No more stretching before a game

THIS IS HOW MODERN WARM-UP WORKS IN SOCCER

Hardly anything has been done more to professionalize in recent years than the warm-up program. And we have also worked intensively on this for you.

Static stretching was yesterday — thanks to our warm-up programs, you and your entire team can get started right away in the future and are protected from injuries at the same time. Start today with our Android app or iOS app — over 200,000 players are already training with it.

There you will find free training programs All around the Warm-up, athletic training and rehab after injuries — for players and teams.

But on with the topic of warming up. From the lowlands of amateur soccer to the performance classes or federal leagues — when it comes to warm-up, you don't want to leave anything to chance anymore.

In many places, the initial relaxed start is usually followed by compulsory running school and a first start. This is followed by more intensive focal points with a passing game and a change of pace — followed by another step.

Even though it is enormously structured and worked through so meticulously by some coaches that it also makes a powerful impression on the opposing team, a stretching program must still be critically scrutinized.

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WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY WANT TO ACHIEVE WITH STRETCHING?

Ad-hoc people think of “shortened muscles” that should be made longer or even of preparing the muscles for continuous stress. You just want to be “ready” and not risk injuries. These wishes are all appropriate, correct, important and yet hopeless.

Stretching will neither give you longer muscles nor will you be optimally prepared for maximum loads — in the “worst case”, stretching will even harm you.

DOES STRETCHING HURT? WHO SAYS THAT?

Imagine yourself on the sidelines, relatively centrally in front of the gang. This is followed by a short chat with a fellow player and a delicate, sweeping movement of the leg towards the gang. Then lean your upper body forward a bit and et voila: steps. What may feel in some way as though you are working on your back thigh muscles to regulate tension is just one thing, especially for soccer players and their major restrictions on this body region: An activation of a protective reflex.

This protective reflex, which protects the muscle-tendon complex from overstretching, will certainly not make you more flexible in this “passive” form of stretching — nor will it prepare you for stress.

Because whenever you try to get “length” on your muscles by adding external forces (gravity, momentum, partner), your brain will do what it always does in such situations, nothing. Your colonel doesn't really understand what you want to achieve with it.

In the worst case, it even packs a little extra voltage into the system. After all, your brain wants to protect you from injuries.