Oliver Schmidtlein has seen a lot in his professional career — he worked as a physiotherapist in the USA, with the Münchner Löwen, FC Bayern Munich and finally with the German national soccer team. His career reads like the modern dream of every physiotherapist. Schmidt's path, however, is also characterized by the constant “desire to change” and the burden of the misunderstood pioneer.
He and his team from OSPHYSIO are one of the best things that can happen to an athlete in the event of an injury or to increase individual performance potential. We are all the more proud and honored to be able to announce:
Rehabilitation expert Oliver Schmidtlein will provide B42 with advice and assistance in the future.
Oliver Schmidtlein has now settled down and has had a center for therapy and training in Munich since 2008. And his view of sport and its protagonists has also changed over the years: “Today's soccer players are motivated, hungry and have understood that basic athletic training on the pitch gives them great advantages — unfortunately that wasn't always the case. I currently enjoy working with many young professionals all the more. ”
During his active life as a therapist in professional soccer, the Bamberg native had to fight against many obstacles. When he returned to Germany from Los Angeles (USA) in 2001 with rubber bands in his suitcase and a number of ideas in his head, he had to do pioneering sports science work in this country.
For example, he had to explain to Elber, Kahn and colleagues why active regeneration the day after the game makes sense or how an ice barrel can improve regeneration. Just imagine Kahn's face when looking at an ice sun. “Of course, players were cursing, even though we tried to introduce changes with tiny steps. It was a bit of fighting against windmills, after all, the players were used to being wrapped in cotton wool after the game. ”
According to Schmidtlein, the status of therapists and athletic trainers is now significantly better — their reputation has increased. The openness to additional training, for which he still had to fight for every day back then, has now arrived in competitive sports.
This development becomes even more obvious when you get a glimpse behind the scenes, for example with the Amazon Prime documentary about FC Bayern Munich. Here you can see players who use the cold chamber as a matter of course or perform floor exercises completely independently.
A fact that was far from being the case 15 to 20 years ago — but perhaps the foundation was laid for it back then. At a time when strength training was mostly associated with large exercise equipment, Oliver Schmidtlein did something that no one did. He established functional training and functional rehab in Germany over twenty years ago and, against all odds, dared to implement these training methods among the absolute sports elite.
He was often misunderstood and sometimes even ridiculed. But functional training is now the standard and elementary part of all basic athletic training.
In his Munich practice OSPHYSIO, Oliver Schmidtlein and his team bring professionals and non-professionals back to working life or onto the soccer field.
In particular, his time in America benefits him:
“Through the exchange with Jürgen Klinsmann, I learned in the USA what was new to me at the time a training philosophy from Jim Liston (editor's note: then athletic trainer at L.A.Galaxy, now Toronto F.C.). With him, I saw for the first time how sports scientists and coaches worked closely with physiotherapists both spatially and professionally. It was exactly what I was always looking for. Jim already told me important names back then, such as Mark Verstegen's. ”
After spending time in Los Angeles, it was back to Munich — to TSV 1860 Munich, which was still a first-division player at the time. In the luggage: new input, new ideas and lots of pioneering work in front of you.
From the Munich lions, Oliver Schmidtlein then went to soccer Olympus: to the Red City Rivals as their first rehabilitation coach and in 2004 (until 2008) to the German national soccer team.
After his time in high-performance sports, Oliver Schmidtlein set up his own practice in the east of Munich — OSPHYSIO. Here, too, he combines exactly those disciplines that he found inseparable many years earlier: therapy and training.
In order to be able to guarantee 100 percent of his skills, knowledge and approach in his practice, the constant “desire to work on myself” is of great importance to Schmidtlein: “Even when I was a young therapist, I quickly realized that I had to constantly develop myself. ”
Successful, because Schmidt's team is one of the best in Germany.
However, the ex-DFB physio looked even further outside the box. Together with a colleague, he established a set of rules for therapists and rehabilitation trainers with the help of which rehabilitation stages can be better controlled. A number of trainers and therapists who work with teams, athletes or convalescents have thus been able to experience OSPHYSIO's signature and are now acting in accordance with its guidelines.
And it is precisely in order to experience this expertise in Munich that a number of Bundesliga or third-league players are willing to travel a long way. But what is really important when treating soccer players?
Schmidtlein emphasizes that miracles hardly ever happen in physiotherapy. That is not what he is interested in, but rather about being thorough and precise. Rehabilitation control is the key word here. Or sometimes just patience. “Rehabilitation is often a process lasting months. If the therapist and/or player loses their nerve and takes three steps instead of one, then things go wrong. ”
B42 users will also be able to expect this input in the app in the near future. Schmidtlein wants more individuality, more rehabilitation control and more “hands-on”. As back then, he has a clear picture before his eyes again today.
It must feel a bit like it was over 20 years ago when he had to make Oliver Kahn the ice cream barrel tasty. With the difference that he doesn't have to fight windmills with B42.
Because together, things should soon be put on their digital path that many people today probably can't imagine yet. Because just as Oliver Schmidtlein established functional training in competitive sports over twenty years ago, it must be our common goal for app-based training to become the training standard.
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