“Repetition is the mother of skill” is a motivating quote that encourages us to get our butts out on the pitch and work on some of the many skills involved in the game of soccer. However, when Tony Robbins talked about moms, he left out one key aspect of why getting reps in helps improve performance. The answer lies in something Dutch Sports Scientist, Frans Bosch said, ”We don’t learn a movement by doing it over and over. We learn by determining the difference between two movements”.
When we practice something over and over again, our brains learn from all of the times things went well and begins to distinguish from the times things didn’t go as well. Imagine you take 100 shots against a goalkeeper from just outside of the 18 yard box. The first 10 shots you may not realize anything other than how much or little success you’re having. However, as the reps progress. you will start to recognize little things like “oh, my head came up too soon the last couple shots that went over the crossbar, I should keep my eyes on the ball when my foot strikes it”, and make adjustments. Like Bosch said, differentiating, in this case, between two head movements.
Human movements are not just motor patterns, but sensorimotor patterns. In other words, our bodies are not just moving in space, but make adjustments to the surface area, different ways force must be produced, and other changes such as the aim of the task or opponent behavior. For example, even though our bodies perform a similar looking movement, running in the water does not transfer well to actual running on the ground (with gravity). Although an exercise may resemble the actual sporting movement, the sensory information can differ greatly, leading to little or no transference to our sport. But while changing the environment too drastically limit transfer, there is evidence that by varying smaller constraints on movements, we can create new and better learning.
The concept mentioned by Bosch of being able to differentiate between tasks is very much related to Differential Learning (difference- differential…I feel like Sherlock Holmes), which is a training theory in part owed to FC Barcelona, Thomas Tuchel (PSG coach), and Jurgen Klopp’s success. If repetition is the mother of skill, differential learning is your college professor.
Developed by Professor Wolfgang Schöllhorn from Mainz University, “differential learning” also contends that players do not learn by repetition, but by making adjustments to their technique to solve new problems. Part of the effectiveness of Differential Learning is that it simply makes things harder. Shooting the ball with your arms grasped behind your back will throw you off balance and require other muscles to function in new ways.
Tuchel, who puts out every cone himself, has his players practising on slippery, extremely narrow or extremely wide pitches, makes them control the ball with their knees before passes and instructs defenders to hold on to tennis balls to stop them pulling the shirts of opponents. The aim is to make training so complex and mentally demanding that the game feels relaxing by contrast. “At first, we wondered what these things had to do with football but we realised quickly that they worked,” said Neven Subotic. “Some exercises last two and a half hours. But because they always change, it doesn’t feel like that”.
Some ways to create “problems” to solve and expedite the learning process include:
1) Changing the environment: the weight or size of the ball or pitch, the way the ball bounces or the surface so the ball moves faster or slower, the number of teammates/opponents, the size of the pitch, the shape of the pitch (like Tuchel’s diamond), the size of the goals, the maturity status or athleticism of the opponents in the exercise, adding a light weight vest or wearable weights, playing barefooted, etc.
2) Changing the task: the execution of the movement such as holding hands on top of your head or covering one eye, or trying to exaggerate something like passing the ball super hard in an exercise and then passing it soft, or shooting the ball way over the goal then shooting only with the ball on the ground, how a goal must be scored (i.e. one touch or from a specific zone), etc.
3) Changes in the organism: training in a state of fatigue (muscle soreness or other), training without as much food, training at different times of the day, training drunk or high (just kidding, although technically it counts) etc.
Differential Learning- If you don’t beat the defender you will be shot
These new challenges pave the road for new learning to take place. When it comes to learning, the intention (the result or knowledge about the performance) seems to be a more effective focus than the process (knowing how the result is achieved). That is another reason why differential learning and constraining tasks is an effective training strategy. Instead of trying to make internal, self-focused changes to your technique, the technique changes more naturally based on the task. To take the example I used earlier about picking the head up too early during shooting on a goalkeeper- if a coach said “keep your head down”, this coaching strategy of creating process driven internal awareness may not be very effective and create an over-thinking athlete. The differential learning approach would be something like instructing the athlete to intentionally shoot the ball over the goal, then having the athlete keep the shots on the ground and in turn, allowing them some autonomy to realize that the difference in head posture determines the trajectory of the shot.
To wrap up, one reason strength and conditioning improves performance is because it increases the bodies’ durability and increases the capacity to produce greater forces at faster speeds, and find stability and coordination in challenging situations. To learn more about how to incorporate not only strength and conditioning but other cross training methods into your soccer schedules, check out Soccer Dominance.