So you want to become a professional football player?
In this series I'll take you behind the scenes
to meet the experts to see what it takes to actually get there.
Our first stop: Munich.
The city that’s home to the German record champions
and probably the fittest team in football
who always had the fittest players.
Professional football is more than just your skill on the ball.
You have to be able to run fast, jump high, hold off your opponent,
and play about 500 games a season without getting injured.
So how do you gain that physical cutting edge that it takes to get to the pros?
That’s where strength and conditioning comes into play.
Chris Gamperl is the owner and head coach at Munique Performance,
a training facility that focuses on peak performance and injury prevention
where Chris trains some of the best in football.
So we wanna know something about strength and conditioning
and performance on the football pitch, Chris is our guy.
Let’s go talk to him and see how he trains the very best and the top youth prospects.
Why is it important for young players, aspiring professionals to be doing these kinds of things in the gym.
We use the gym for injury prevention and for individualised performance.
Chris’s first session is with a young goalkeeper with high aspirations of becoming a pro.
Everything from his warm up to his training consists of movements
that translate to how a goalkeeper needs to move on the pitch during a game.
He's a goalie, he has to do a lot of fast movements on the pitch
so his muscle fibres need to be activated for that.
On the other hand, we work on some more vertical power.
His actions and his movements are very individual, very unique for his team,
so the lateral things, the vertical things.
We work here to make his goalie performance better,
but on the other hand also to make him more robust for injuries.
Would you say it’s almost more important for a youth player
to do these kinds of things and build a strong base?
Not every player has with 17 the physical part to be participating in pro football,
so the gym is actually a lot more important to the youth players.
I’ve heard a lot of people say "If you train in the gym, you’re going to get too big,
you’re going to be too slow, you’re not going to be able to run."
This is actually a myth, came from the 70’s, I don't know why.
So if you work in the gym like a bodybuilder,
maybe then you're not using the muscles and things on the pitch,
but if you use the gym in the right way it only has benefits.
The offseason is when players usually make most of their gains in the gym.
In season their strength training changes to make on pitch performance key.
Some players come here 5 times a week but then they switch the goals
so maybe they come twice for upper body once for legs,
one for mobility and one for recovery and then they have everything they need.
Every position has different movement requirements on the pitch,
so players should train in the gym based on the requirements of their position.
Let’s see how Chris trains some of the most common movements in football.
We all have these image of Davies or Haaland doing these runs,
catching up to people and just being so fast.
Could a player who maybe isn't the fastest player, could they get faster?
So yeah, of course, every player can get faster as his individual standpoint is right now.
Not every player can get to the top speed of Adama Traore for example or Phonzie
because this is also genetically a lot but you can get faster if you do the right things.
I’ll show you some exercises to make you faster, lets go.
Alright alright!
You just try to push back the floor aggressively.
Lets go, push, push, push and sprint.
Ok, so this was speed. Now what about a player like Cristiano Ronaldo?
We all have that picture in our head of him of how high he can jump.
So if you're a striker, and you wanna get up high
or even if you're a midfielder who needs to win balls in the air,
what can you do to maybe get more powerful in your jumping?
Think about jumping vertical, you have to know
that explosive strength needs to have a strength fundament.
So for these actions we use stuff like trap bar deadlifts or single leg
because it depends also if you wanna jump bilateral or with one leg.
Mostly the jumps in the pitch are single leg jumps.
Thats high, I know.
Now you saw a bilateral exercise with two legs on the floor
which helps a lot with performance, but when you talk about injury prevention,
almost every motion movement on the pitch is a singular.
It’s like cutting, change direction, also sprinting.
If you only train bilateral in the gym you will not have the same effect on your injury prevention.
So now lets go to the next best exercise.
Soft knee, knee outside, big toe pushing, hip is all the way back, stop.
One, two, and up.
That's it.
Since football is mostly played with the lower body
some players might neglect training their upper body.
Is upper body training really that important for football players?
It’s very important to train it, not just because of looking good at the beach
but also because sprinting, duels, have a lot to do with upper body and core.
We’re not doing body building things, were not building muscles you cannot use on the pitch.
So we mostly do basic upper body exercises for strength.
And now we see if you can do some pull ups, the most important exercise for the upper body ever.
Alright, you heard that guys, no beach muscles, only functional.
I mean, beach muscle is important too, right?
Slowly down, go all the way down and now do two... Oh, wow, good job!
And now I have something for all the guys who cannot do pull ups,
if you can not do pull ups, do a jump and go slowly into full extension.
But take care of your chin with the jumping, ok?
Jump up, yep, and slowly down, thats it.
Leon Goretzka is an example of what hard work in the gym can do for a players performance.
Goretzka’s transformation was more than just looks, it took his game to the next level.
Leon when he was at Schalke he was way leaner, he probably had 10 kilos less muscles,
but he was a great technical player, he has good speed, but now what he can do is the defending.
When they lose the ball its like bam and they get it again
because he's so powerful in the first step defending
that I think this helped his performance a lot.
So we talked about why strength and conditioning is so important,
especially for young athletes, how it can prevent injuries,
and help you perform better in all aspects of your of your game.
But what about those players like a Thomas Müller for example,
he doesn't look like he works out at all.
It’s actually very funny because if you see Thomas Müller
you may think he's weak because he has not too many muscles,
but on the pitch people say he is not very weak, he's strong.
But to be honest, Thomas is very genetically gifted, no injuries, no muscle injuries.
For those 1% of players maybe the gym isn't the most important thing,
but I’ll tell you one thing: also he does a lot of sprint training and stuff.
that only genetics will not help you too much.
This is why Usain Bolt failed to become a pro football player after his 100m sprint career
So for young football players, maybe they don't have the money
to get themselves a professional coach to train them,
what is the biggest advice that you would give them
as to how they can improve their game
and get better in a strength and conditioning sense?
So if young players don't have the money or budget or time to have this, go to Instagram accounts...
...look for, ask questions, ask coaches, go to your club ask if they offer programs?
So if you are proactive, you will find a lot of information on the internet these days
to coach yourself a little bit,
and then if you become a pro and have more money you can afford a little bit more.
So you’ve signed up for the gym, what’s next?
There’s a lot more you’re gonna have to do before you’re playing here.
Are you ready to gain the competitive edge over your opponent?
Stay tuned for more.