INTERVIEW ON NEURO ATHLETIC TRAINING FROM COACH LARS LIENHARD

The ‘Neuro-Revolution’ is about to make an Impact on Top-Class SportsPosted on September 8, 2015 @Tempus Magazin

InterviewJochen Dersch / Frank Schneller (translated by Nicholas Reade)

Bonn Neuro Athletic coach guides athletes towards their personal limitsWitchdoctor? Lars Lienhard rolls his eyes, since such platitudes are used time and again to somehow classify the sports scientist from Bonn. But hocus-pocus isn’t Lienhard’s thing at all. But how to describe what the Neuro Athletic coach ‘does’ to condition professional soccer players, world and Olympic champions, guide them towards their actual limits and enable them to reduce injury risk and rehabilitation? The 43-year-old focuses his work on the neuronal proces-ses within the body. Since all movement, abilities and proficiencies are guided via the brain and the nervous system. ‘Talent is often overrated’, says Lienhard, ‘Peak performances can be created’. It is not surprising that this new approach causes discomfort throughout the coaches industry, among athletic coaches and physiotherapists. A number of participants from the field of athletic and fitness coaching were quite surprised when confronted with Lienhard’s concept during his workshop at the second ‘Athletikkonferenz’ (athletics-conference) in Bonn this September – a knowledge exhibition with more than 200 participants, lasting several days. During two hours-long demonstrations, many experienced first hand, which potentials Lienhard was able to set free within them via his approach and which physical deficits, which even some of the coaches were dragging around with themselves, can be dissolved. Could be dissolved! So far, Lienhard swims against the current. Al-though he is hoping for a paradigm shift and fights the biomechanical leveling down of athletes. Oliver Bierhoff was open-minded to Lienhard’s ideas: He invited him to accompany the German men’s football team to their training camp in South Tyrol and to the World Cup in Brazil. Insiders know about Lienhard’s considerable proportion to the – timely – fitness of some of the world champions. La

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At a time, in which not only FC Bayern Munich seeks to renew their medical and fitness department due to immense, sometimes mysterious injury problems, Lien-hard provides remarkable food for thought.

Mr. Lienhard, what does a Neuro Athletic coach do? Lienhard: I am a sports scientist and we are working with our team at Focus On Performance at the interface between neuronal sciences and athletic training. The label Neuro Athletic coach is a neologism, which emerged within the frame-work of the 2014 World Cup preparations with the German Football Association in South Tyrol. Ultimately, Oliver Bierhoff coined the term ‘neuro-coach’ to intro-duce me and our work to the national team, because it was difficult to describe what I’m doing at first. I think the term Neuro Athletic coach is very convenient, since our work at Focus On Performance is about the neuronal fundamentals of athletic training

The term is not very well known in Germany yet.It is completely unknown. But that is about to change. The topic of high-performance trai-ning is changing – from a rather biomechanical and symptom-oriented point of view towards a neuronal-oriented. There is already talk about a neuro-revolution in the United States. But I’m much more pragmatic: As a coach, I want to of-fer the best possible training to my athletes and therefore applied neurosciences are inevitable. If the brain and the nervous system are incor-porated into training as central elements of motion control, large and previously idle reserve capacities of the athlete can be activated and many motion-induced injuries can be avoided preemptively.

What is your personal style of coaching, how does it differ from conventional approaches?Therefore I have to compare the two concepts with one another: the dominating biomechanical concept and one that includes the insights from neurosciences. Ul-timately, all established training systems and theories, even the seemingly innovative ones – for example tho-se, which concern themselves with functional motion analysis, with fasciae or with motoric basic patterns – incorporate the viewpoint of a nominal-actual compa-rison, along the lines of ‘This is what we found and this is the mechanical background’. This type of thinking is still closely aligned along a mechanical basic structure. But man is not a robot.

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Our approach observes peoples’ individual and present status quo and tries to figure out the neuronal background of the respective current situation – an analysis, as individual as the human fingerprint.

How do you accomplish such an analysis?At first we conduct a comprehensive anamnesis and record the athlete’s physical condition via extensive testing. Then we take a look at the neuronal background; this involves visual, vestibular and proprioceptive tests.

For example, most problems, such as a pelvic obliquity, seldom have mere mechanical causes, but a neuronal background. Man’s movement and posture are dependent on the central nervous system, even if something is misa-ligned. The background for a pelvic obliquity always has to be sought after individually within the athlete’s history and cannot be found structurally in a mechanical-based test.

A pelvic obliquity? Thousands upon thousands have one; what could be the most common cause in your opinion?When it comes to a pelvic obliquity, in most cases all motion-controlling systems are involved. If for example, one side of the body delivers more precise information to the brain than the other or if an eye or another part of the balance system delivers more precise information than the rest, it will be used more frequently. The consequence: the body distorts itself. The discrepancy is therefore dependent on activity patterns in the brain, which can be caused by the visual, vestibular and the proprioceptive system. The brain therefore compensates the ‘deficient input’. These compensation structures can be mechanically measured as discrepancy. But it is much more about the software, which is behind biomechanics.

What do visual, vestibular and proprioceptive have to do with athletics? The eyes are potentially the most important sensory organs for human motion and for safeguarding the ‘survival’ in the surrounding elements. Combined with the vestibular system of the inner ear, we navigate through space – precision, accuracy, stability and balance of each movement are tied to these systems and therefore heavily influenced by them; they deli-ver input to several brain areas, which are involved in motion control. Our brain absorbs this information and analyses it in order to determine the motoric output. The visual system is therefore not only about ‘good vision’.

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Vision, especially in sports, comprises of many different visual proficiencies, which are all trainable, for vision does not occur in the eyes, but in the brain and is trainable due to the brain’s plasticity – depth perception, rapidness of change of perspective, rapidness of near-far-focus, speed of accommodation or peri-pheral perception. If these proficiencies improve, the body will not only move more efficiently, but – due to the improved perception – will also be able to react earlier to a situation, therefore react quicker.

What does the vestibular system do?Grossly simplified, it tells us where above is and how to navigate through space. This equilibrium organ primarily controls our movement through space, meaning, grossly simplified, that virtually all human movement interacts with this organ and is in turn influenced by the quality of its signals. Neuronally, the eyes and the equilibrium organs are very closely interconnected to the postural control – posture that is – and directly influence the muscles, which are responsible for our posture. ‘Unspecific’ backaches can be a prompt consequence from bad signal quality. Only improved signal quality leads to improved motoric output.

What about the proprioceptive system?It includes data from all nerve-endings in the body. It supplies the brain with information necessary to three-dimensionally navigate through space. All data from the various nerve-endings involved in movement are transported to the brain, analyzed, interpreted and then realized as movement output. The proprio-ceptive system is therefore heavily involved in the quality of movement. The bet-ter and more precise the information from this system is, the better and clearer is the information that is transported to the brain – and the more efficient and sophisticated it can react.

And if this information is false or distorted……our movement is neither predictable nor controllable for the brain in that instant. Therefore the brain takes safeguarding measures, such as ‘shifting down’ a gear or two. Of course this reduces the performance drastically: the range of movement, the strength, the reaction time. Since from the brain’s perspective there is a risk of injury. Therefore the proprioceptive system is highly involved in our performance capacity. The better my proprioceptive system is trained, the less protective reflexes – and pain – I have. As a result, I work a lot harder and have much more strength. Therefore, the better the quality of the signals trans-ported to the brain, the better the brain may work, realize patterns and plan movements.

Could you explain this via a specific example?When joints in the tarsal area are blocked, which may happen very fast, then no clear information is passed on to the brain from this area. Metaphorically spe-aking, this area is a ‘blind spot’ for our brain. But the brain needs certainty and predictability. As a consequence, the other, ‘clear’ structures are used more and 4

the movement circumambulates the ‘blind spot’. However, we walk and stand on our feet all day long, having to pick up twice or thrice as much as our body weight and subsequently process it. These compensation structures are heavily charged and the risk of injury is enormous, especially in top sports. Therefore the proprioceptive system really has to be regarded as the basis element of athletic training.

Do all of the forever-injured soccer stars, such as Badstuber, Robben, Ribéry, Sahin and all the others, have the wrong doctors and physiotherapists?I am not entitled to public assessment or even criticism from afar, as long as I have no information on past injuries and the respective status quo before and after the athlete’s injury – that would be dubious speculation. The medical su-pervision in top sports is certainly at an outstanding level. However, the gene-

rally high injury susceptibility of several athletes in the absolute prime segment is very peculiar. To me, this rather seems to be a general problem of the sympto-matic approach to injuries. Potentially this does not help in finding the cause for an injury, specifically for motion-in-duced injuries, free from any external influences. When tissue has healed, the cause for the injury is often still not eli-minated, namely the activity patterns in the brain and the thus resulting compensation patterns found within the body. With perennial injuries, there are always underlying neuronal cont-rol problems. One can only speak of a successful rehabilitation process, once the ‘software’, which was behind the injury, has been corrected as well. Some athletes were unbelievably unlucky, suf-fering constantly from violence-induced

injuries, such as fractures through brutal fouls. But in the case of motion-induced injuries, when something just tears, one cannot always speak of misfortune.

To follow up once more: Do doctors and physiotherapists train falsely in top sports?I do not claim the right to criticize people, who are often eminent authorities in their fields of expertise. The problem is rather of enlightenment. One can inter-pret my point of view as system criticism. I rather see myself as an enlightener. The learning never ceases. There are new developments that incorporate the findings from neurosciences into a holistic training. The world of sports should know this – this is about athletes, humans!

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