Sensing, Coordination how important in Football?

Before you start reading this article have a look at the link below. Just watch it for 2 minutes or so and get back.......

check this first

 Is that not amazing? A kid who's 6 years old masters skills that some people will see as a circus act, but to me this is the key to high level sports achievements. The control that this girl has over her body, ball(s) and environment "all" at the same time is a sign of excellence. She's being able to deal with multiple incoming information pieces trough her senses and translate them to a fluent movement. I call it simply "Multitasking". Is this born talent or trainable? I would say say both but am certainly sure that by training the senses and challenging the brains capacity of  absorbing multiple info-pieces at once will lead to faster, more economic and creative ability to do sports.

Now there are 5 senses that are used to take in our surroundings. To me there are 6 senses. This is my opinion and scientifically not proven!!

1. Seeing
2. Hearing
3. Feeling (touching)
4. Tasting
5. smelling 
6. Feeling-intuition 

In football we use use 4 of them. Only Luis Suarez uses 5. He included the tasting part a few times :-) All other normal footballers use Seeing as the most dominant one, hearing, touching (physical contact) and your intuitive feeling.

So image you are able to make quicker decisions during a football game because your better able to take in information like the ball speed, opponents coming at you , your team mates movements etc. and translate it to a positive football action. Speed represents one of the most fundamental of the functional areas. The faster we can analyse information, the faster we can solve problems, access memories. And adapt to new situations. After sense training, users report improved reaction time and quicker thinking.

Just think about driving a car. If you drive from your home to work, you will do that without thinking and almost automatic because you did it hundreds of times. You know all street corners, dangerous angles etc. Now lets start driving from a place where we never been before. Now suddenly we have to pay more attention and be aware while the technique of driving is the same. New surroundings, new challenges....how fast do you adapt and how well do you deal with those information pieces coming in trough your senses?  A good driver has his vision, hearing and touching senses working at full awareness to scan these surroundings and make the right decisions.

So how do we train that and become better?  It's all about starting from "simple" coordinative exercises to more "complex" movements. At least 1 to 2 hours a week. If we go back to the basketball girl in the video. By simply using 2 balls and create all kinds of exercises, is all ready a amazing start. If you never used 2 balls before, you have to deal with new information pieces coming into your brain and it creates new brain connections. There are endless combinations you can make with 2 balls and add other attributes, numbers, colours or spaces to make it more complex. 

I have developed my own system and exercises over the last 20 years with many different exercises. In my opinion coaches should be creative and start thinking of how you can stimulate your players brains in order to work and make quicker decisions to be more efficient during a football game. 

Training of the Visual System

This training will calibrate the visual perception, increase the field of vision, improve spatial perception and help to accurately judge the distance and speed of objects. Tracking eye movements: Smooth eye movements in horizontal, vertical and diagonal direction without jumping of the eyes. Field of view: Increases field of vision and improves spatial perception. Eye-focusing: Accurately judging distance and speed of objects.

Training of cognitive skills

Working memory: Better evaluate and choose between several options. Perception: Better understand and organise incoming information. Recalling information: Improves the ability to recall stored information in tense situations

Effects from this way of training:

1. better performance with less effort and energy expenditure
2. increasing spatial awareness and orientation
3. enhancing motor skills harmonious coordination of movements
4. improved balance
5. optimized hand-eye and leg-eye coordination

In my opinion sense training has a high priority to build  into your training regime on a weekly bases. You have to be creative and constantly challenge the brain to make new connections so you become better in solving problems, quicker and more economic on the field.

Have a look at the last link, where the women football team of Bayern Munich uses a similar way of training. This to give you an example of how eye hand coordination is combined with eye foot coordination. It looks easier than it is in reality. Just go and try it and be creative.

Sense training Bayern Munich woman