The 6 drivers of Neuro-Plasticity and its relation to Football-Soccer training.

 Author: Oscar Mendez.

I always remember when we were studying and learning in the 2000´s with Professor Horacio Anselmi in Rosario, Argentina and later here in Maldonado and Montevideo (Uruguay), one of the things he mentioned among many revolutionary things for the time , was that the future Books of Physiology and Training in Sport would no longer be about muscles and cells, but rather on Hormones and the brain and nervous system and its effect on the training process.

Now a days, 20 years later we are re discovering the role that   hormones play on our body and their influence on our health (Insulin, Cortisol, Glucagon, Growth Hormone etc) and how they affect our overall health since many of the diseases are based on metabolic issues.

Thanks to the new technology we have nowadays, we have discovered that many of the things we did many years ago were not correct and were based on assumptions that were made and that didn´t have the technology we do now.

This also applies to Tactics and Methodology, where Professor Frade was way ahead of his time and now thanks to the technology, we can see and prove it was really the way he said.

The term “Plasticity” was first used in 1890 to Behavioral Science by William James in the beginning of Psychology. The first person that used the term of Neuro-plasticity was a Polish Scientist by the name of Jerzy Konorsky.

It refers to the Physiological  changes in the brain that occur as a result of our interaction with our environment. From the moment that our brain begins to develop in the uterus till the day we die, the connections between the cells (neurons) in our brain re-organize to our  needs of adaptation.

This dynamic process allows us to learn and adapt according to our experiences.

Structural Neuro-plasticity refers to the strength in the Sinapsis and whether this connection is modified  or changed.

Functional Neuro-Plasticity refers to the permanent changes in the sinapsis due to learning and development  (Demarin, Morovic y Béne. 2014).

Definition of Neuro-Plasticity.

We can define  Neuro-plasticity as “The process by which the brain is constantly re-organizing itself all along our lifetime”.

These are events that occur constantly in our brain.

The Synapsis are constantly appearing and disappearing in our body.

 

Their influence on modern training.

For decades, Footbal-Soccer training in general, was based on track and field sports.

In sports that had very little or nothing to do with Football or were totally unspecific to our sport.

Now in modern training, we have seen how Football  has adapted to modern science and the new scientific findings , as well as other Paradigms (Paradigm of Complexity).

Now Physical trainers are not the ones in charge or have the initiative, they are not the most important in the coaching staff as before, but they are part of a Coaching Staff, along with other trainers or coaches, where of course the Physical Sub- Dimension is evaluated but we do not plan and do exercises based only on Physical Dimension but rather on the Football effect the task demands.

“Because  Fitness in football is not Physical anymore,  but rather Football-related exercises  due to the complexity of the game and the influence of the Tactical Supra-Dimension  has on the game”.

 

 

 

Does Transfer in functional training from an unspecific exercise to a specific one  really exist?

I do not know if this was applied in other countries and training cultures, but in South America and Europe we were taught that if we applied an unspecific exercise of Strength, Endurance or speed later we would have to transfer that load or stimulus to a specific one and later we would see the improvement on physical aspect.

This could apply to any type of exercise on the Physical Dimension, either strength, endurance-resistance or speed and quickness.

Many years after, many studies have concluded that this “transfer” does not exist, (going from working General Strength for example to Specific strength for example). This was made famous among others by French P.T. Gilles Cometti for example.

 

We went from training muscles to training movements and the nervous system now:

 

Many colleagues and Friends here in South America, knowing that I lived and worked in Spain for many years ask me when they see in videos teams in Europe training specific movement and actions of the game.

Do they really train this way or do the other type of training (General Exercises), do they do them somewhere else or in a Gym?

I remember that Rui Faria when he was working with Jose Mourinho in Chelsea in an interview mentioned this because he was accused of lying or not being honest when he mentioned that they do not do this type of training.

Well…the explanation or reason is this.

This is the reason why in Europe we train differently in relation to other places.

Here in South America we were taught to focus on the Hill Law, The recruitment of motor units while in Europe were based in more recent studies and evidence that suggests that we should focus on specific movement/motion patterns and Neuro-plasticity. They ware just based on other paradigms.

This way, strength for example is trained specifically in the Physical Sub-dynamic, performing specific movements similar or the same to the activity that a footballer does in a real match.

 

This way when we training the Physical Sub-Dynamic we base our tasks on specific movements where they have a high level of intensity that we have in a game, where we have many stops and starts, where the actions are short and very intermittent and also discontinuous , that use specific energetic systems that are related to the game and where we practice what the player will do in a real match with a low level of complexity (because if complexity is high, level of intensity will decrease).

 

Unspecific training and its relation with muscle injuries:

I think on this topic, Dutch Famous Coach Raymond Verheijen has mentioned many times the problems that unspecific training can have on footballers.

Before we use to think and were taught, that since we had this “Transfer” from a general /unspecific task to a specific one the physical load or stimulus was the same so we would not calculate them as two separate stimulus and both were not added.

Now that we know that we are applying twice the amount of Load since they are not transferred but added up, this is something that many Trainers and coaches do not seem to notice or know.

Of course we are not implying that when we have many muscle injuries it can done by only one factor since we know the use of other specific energetic systems, reutilization of residual substances, muscle imbalances and other reasons play a very important role but of course it has a relative level of importance.

This is not due to bad luck, this is why many teams have tens and sometimes hundreds of injuries and others have very little.

 

  

The 6 drivers that promote  Neuro-Plasticity in Football are:

1:  Repetition.

The more we do something the better and more efficient we become doing it.

As it is popularly known, Repetition is the mother of Perfection and latest research seems to agree.

 

2: Intensity.

The higher the intensity of the task, the more it will demand on our nervous system.

When  high levels of emotional and physical stress in an exercise are present, and when the footballer does specifically, when he will have to perform it in the game that stimulus will already be learned and it will not be a new stimulus where he has to adapt. He will be already familiarized with it.

 

3:Timing or coordination.

We can define it as “ The neurons that fire together wire together”. When we initiate a movement different muscles intervene in that movement that are activated on different parts of the brain and nervous system. The more we do this, the more efficient we become in executing this movement.

 

4: Dificulty.  

The tasks or exercises must have an optimum level of difficulty. Not too simple nor too difficult. Enough difficulty so that there will be an adaptation or learning but not too much where he/she will not be able to solve them.

 

 

5: Specificity or be specific.

We must train what we will do on the matches and games. As Jose Mourinho says “You will not see a pianist training, running around a Piano”.

Neuro-Plasticity will occur according to the specificty that we will train.

6:Prominence or that it has meaning.

We have sensory maps that allow us,when something is relevant or important to us, and in those cases there is a higher level of plasticity that when we do something that is not important or relevant to us.

This doesn’t appear to happen when we train something that has no meaning or significance, when it is boring or doesn’t attract us .

 

 

 

"The images we experience are brain creations  caused by an object, and not mirror reflections of the object."

Antonio Damaso.