Fussballetics
The Team
Teamname: Fussballetics
Start-up: Fussballetics + Dyke Knoblauch, Claudius Ludwig und Andre Werres GbR
Founders: Claudius Ludwig, Andre Werres and Dyke Knoblauch
Mentors at university: Evelyn Berresheim-Christ and Sophia Haski
Founded in: 14.04.2021
University at which you study/work and faculty(s): German Sport University Cologne and University of Cologne, at the Faculty of Human Sciences and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences
What is your idea about?
Only 20% of the soccer coaches have completed a coaching education in the technical and tactical area and less than 5% in the athletic area. As a result, the majority of clubs do not provide holistic training to reduce injuries and improve performance.
Fussballetics solves this problem by providing pre-designed sessions that allow coaches to provide qualified athletic training on the field.
Health-promoting athletic training
Fussballetics offers health-promoting athletic training with the target group of soccer players in mass sports clubs. For this purpose, we have developed a seasonal membership concept that enables coaches to carry out qualified athletic training in team training. The seasonal membership model includes three key components.
Coaches receive access to the Fussballetics app, which allows them to access weekly pre-structured training sessions adapted to the players' level and age group. The majority of our training sessions are carried out in groups during team training and have a predefined structure of units that are optimally integrated into the seasonal schedule of the team.
Furthermore, partners have access to the Fussballetics member area. This contains additional units that can be carried out individually at home and video-based rehabilitation concepts. In addition, coaches get the opportunity to extend their education via instructional videos. The content of the member area focuses mainly on the areas of prevention and rehabilitation.
The last pillar is the service area. This consists of an introductory event, regular check-ups, validation meetings and the possibility to contact the Fussballetics experts in case of questions.
How did you get together as a team?
Dyke Knoblauch and Andre Werres knew each other from their soccer club in which they both played together. Afterwards, both started their studies at the German Sport University and met Claudius Ludwig there.
In the context of this, we worked together several times in scientific projects. While working on these and beyond, we quickly realized that we fit together very well as people.
Furthermore, we realized that we have our strengths in different areas and therefore complement each other very well. When we discussed about soccer from different perspectives (fitness coach, soccer coach & athletic coach), we decided to find together a solution to the problem of holistic support.
Subsequently, we joined forces and founded Fussballetics together.
How did you come up with your idea?
All three of us have played soccer in the club for a long time and have had a strong connection to soccer since childhood.
Dyke and Andre were also coaches on the soccer field for a long time. During this time, the soccer clubs communicated the great need for athletic training.
For this reason, Andre and Dyke started writing Word manuals for soccer clubs. These were received very well and more and more clubs requested them.
Together with Claudius, the idea came up to scale the whole thing and make it more user-friendly. Subsequently, validation talks were held with the DFB, the FVM, the DSHS, and a large number of soccer clubs.
These discussions revealed that the need was even greater than expected. To meet this need, a solution was sought and developed with Fussballetics.
What are you studying/working or what have you studied?
We studied sports science at the German Sport University in Cologne. Claudius and Andre also studied social sciences with a focus on economics at the University of Cologne.
Dyke's second subject is Biology, which he also studied at the University of Cologne.
Dyke and Andre have already completed their master's degrees and Claudius is about to graduate.
Funfact
Before the Fussballetics app was even finished and published in the App Store and Google Play Store, we had already signed the first contracts with soccer clubs.
This caused us a month of sleepless nights until the app was fortunately ready and could be downloaded.
What has Gateway ESC helped you with?
Gateway ESC provided us with experienced and competent coaching in the person of Evelyn Berresheim-Christ. She advised us in particular on the start-up grant, which we were ultimately able to obtain. At the same time, we benefited enormously from the Gateway's large network, which brings us many advantages even nowadays.
We would recommend Gateway ESC to anyone because it is an enormous help for start-ups. It saved us a lot of time, money and energy, which were very scarce resources, especially in the beginning.