Christian Bosse has over 20 years of experience in coaching athletes at the elite level, working with more than 20 Olympians, 13 Olympic medallists, 7 Olympic champions, and 23 World champions. More recently, Christian has worked as a Strength & Conditioning Coach for the German Cycling Federation, where he is responsible for the S&C support of the national track cycling team. Christian also educates and mentors the coaches of the German Cycling Federation to improve the strength and conditioning support in the regional training centres.

Prior to this, Christian has worked for different national and international governing bodies, including the National Olympic Committee of the Netherlands, Catalan Tennis Federation, the British Lawn Tennis Association, the International Tennis Federation, the Chinese Olympic Committee.

QUOTES

“I just looked at what can I build in the entrepreneurial space. They call it the minimum viable product, meaning a product that works. It doesn't have all the features that you need in the end, but it works and it should be at a minimal cost.”

“So I don't necessarily ask them to send in a video of every exercise they do. It's more like, okay, you have to improve whatever your turnover in the clean, you have to improve your posture in the squat or something like this. So then that person sends me the video regarding their points of improvement and the corrective exercises I've prescribed”

“I'm a big fan of limited amount of exercise selection, meaning one of my core philosophies as an S&C coach and that's probably opposed to many others, is just have a handful of exercises that you can dominate very, very well, and then do them as good as you can.”

“The innovation is not, yes, somewhere in the world we already know this. But over here, you don't do it. So the innovation is, in a way, we bring what we already know to that place where it's needed.”

“My point is is it correlation or causation that makes the cyclists legs big? I think it's more because of the stuff they do on the bike and… it's unlikely the work in the gym, it's more likely the work on the bike that leads to the big legs. So anyway that was definitely a challenge to get them away from, or to implement the thought of maybe we don't need that much of hypertrophy work for the legs”

SHOWNOTES

1) Christian’s journey in strength and conditioning including stops in India, Spain, China, Netherlands, and Germany across tennis and cycling

2) How limited resources drove innovation in supporting the German national cycling team

3) The use of video feedback across a decentralized team model and the advantages of being able to stockpile and tag videos from athletes over time

4) Technical coach strength and conditioning education and making sure old knowledge is being applied in the right places

5) Differences between German and Dutch athlete preparation in cycling

6) Christian’s long term athlete development approach through reverse engineering performance and rates of progression over developmental years for younger athletes

7) Adapting to the demands of working with athletes remotely in different sports

8) What a typical session looks like for strength and power development with German cyclists

9) Staying away from right or wrong when working with coaches and athletes and Twan Van Gendt’s Bulgarian split squats

People Mentioned

Dietmar Schmidtbleicher

Katharina Dunst

Narelle Sibte

Reid Hoffman

Twan Van Gendt