Xavi’s tips on passing and control

A key factor in Spain’s UEFA EURO 2008 success was our midfield – Marcos Senna, Cesc Fàbregas,Andrés Iniesta and David Silva all know how to control and pass. — Xavi

FC Barcelona’s Xavi Hernández gives his tips on passing and control.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure

Congolese man turns scraps into a soccer ball for children.

Dynamic Stretching

While treating clients in our massage studio, we often times need to help them increase their muscle flexibility in order to overcome pain from an injury. Then, we suggest them that they combine dynamic stretching, also known as dynamic flex, and soft tissue manipulation, a form of muscle massage designed to restore the full function and length of a muscle, with a small medicine ball or foam roller beforehand for improved performance and efficiency.

In soccer, it is vitally important to have explosive muscles. For example, when you run you bend your legs first then explode forward, in jumping you must bend your legs, and finally cutting in soccer requires a lot of eccentric power. Almost every movement in soccer is preceded by an eccentric movement.

Dynamic stretching is the dominating feature in professional athletes’ warm-up routines, and should be considered for any serious athlete or team to reduce injury and increase performance. Dynamic warm-up is a technique used to increase total body blood flow and uses major joints such as hips and shoulders in a total range of motion. This technique is done while the body is in motion and the muscles, ligaments, tendons, and joints are being moved and blood flow is flowing.

While static stretching is still almost universally practiced among amateur athletes — watch your child’s soccer team next weekend — it doesn’t improve the muscles’ ability to perform with more power, physiologists now agree. “You may feel as if you’re able to stretch farther after holding a stretch for 30 seconds,” McHugh says, “so you think you’ve increased that muscle’s readiness.” But typically you’ve increased only your mental tolerance for the discomfort of the stretch. The muscle is actually weaker.

Stretching muscles while moving, on the other hand, a technique known as dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups, increases power, flexibility and range of motion. Muscles in motion don’t experience that insidious inhibitory response. They instead get what McHugh calls “an excitatory message” to perform.

Dynamic stretching is at its most effective when it’s relatively sports specific. “You need range-of-motion exercises that activate all of the joints and connective tissue that will be needed for the task ahead,” says Terrence Mahon, a coach with Team Running USA, home to the Olympic marathoners Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor. For runners, an ideal warm-up might include squats, lunges and “form drills” like kicking your buttocks with your heels. Athletes who need to move rapidly in different directions, like soccer, tennis or basketball players, should do dynamic stretches that involve many parts of the body. “Spider-Man” is a particularly good drill: drop onto all fours and crawl the width of the court, as if you were climbing a wall. (For other dynamic stretches, see the sidebar below.)

— “Stretching: The Truth” (NY Times, 10/31/2008)

Current research work detailed in Medicine & Science in Sport and Exercise and also Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research suggests that the use of dynamic stretches – slow controlled movements through the full range of motion – are the most appropriate exercises for warming up. By contrast, static stretches are more appropriate for the cool down at the end of the session.