosch and how it can make you a better soccer player. Most quotes are from Frans Bosch’s book; Strength Training and Coordination – An Integrative Approach – Frans Bosch (2015)
There is a docent in the Netherlands that is not well known in its own country but has some fame abroad. His name is Frans Bosch and he writes about integrating coordination and strength. In this article, we delve into what we can learn from Frans Bosch to become a professional soccer player.
‘Strength is coordination training against resistance’ is therefore a good defination what sport-specific strength training ought to be.
Frans Bosch points out that research is difficult because biological systems are too complex and targeting individual aspects do not necessarily translate into actually improved outcomes. Specific measuring of disturbing an athlete while doing a squat and interpreting the data of that disturbed squat on athletic performance is very difficult. Frans Bosch put the focus on coordination and movement, not strengthening a single muscle or muscle group. In fact, Frans Bosch is against strength training which originates from bodybuilding. Bosch says;
Especially in open-skill sports, in which transfer from the strength exercise to the sporting movement is hard to identify, analysing athletic movement and identifying the stable components of the movements are key steps in devising a meaningful strength training program. The methodology focussing on individual muscles, which is derived from bodybuilding, yields no improvement in essential movement attractors and hence is not so suitable for sport-specific strength training. In other words, strengthening individual muscles in the absence of any context merely focuses on the final stage of the movement design (individual muscle action), and hence serves little purpose.
Frans Bosch
What Is Sport-Specific Strength Training, The Frans Bosch Way
In his book, Bosch takes the approach of strength and coordination as one. Strength and coordination, however, must be trained according to not just the individual sport, but also the individual and his or her abilities. Bosch concludes that sport-specific strength training is not (maximal) strength, but maintaining coordination under resistance.
Frans Bosch wrote;
sport-specific strength training means coordination training against resistance
The improvement of coordination in athletes thus far been under-researched and received little attention. Bosch puts the focus away from solely looking at muscles and generating force to the holistic connection between muscles, learning, neurons, coaching and the self-organizing abilities of the body
Stable yet flexible movements patterns do not develop by learning techniques precisely, but through self-organization from complexity.
Yet training individual isolated muscles does not contribute to to the complexicity based dynamics of contextual movement patterns. The complexity of the moving biological system only develops when muscles have to generate strength in cooperation and so produce a contextual movement pattern
Frans Bosch
Some Basic Information Before We Start
Before we grasp the ideas Bosch talking about, we have to have some understanding of muscles and motor learning and the moving body.
The basic functional unit of the neuromuscular system, the motor unit (MU), comprises a single lower motor neuron and its innervating muscle fibers that contract simultaneously provided sufficient discharge from the neuron. However, individual MUs are quite different in their contractile response characteristics of muscle fiber. Muscle fibers are generally classified as either type I (slow-twitch) or type II (fast-twitch), with the latter displaying greater contractile speed, force generation, and susceptibility to fatigue, as well as less mitochondria and myoglobin content. An individual MU innervates muscle fibers that only belong to a single fiber type, and muscle fibers require innervation for survival.
From a health perspective, muscle are great. muscle can produce healthy molecules and hormones that keep us strong and healthy. Furthermore, muscles can generate a huge amount of force. However, muscle size comes at a cost. Any increase in size can impede quick movement and adaptation. Furthermore, every kg of muscle mass is a weight you have to carry around on the soccer pitch. At every match, a soccer player can move about 12 km, this extra weight can have consequences.
Anatomy For Sport-Specific Strength Training
First, let’s start at the autonomy of the muscle. Muscles are attached to the bones through tendons. Within the muscles, there are muscle fibers, consisting of filaments. In turn, filaments are full of the sarcomeres, which consist of the famous actin and myosin properties that are pulled together making the muscle shorter (contracting). From Z-line to Z-line is considered the sarcomere (see below). These are the units that generate force. The quickness and speed in which force can be generated depend in part on the way how sarcomeres are ordered. Sarcomeres can be ordered as a link (series, length) or as a parallel (width). Frans Bosch notes that a decision has to be made. Although adding sarcomere in width can increase strength, but lengthening can add speed. There is a relation between force generated and speed. As speed goes up, force is decreased, when force is increased, speed goes down. For example, the strongest muscle gluteus maximus can produce a lot of force but does not add much at high speed, while the rectus femoris is a relatively weak muscle main but can increase speed.
Strength and coordination are thus closely related, and should in fact be treated as a single unit, Strength and coordination are basically one and the same thing.
Knowledge about improving coordination (motor control and motor learning) must be applied in strength training. Knowledge of motor learning processes has so far had no little or no impact on strength training.
Directing training is therefore not just a science but also an art; intuition fed by experinece – always plays an important part in guiding the training process.
Frans Bosch
Coordination Between Muscles And Neurons
Frans Bosch describes the fact that strength is only a part of the complex movement. The more complex a movement is, the more strength and coordination become one. Below a simple description of how muscles and neurons work together. Control of muscle via the neurons happens at the motor unit (a neuron that is linked with muscle fibers).
To train sport-specific, training involves 4 different levels
- muscle level
- neuromuscular, all or principle of muscle stimulation
- spinal-cord level links that process outside influences to adapt force production
- central nervous system level
Although in the past sport-specific strength training focused on the muscle levels, thinking beyond the muscle levels can make you a better soccer player. Especially improving the contractile properties of the muscle become central.
Co-Contractions And Muscle Slack
Central in the writings of Frans Bosch are the concepts of muscle slack and co-contractions. These concepts can be very important for soccer players. Frans Bosch writes
Muscle Slack and its relationship to cocontractions are among the most performance-determining factors in sport, and it is remarkable how little coaches and sports physical therapist know about it.
What Is A co-contraction
Co-contraction is the simultaneous contraction of agonist and antagonist muscles around a joint. This will provide more stability in the joint. Children demonstrate greater co-contraction than adults and the ability to co-contract decreases with age. Co-contractions play a huge factor in fatigue and aids to stabilize the body. Imagen taking a free-kick or penalty. the leg on the ground forms the foundation. Without this foundation kicking a ball is difficult.
In good runners this dominant cocontraction round the hip is particularly noticeable in abrupt changes of direction such as a sidestep and a stop-and-go, and in the first phase of straight-line acceleration.
What Is Muscle Slack
Another concept that can improve your soccer game is muscle slack. When you are in rest your muscles are in rest. This rest disorganizes the muscles and the properties that attach the muscle to the tendon. This is one of the reasons why coaches always want you to be on your toes when you have to do one-touch passing.
One way to reduce muscle slack is according to Frans Bosch;
COCONTRACTIONS MAY BE AN EFFECTIVE SOLUTION TO REDUCE THE DEGREE OF MUSCLE SLACK “
Rigid Muscles By Co-Contractions And Reducing Muscle Slack
Below is a picture of the muscle with its elastic properties. Bosch points out that by contracting the different muscle groups, the elastic properties in the tendons (not the muscles) can creating power by shortening and lengthening.
Activating the elastic properties increase your efficiency of running and changing directions while running. This type of running is efficient because of the limited length of the muscle and the tension in the muscle created. Think about a rubber ball filled with air compared to a flat ball. The rubber ball with air bounces back up using its elastic properties only when the air provides tension. The air in the ball increases the tension for the ball to bounce back. Just like the air in the rubber ball does not use energy, your muscles can provide the same tension for the tendons (rubber ball) to do the work. Co-contractions can be the air in a rubber ball.
Co-contraction creates a more rigid stature of the muscles, Bosch points out that
- Single leg jumps less knee flexion is a sign of a quality jump
- The best volleyball players bend their knees less when jumping for a smash than players that perform less well
- In tennis, there is a reduction in the backswing for service without negative repercussions
- The best athletes show stiffness when performing their sport (make smaller countermovements).
Train For Length Of The Muscle, NOT The Width
For soccer, endurance is as important as strength and speed. Although soccer is becoming more high intensive ( more sprints and explosive actions), most soccer players still cover a distance of over 12 KM per game. Bosch’s perspective on training the muscles is to focus on muscle architecture.
As described in the segments before, muscle consists of the different muscle fibers, filaments, and sarcomeres. The sarcomeres contain the contracting properties that work the muscle. These sarcomeres, however, can be ordered in different ways. Sarcomeres can be ordered in length or width. While width can be formed by bodybuilding-like training, an increase in length can be achieved by segments of speed training. See the picture below to see the difference.
Bosch writes in his book that the sarcomeres can act as a chain (sarcomere assigned in length instead of width) to generate quick contraction with less force. While the length can generate less force, it can create more speed.
The longer the chain, the faster the whole muscle will contract. Muscle architecture can thus take the form of a structure that allows high force production, or one that is more suitable for rapid shortening (with less force)
The speed at which muscles can build up their tension (overcoming muscle slack) is therefore usually more important to performance than the amount of force they can eventually produce.
Frans Bosch
Don’t Train Like A Bodybuilder
In sport-specific strength training, there are two general approaches to improving athletic techniques. One is to train specific segments of a sport, while another approach is to simulate the overall sports segment while creating difficulties.
There are two main lines of thinking in standard strength-training practice:
Frans Bosch
1 The (methodical) body-part approach, which focuses on physiological aspects of strength training.
2 Contexual strength training, which focuses on coordinative adaptation.
Frans Bosch criticizes the first approach, while under the right conditions favors the second approach. Bosch favors a holistic approach to learning. In this approach, the body can learn how to move and improve movement efficiency.
The Self Organizing Organism
Bosch puts forth the idea of the ability of the human body to learn from movements and training. If you perform a bench press, your body is limited in learning, if you perform a push throw with a heavy medicine ball, your body has to adapt and learn. In soccer, deep squats are seldom seen during a game, while partial squats with jumps, while being pushed or pulled are common. While deep squats teach the organism little, partial squats with jumps while being pushed and pulled can teach you how to time heading a ball under pressure.
The heavy deep squat (at maximal strength) is useful for activating maximal muscle fibers but teaches the organism little. Furthermore, a deep squat makes use of countermovement. Countermovement makes use of eccentric muscle movement, this countermovement does not train how to avoid muscle slack and should be avoided, as Bosch notes ;
What this means in sport-specific strength training is that all countermovements should be avoided
Creating overload in sport-specific strength training does not just mean added weight. Bosch notes that maximizing the weight has little transfer towards the sport movement. Overload in sport-specific strength training is putting the organism into a challenging position.
Training stimuli that the organism is not yet equipped for and that call for adaptataion will produce what is known as overload. Such exercises with less specificity but more overload are needed to ensure improved athletic performance.
Frans Bosch Views On Coaching And Focus
One of the most interesting parts of Bosch’s book is his view on coaching and focus. This is an important part for both soccer-coach and soccer-player. The way the body learns is by focussing on a goal outside of the body. The body will find a suitable way of achieving this goal. In this way of learning the proper use of muscle to achieve the goals becomes instinctual and natural for the body. The athlete’s focus can be divided into 4 categories.
Internal Focus VS External Focus
Soccer players can perform an action based on the focus on internal and external focus. Both internal and external focus can be subdivided into 2 categories. The following example explains the difference between internal and external focus.
Let’s say a soccer player is about to take a free-kick to score a goal. The soccer player can focus his attention on the following points.
- Narrow Internal Focus; the focus is on the stiffness of the ankle to hit the ball correctly.
- Broad Internal Focus; focus on positioning your body forward to keep the ball low.
- Narrow External Focus; focus on curving the ball next to the wall.
- Broad External Focus; focusing on getting the ball in the right top corner of the goal
The best way athletes learn is through intention and a broad external focus. The athlete has the intention to score from the free-kick and the body will adjust to score the goal. The body does not think in terms of movement but thinks in terms of movement. In this way, the organism does not have to memorize the information intellectually but retains the information without trying.
Coaching should follow the way the organism learns. Research has indicated that athletes learn the best though intention Most coaches prefer narrow internal coaching, This specific way of coaching is highly technical and instructional. Bosch points out that this is not the way the body learns. External coaching is extremely difficult for most coaches. This is because coaches tend to be technical. This way of teaching goes against of most of the methods used currently.
Frans Bosch explains;
Now, if we look at how instructions affect the way in which attention is focused, we have to conclude that the great majority of instructions given by coaches and rehabilitation specialist direct attention internally ; internal ocus rates of up to 94% have been measured in eductaion, 84% in athletics coaching and 69% in mid-competition coaching…
Feedback By Performance Or Result
The self-organizing organism can be best be getting feedback from results. There are currently 2 main theories of feedback learning;
- Feedback of knowledge-of-performance (KP), the body works by instructions given to learn.
- Feedback of knowledge-of-result (KR), the body works by the results achieved.
Frans Bosch explains why KR feedback is better;
KP information leads to internal focus and KR information to external focus – with all that that entails.
In fact, too much augmented KP information is bad for the learning process, and can easily interfere with learning. The optimal frequency of augmented KP feedbackthus turns out to be surprisingly low. There is no such problem with intrinsic feedback
Control of movement thus does not envolve permanently processing permanently released sensory information (like water from a tap), but working towards results of the movement that are planned in chunks
Feedback of coaches should mirror the broad external results. In this way, overall coaching is more important than specific coaching. This is very important in soccer players as soccer players have a lot of space and room for creativity. This creativity might be impeded by too many specific and little instructions.
Frans Bosch writes;
Giving feedback once in every five practice attemps has a better impact on the learning process than once every attemp. Furthermore, very precise augmented feedback is usually less effective than feedback that provides an overall assessment of the quality of the attempts. All things considered, the learning system does not really seem designed to deal with augmented feedback.
The famous ‘choking’ phenomenon that occurs during competitions may well be due to the way in which the movements have been taught.
Strength Training For Soccer Players
Frans Bosch lays out in his book the groundwork for sport-specific strength training. Bosch is searching for transfer. He writes
The contribution that practicing a particluar movement patterns makes to improving another movement pattern is known as transfer of training
Sport-specific strength training only makes sense if adaptations are transferred to athletic movement.
Near-total specificity in a strength exercise is impossible to achieve, even with low resistance. That is why maximizing specificity may not be such an effective strategy. Part of the effectiveness of a strength exercise will also have to come from overload and variation…..Constant variation in these exercises that are outwardly specific to the sporting movement is the key to effective transfer.
Frans Bosch
Most exercises in current-day sport-specific strength training are not contributing to an improved athletic outcome. Especially mindlessly training the muscle contribute little and can be seen as hindering the athlete. Exercise must be sought to improve the athletes and creating an overload that is useful. These exercises should focus on the coordination of muscles, reducing muscle slack and focus on co-contractions.
Whole-practice exercises more or less guarantee similarity of sensorimotor information; part-practice exercises do not.
For players of ball sports who not only have to run but also shoot a ball hard, strength training to support running performances will also be enough for shooting a ball, so no additional strength training will be required.
In ball sports such as soccer, in which there is little running training or strength training based on running training, there are few players even at the highest professional level that have optimally incorporated the basic patterns into their running patterns.
Strength Training For Young Soccer Player
Young soccer players can learn from an overload of variety. The young soccer players can engage in a variety of exercises. These exercises should teach the body to move stable and economical. Whole-body exercises like in the video below show some of the exercises that teach the body how to work coordination under resistance (these exercises are inspired by Frans Bosch, not endorsed).
Strength training is appropriate for learning and improving certain components of a movement pattern, beacause the increased resistance allows the characteristics of the high intensity to be maintained without the movement having to be executed at high speed. The relatively slow, controllable movements within strength training therefore simplify the learning process. Strength training thus complements technique training. In high-intensity movement, for instance, core stability through cocontractions is important. In low-intensity movement without extra resistance coccontractions are not so important.
With beginner athletes, coaches would be advised to spend a few years building up a good catalogue of basic components through variable training. Only then does it make sense to start using larger barbell weights.This does not mean that they should wait a long time to introduce strength training for young athletes. Because the training loads are kept low, resistance training can be strarted at a much younger age. There is no reason not to train 14-year-olds in a resistance training setting, provided the loads are strictly limited.
Movement patterens in heavy strength training are seldom if ever reflex based….If the maximal force that can be produced during an exercise is less than during the sporting movement, the exercise to move serves no purpose when it comes to providing overload.
Training with overload but without specifity usually has very little positive impact on athletic movement.
Train For Speed
Sprinting is increasingly important in soccer and a good running technique is seldom seen in soccer. Speed is not just the quantity of specific muscle fibers. The contraction of the muscles is only a part of running and changing directions. Bosch writes;
speed is not simply generated by performing the fastest possible (concentric) muscle action, but above all by distributing the movement over as many joints as possible. Speed is thus a function of coordination.
With training, coordination of joints and muscles can be improved and increase running efficiency. This efficiency leads to better coordination and increased speed;
Great external speed often develops by limiting internal speed.
Young Adults Can Train For Strength
Maximal strength training has some advantages compared to other kinds of strength training. Normal activity can only recruit about 75% of muscle fibers and potential strength. In a gym setting, this percentage can be increased by strength training. Strength training is the ability to perform 1 to 5 times the exercise at your maximal strength.
we are not normally able to recruit more than about 75% of our potentially available muscle strength….Training can increase this percentage without the muscles having to increase in size.
The added benefit of this way of training is no muscle increase, no extra weight to carry around. Since the recovery time for maximal strength training is limited, it can be incorporated into almost the whole season. Maximal strength training can be executed in a sport-specific way. This means partial squat fr example, as full squats are seldom seen in soccer. Bosch puts a lot of focus on the hamstring training in which the following way. The one-legged roman chair. This exercise lets the hamstring and pelvis find their optimal length.
This exercise makes more sense if we rotate the image and compare it with a pose of running when the hamstring is stretched. See below.
Improved maximal strength is the result of better neural control. Training with a barbell so heavy that the exercise can only be repeated once to five times will increase the percentage of muscle fibres that can be recruited. The movement are controlled and executed slowly to ensure as strong an isometric muscle action as possible…
Since elastic muscle action is optimized by better recruitment of the contractile elements, maximal strength training is particularly suitable for creating conditions for improving elastic movements.Frans Bosch
The great advantage of training maximal strength is that it mainly focuses on central nervous system processe and hence creates less stress on muscle fibres. In advanced athelets, maximal strength strength training creates little or no hypertrophy, and recovery times after training is short compared with hypertrophy and power training… This means that strength training can easily be fitted into the overall training plan.
End Note
The main take away point from Frans Bosch book is that strength in sports comes in many forms and is dependable on what you want to achieve. Don’t be focused on muscle types and looking strong. Strength as coordination against resistance is less threatening and intimidating. To end with a quote from Frans Bosch.
“There are no ‘magic’ exercises”
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