In order to tease out the last percentage at the European Championship, the DFB players rely on special forms of training. Behind it is an ex-top talent.
Anyone who speaks to national player Klara Bühl about Jan-Ingwer Callsen-Bracker’s neuro-centric training will hear a true hymn of praise. Her body feeling, said the winger from FC Bayern, has improved “enormously” thanks to the former Bundesliga professional. At the European Championships in England, too, the former central defender works as part of the support staff on the “movement efficiency” of the DFB women.
His training methods are sometimes “not commonplace”, as the 37-year-old himself admits. A clear example: he practiced “tongue circling” with Joti Chatzialexiou, sporting director of the national teams, as a kind of preparation for the coach kick on Monday evening in the sweltering heat in London.
Stimulus processing of the brain should be optimized
Eyes, balance, body perception: Roughly speaking, it is about analyzing the stimulus processing of the brain in terms of competitive sports and optimizing it in the event of problems. Tools are sensorimotor exercises, with many repetitions, “whether to improve performance or reduce pain”.
Callsen-Bracker himself was a “seeker” for a long time, after his Champions League debut at Bayer Leverkusen aged 18 he suffered an injury in 2004 that overshadowed the years to come. “I kept having problems, all from an incorrect load,” he reported. When he came across the “neural approach” it was his “aha moment”. Pain, mobility, strength – he felt improvement everywhere.
