Michel Bruyninckx's Ballritmics

[Damocles]

Interested to hear any thoughts on this, especially fbloke/other coaches working/has worked with young kids:

Countless reasons have been put forward to explain England's repeated failure at international tournaments, so here is another one - a lack of intelligence.

Nothing do with GSCEs, A-levels or university degrees, mind, but when it comes to football IQ, surely England has been sitting in the dunce's corner for too long.
A year ago former England international Chris Waddle hinted at English footballers' cerebral deficiency when he said Arsenal winger Theo Walcott lacked a "football brain".
So given its importance, why is the brain the one part of the body for which players receive no special training or instruction?
That is where Belgian Uefa A licence coach Michel Bruyninckx comes in.
Over the last decade Bruyninckx has been training young players with what he calls "brain centred learning", a common idea in education, but a new concept for football.

Bruyninckx's methods and philosophy touch on the last frontier of developing world-class individuals

Based on the premise that the brain is at least 1,000 times faster than any computer, Bruyninckx's intention is to make sure the young players he trains are programmed to take full advantage of the body's "hard disk" and become more skilful and intelligent footballers.
Standard Liege midfielder Steven Dufour - in the past linked with a move to Manchester United - and Utrecht attacking midfielder Dries Mertens, who came close to joining Ajax in the January transfer window, are the two most high-profile players with whom the Belgian coach has worked.
"He has given me that crucial extra metre in my head that is so important," Belgian international Mertens, who can kick the ball with both feet at a speed of 74mph, told BBC Sport.
There are plenty more players coming off the Bruyninckx production line - boys like Wannes van Tricht and girls like Imke Courtois - while clubs such as Lille in France and Espanyol in Spain have been in contact with other teenagers that the Belgian coach has helped to develop.
When Germinal Beerschot and Belgian international midfielder Faris Haroun came to work with Bruyninckx, he could not kick the ball with his left foot. Two years later his former club Racing Genk thought he was left-footed.

Barca's players touch the ball 100,000 times a year; Bruyninckx's approach delivers up to 500,000 touches
"Michel's methods and philosophy touch on the last frontier of developing world-class individuals on and off the field - the brain," renowned tennis coach educator Pete McCraw stated.
"His methods transcend current learning frameworks and challenge traditional beliefs of athlete development in team sports.
"It is pioneering work, better still it has broad applications across many sporting disciplines."
Bruyninckx coaches about 68 youngsters between the age of 12 and 19, players affiliated to first and second division Belgian clubs like Mechelen, Westerlo, Anderlecht, Sint-Truiden, OHL Leuven, Vise, KVK Tienen.
The youngsters have been selected by the Belgian football federation and study at Redingenhof secondary school near Brussels, an institution which plays a key role in Bruyninckx's work.
With his methods endorsed by ex-Belgian national coaches Paul van Himst and Robert Waseige, Bruyninckx estimates 25% of the 100 or so players that he has coached have turned professional or are in the women's national squads.
Compare this one-man Belgian football academy's success rate to England where, according to the Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor, of the 600 boys joining Premier League and Football League clubs at the age of 16, 500 are out of the game by the time they are aged 21.
"We need to stop thinking football is only a matter of the body," the 59-year-old Bruyninckx commented. "Skilfulness will only grow if we better understand the mental part of developing a player.
"Cognitive readiness, improved perception, better mastering of time and space in combination with perfect motor functioning."

A world away from the traditional "on me 'ead son" philosophy of English football, Bruyninckx's idea, which he began studying 20 years ago, is to "multitask" the brain.
His drills start off simply but become increasingly more complicated to challenge players' focus and maintain their concentration.
Sometimes players train in bare feet to make them more "sensorially" aware; at other times they would play simple maths games while doing physical conditioning work.
Bruyninckx emphasises teamwork ahead of individualism, while aggression is frowned on - players do not wear shinpads - with tackling seen as the last solution to recover the ball.
"You have to present new activities that players are not used to doing. If you repeat exercises too much the brain thinks it knows the answers," Bruyninckx added.
"By constantly challenging the brain and making use of its plasticity you discover a world that you thought was never available.
"Once the brain picks up the challenge you create new connections and gives remarkable results."
It is an innovative approach, though neuroscientist Jessica Grahn strikes a word of caution with the "brain centred learning" label.
"It makes perfect sense to use lots of different approaches in order to maximize potential in people, because they are all different," said Professor Grahn of the Centre for Brain and Mind at the University of Western Ontario.

"Similarly, well-rounded training is bound to be better than singular, focused, training. To say these multi-pronged approaches work because they use multiple parts of our brain makes it sound more scientific, but really, that's about marketing.
"We can't do anything without our brains 'doing it' for us, so absolutely everything we train at involves changing our brains."
Labels aside, what is indisputable is the enormous amount of research that Bruyninckx has devoted to his method, which incorporates the idea of "differential learning", a training approach pioneered by Professor Wolfgang Schoellhorn of Mainz University.
"The idea is that there is no repetition of drills, no correction and players are encouraged not to think about what has gone wrong if they have made a mistake," explained Schoellhorn, an expert in kinesiology or human movement.
Only two professional clubs have picked up on Schoellhorn's work - Spanish giants Barcelona and German outfit Mainz - though in January he gave a lecture to the German Football Federation.
Working with Schoellhorn, Mainz coach Thomas Tuchel has incorporated drills of playing 20-a-side games or 11 versus 11 in one half of the pitch to improve speed and agility, with wingers only allowed to move within a specific space. Tactics would only be discussed using videos.

In the UK intelligence is not valued
Ex-USSR international Sergei Baltacha
"Players have to take responsibility," Schoellhorn added. "They have to be creative and take responsibility and have to find the optimal solution. It's a whole philosophy.
"In football you are fighting against a lot of tradition. The reason why Barcelona's fitness coach Paco Seirullo and Tuchel were ready to listen was that they were already aware of this theory."
Mainz striker Lewis Holtby, who is of German-English descent, has described working with Tuchel as "extraordinary", while his midfield team-mate Andreas Ivanschitz has quipped that you need to be a university professor to understand the coaching sessions at the Bundesliga club.
Another German coach Horst Lutz, the founder of Life Kinetik, has worked with Borussia Dortmund or Hoffenheim, in the area of "brain performance".
Perhaps not surprisingly the way Barcelona play football has key reference points for Bruyninckx and during his training sessions players are continuously moving to better understand time and space when they practise the drills.
He explained: "If a team continuously plays the balls in angles at very high speed it becomes impossible to recover the ball. This requires high concentration and creativeness."
Not that Bruyninckx is only interested in exploring how the brain might best be used by his players. Biomechanics, psychology and kinesiology are equally important in what the Belgian coach calls a "holistic" approach to training.
"Many researchers warn that there is too much conditioning in our world and deliver athletes and people with health problems both physical as mental," the Belgian continued.
"If that is the case we can't go on with our traditional approaches - we must look for other ways."

Mainz striker Holtby has praised the quality of Tuchel's training
Bruyninckx points out that in Spain there is no 11-a-side football before the age of 15. He also believes that if you want to produce technical footballers then forget the idea of competition.
"I create players that can play to win at the right moment, but firstly you have to explain that learning is more important than winning games," he added.
In addition to his desire to cultivate talented footballers, Bruyninckx has made it his aim to create well-rounded human beings, who if they fail to make the grade professionally, go on to successful careers outside football.
He stresses at the start and end of each game that players, parents, coaches and referees must greet one another.
He has just returned from a coaching demonstration at Dinamo Minsk for trainers from Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania, but before leaving he took a wander round the Belarusian capital and bumped into some of the youngsters he had coached.
Bruyninckx said: "They came and greeted and shook my hand. This is the most important message: they respect me and they are telling me I've taught them a lot.
"It's about letting 'competition' go and opting for 'education and apprenticeship'."
Bruyninckx, who also uses his method to help elderly people and children with behavioural problems, demands that his players also concentrate on their academic studies.
If they do not they are banned from training with him - in some cases for up to a month at a time.
That demand for academic rigour has had spin-offs for Redingenhof secondary school.

Sergei Baltacha was handed his debut by the legendary Dynamo Kiev coach Valery Lobanovsky
"Progressively over five years the school performance has improved remarkably," Redingenhof headmaster Yves Dewolf commented.
"The results of 80% of the children in the "elite group" have always been above the average results of the regular secondary school children.
"The teachers' reactions are very positive regarding school performance and behaviour.
"The project has been extended to other sports as volleyball, dancing, basketball, table tennis, cycling and from next year tennis."
Like Schoellhorn, Bruyninckx has admitted that he is fighting "a lot of traditional habits" in football, but slowly the Belgian is beginning to win recognition for his work.
The Dutch Football Federation recently awarded its "More than Football" award - normally given to professional clubs - to Dutch amateur team club Apeldoorn which has started to use the Bruyninckx method in recogniton of its social benefits.
"I've never met anyone like him in football with the possible exception of Wiel Coerver," said Eurosport commentator Herman Hobert, referring to the famed Dutch skills coach and former Feyenoord manager, nicknamed "the Albert Einstein of Football".
"Michel is so inspiring, so enthusiastic, always open minded and friendly. He gives players freedom, but also sets down boundaries that they mustn't cross. He demands very high standards," added Hobert, who is involved with the Apeldoorn project.
Elsewhere Canada, the United States, Nigeria, Egypt, Austria, Germany, France, Brazil and Turkey have been in contact with Bruyninckx about his method.
The one country to show minimal interest in the Belgian's approach is England.
"In the UK intelligence is not valued," stated ex-USSR international Sergei Baltacha, who is director of coaching at Bacons Football Academy - the first football development centre in London - and has been working Bruynincxk over the last year.
"But the brain - it is the most important thing; it is everything."

I'm not sure that I buy into the socio-economic factors that he is trying to sell us on, but purely as a coaching tool, I can see the link between good neurological skills and a quick footballing mind.

When I was coaching kids, I used to shout sums at them whilst they were performing a drill, as I do share Michel's impressions of the importance of proper multi-tasking to developing footballers. His thesis described his method in more detail:

The B&M (brain-movement and body-mind) method anticipates a person's individual brain organization (action type (mental profile), learning style, moving style and deviations. I implemented a large number of neurological and neuropsychological advises into soccer training programs (cognitive readiness, holistic cueing, importance of emotion during learning processes, the multi sensory integration principle, sonification, synchronization principle, more visualization and imagery etc...).

However, I'm not utterly convinced of his use of constant repetition as a way of developing technique; well, certainly not in the way that he is achieving it. He seems to be using those skill balls on elasticated strings to have the kids constantly passing/controlling the ball to themselves, in time to the music whilst counting out loud. I have no problem with the disco like atmosphere, or the counting, which I do think is an excellent idea and I'll be trying to incorporate somehow myself, but the usefulness of this type of repetition (using the skill ball) should surely disappear when into the teenage years?

I also like his idea of promoting a dialogue with the kids to make them work out where they have gone wrong themselves rather than correcting the mistake yourself. This falls in line with my love of Performance Analysis as a tool for developing players, and my belief that the game itself is a greater teacher than most people are.

I also agree with his lack of competitiveness in football at a young age, and how his kids treat it more as an apprenticeship than a 'fun game'; something that is quite an Italian way of doing things.

One of the things that I'm wondering, is what does he use as a success/pass rate on a drill? I tend to think that if somebody can do something about 50% of the time, then they can move to a more complicated version of the drill, but he seems to be advocating drilling for a longer period of time, if I have understood that bit correctly. In the article, it talks about differential learning, but I'm pretty sure that any decent coach has been doing this since time immemorial without knowing it. I used to integrate the formal Project Management skills and techniques into coaching as long term development plans. Sort of like Gantt Charts and Work Breakdown Structures concentrating on development. Numerous others have rolled their own method with this sort of thing.

Question in particularly for fbloke and other autistic experts, what effect would the rhythmic/musical based training have on the skills of autistic children? In particularly, how this type of learning could improve their overall life, which he seems to be advocating (and I'm embarrassed to say that I don't understand how).
Much of the above article is marketing crap, but I'm excited that somebody is doing the research on how emotional intelligence and neurology can help us train better players.
However, as always, I'm loathed to hear that the whole country's clubs and infrastructure is behind the rest of the world on this, as per bloody usual :(

 

[Dax777]

I'd love to read more about this. Perhaps even try to get into a seminar that covers the progressional practices as it relates to football. Where I coach now, we have been trying to institute a program with the U12 thru U15 kids, that will triple their ball touches over a single year. And we are trying to double ball touches for each player on average per game.

Where can I get more info on this stuff.

 

[Damocles]

This is a video of it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyGcUldSJ3c[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD4msi4i-RM[/youtube]

Info is a bit short on the ground really, as he runs a for-profit company.

There's a channel demonstrating his drill in a full session here:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/DeVoetbaltrainer1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.youtube.com/user/DeVoetbaltrainer1</a>

The videos are called:

VT176 p59 Michel Bruyninckx training Video1.MTS
VT176 p59 Michel Bruyninckx training Video2.MTS

etc<br /><br />-- Tue Mar 22, 2011 1:55 pm --<br /><br />Look at how many players he is putting in each position/space drill. He's got about 10 players there in a tiny space. Sir Trevor Brooking has been talking about making the age over here higher before players work in 11 a side games and drills, favouring the Spanish version of 4 and 7 a side until they hit their teens, but this has got pretty young kids all cramped on together.

I'd appreciate any thoughts about these two competing systems. I can't see the benefit of packing out the drill spaces until at least their teens. In my experience, most 5-12 year olds are ball chasers so it doesn't give them the advantage of having to quickly control/move/pass mentally, as they have barely developed the skill to control/move/pass. Perhaps with his emthods after a couple of years it would work out better.

Still interested to hear others opinions on it though, especially the affect that rhythmic training could have on autistic children (as this is a big selling point of his whole theory).

 

[fbloke]

I skimmed over that this morning before I went for a nice lunch with the missus in Helmsley. Priorities in place there then ;-)

It is interesting to note, in simple terms, how some (and I say some as it is perhaps still a minority) accept that people posses many different 'intelligences' - now I am not surprised that there is a football intelligence and that some are born with a seemingly innately higher level of ability - it is interesting to see such a scientific approach now being proven in its effectiveness.

I will read through it more fully as it is fascinating stuff.

 

[disco dawson]

Coached kids for years and pledged that they wouldn't do any training that didn't involve a football at their feet. My reckoning was that all the best players spend hours and hours everyday when they are kids with a "football". When England were a force all the great players came from working class areas (e.g. North East) where they would be out dawn til dusk with a popped casey (deflated balls are best for ball control).
Skills are 25% gift and 75% practise I reckon but more practise can compensate for lack of gift e.g. keepy uppy.
It's no coincident that Countries with huge poverty/working classes are now producing great skillful players. Tevez, any number of African nations etc.
Early practise with a ball is key to future abilities yet I still see kids coachs taking them for a run, doing press ups etc. Give them a ball each and using fitness drills that involve them. Even penalties improve fitness if they have to fag their own ball and get back in queue to re take. Watch them run then!

 

[Damocles]

I skimmed over that this morning before I went for a nice lunch with the missus in Helmsley. Priorities in place there then ;-)

It is interesting to note, in simple terms, how some (and I say some as it is perhaps still a minority) accept that people posses many different 'intelligences' - now I am not surprised that there is a football intelligence and that some are born with a seemingly innately higher level of ability - it is interesting to see such a scientific approach now being proven in its effectiveness.

I will read through it more fully as it is fascinating stuff.

I think the application of different learning styles in football has only got to be a good thing. How do you feel about Constructivism as applied to training?

With the Project Management aspects that I brought in, I used to show players/parents their goals on a 4 week, 12 week, and 48 week level so they were engaged in what they were doing but also felt that they were 'building something' (albeit themselves). I did my degree on the learning theory/psychology behind the teaching of programming to new students, and I've always felt that people do tend to pick more up if you use multiple learning styles and the long term building goal.

As I say Andy, I'd appreciate a more in-depth post about rhythmic learning and how it would benefit/hurt autistic children in the social development aspect of training.

-- Tue Mar 22, 2011 2:25 pm --

Coached kids for years and pledged that they wouldn't do any training that didn't involve a football at their feet. My reckoning was that all the best players spend hours and hours everyday when they are kids with a "football". When England were a force all the great players came from working class areas (e.g. North East) where they would be out dawn til dusk with a popped casey (deflated balls are best for ball control).
Skills are 25% gift and 75% practise I reckon but more practise can compensate for lack of gift e.g. keepy uppy.
It's no coincident that Countries with huge poverty/working classes are now producing great skillful players. Tevez, any number of African nations etc.
Early practise with a ball is key to future abilities yet I still see kids coachs taking them for a run, doing press ups etc. Give them a ball each and using fitness drills that involve them. Even penalties improve fitness if they have to fag their own ball and get back in queue to re take. Watch them run then!

Agreed, socio-economic circumstances have a large effect on player production. Hell, 90% of players in City's squad come from working class backgrounds.

However, I don't see the social mobility or the digital revolution as enemies necessarily. You can use them to engage kids in their footballing education. You can use videos of things like the FIFA games to explain movement or technique (as they are animations, they don't change and a player's touch is always perfect!). Anybody with a smart phone can get a video up on Ronaldinho or Ronaldo or whoever the idol of the day is, performing a similar thing in a match situation that you are trying to drill that will motivate them. Get one of their favourite players to Tweet them a "well done" after passing a milestone. Things like this. New technology has a massive part to play in the future of coaching.

Motivating people is now harder because kids have more choices in their lives than football, but we should be using these to interact with them rather than denigrating their existence. We can't go backwards, so we must embrace it and move forwards.