Today I'll share with you one of the many drills that administered to mt team with the aim of development of the physical capacity of the player in a global and not analytically way. I think that we are passing the concept of single capacity training like "strength training, "endurance training", "quickness training", etc...(on this topic I am preparing a specific topic).
In this drill there are elements of acceleration, deceleration, stops, change of direction, foot quickness, instability and shoot...so the essence of handball!
today I'd like to show you a drill for the training of the return of the team after the end of the attack. If we will fix the right parameters about time of the action and recovery, this drill may become a very good "physical" drill.
Specifically, the drill is a 3vs3 in all the handball court with some limitation for the defense team: as you can see in the video, the first team make a shoot while the players of the second team are waiting on the cones line; at the shoot moment, the team that was attacking has to return very quickly to defense and the team that was waiting on the cones line, receives the ball from the goal-keeper and go to attack the other team; the defense team can't go after the cones line. The duration of 1 repetition may be of 1 minutes or 45 seconds and then other two team enter in the court. In this way the drill will be composed of 1 minutes of activity and 1 minutes of recovery.
today I'd like to share with you a drill for the development of the strength of lower limbs (jumps) inserted in a technical-tactical and proprioceptive context. In the video are showed two types of exercises. At the end of the second one, there are a decision-making element with the 2vs2 situation with the pivot (the defenders are passive with the 1 man block).
We already talked a lot about pre-match warm-up. Today I'd like to show you the warm-up of the "Lazio pallamano", that include some new elements respect the "classic" warm-up.
In particular, there are some sport-specific cognitive elements and some feet-quick elements. Obviously this warm-up is not perfect and can be improve with your opinions.
after the post about the development of the lower limb's strength with jumps and changes of direction, today I would like to introduce you a useful tools that I used from 2 years for the strength training. I have 6 elastic band of different length and resistance (from 2 to 12 meters). I think that are very useful for the type of load that permits to administrate to the athletes: eccentric and concentric contractions, accelerations and deceleration. These tools are also useful for the muscles injuries prevention.
In this drill we have joint a strength work on lower limb with a sprint in counterattack and a final shoot toward goal.
Today I'd like to share with you a drill for the development of speed of player. This simple drill permits at the same time the increase of the shooting skills and defensive block. The sprint work is on the 20 meters while the "technique" part is made for the development of defensive skills of the players in fatigue conditions.
I think that this is one of the most discussed topic in the athletic training "world". A lot of trainer think that without leg press, leg extension, leg curl, squat etc, is hard to develop the strength and power of the lower limbs. Surely, the work in the gym is an important addition to the "field training" that unfortunately not all the teams can use. This is the reason why today I am share with you a drill for the development of the lower limbs strength with jumps and changes of direction. In these drills, the load is the body weight of the player and the advantages are: specific and mutidirectional actions, work of eccentric deceleration made by the hamstrings muscles, elimination of the training's monotony.
I want to explain that I am not totally against the work in the gym with machine, barbell and dumbbell, but I think that this load has to be modulated with the drills like the below video one.
In this period of the season, when the strength and conditioning training and evaluation is very important, I thought to share with you the last test that I made with the Lazio pallamano team a few days ago.
The test is the 30-15 IFT and I think that this is one of the most appropriate test to assess the aerobic capacity of the handball players. The test is based on a "beep" sound that established the start and the end of every step, and also the speed of the run. If you want more information on this topic you can click on this link, on the creator of the test's blog Martin Buchheit or asking directly to me on this blog.
Today we will talk about a topic that should be on the basis of all the training process in each sport: the Match analysis.
In handball field, were made many studies about match analysis. One of the most recent was that of a Portuguese research group published on December 2012 on the important Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
In this research, were analyzed 10 matches of the Portuguese First division Championship. The Heart rate of the players was surveyed and a Time motion analysis was made on the video of the matches. The movements of the players were divided in 8 categories:
- standing still
- walking
- jogging
- fast running
- sprinting
- backwards movement
- sideways medium-intensity movement
- sideways high-intensity movement
The results was very interesting! For example, the average distance covered by players during the matches was 4370m; average time between two different "motor actions" was 5,6 sec. Furthermore, was revealed that the action most used by players is the stop followed by change of direction; time passed by the players executing high intensity action is lower during the second half respect the first one.
Also the Heart rate of the players was lower during the second half respect the first one. In general, the average value of the Heart rates was 82% of the Heart rate max.
Thinking about the results of this study, it is easy understandable that the information provided are useful to plan the training. If I want to make an intervanl trainig, I have to consider that during the matches, the players change "motor activity" every 5,6 seconds. If you have a heart rate monitor, you can understand if the effort of the players during training is good respect the official match.
The great quantity of stops and changes of direction in handball should led us to the importance of eccentric training, in particular of the lower limbs.
One of my professors during the course for professional physical trainer in Coverciano told me that "a lot of time coaches focus the trainings on the improvement of acceleration, but also the deceleration is very important"
In this paper there are also other important results that I did not report, but if you want the complete text, you can contact me.
- Póvoas, S.C.A., Seabra, A.F.T., Ascensão, A.A.M.R., Magalhães, J., Soares, J.M.C., Rebelo, A.N.C.C. (2012) Physical and physiological demands of elite team handball. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 26(12), 3365.
Hi,
Following the great expansion of the CrossFit in the gym of all of the the world, also in the team-sport's training, this methodology is becoming a common practice. This is the reason why I would like to share my opinions with you on this topic. I hope to receive your comments on this hard issue.
The CrossFit is a training methodology from the United States, made to "mold" the Marines with very hard training, characterized by the total absence of recovery. Indeed, the basic concept of the CrosFit, is the High Intensity and the no recovery time. Looking also at the official Website of CrossFit (http://www.crossfit.com/), it is evident that another peculiarity of this sport, is the variability of the training: exercises, repetition, series, ecc... change everyday. All the training structure change everyday. Classic exercises of the CrossFit are the squat, snatch, power-clean, push-up, pull-up, jump, kettlebell, medicine ball, etc... In some training are included also run, swim and row.
Once listed the general characteristics of the CrossFit, now we can make some thoughts about the possible application of these training to handball. First of all, if we look at the definition of training, we can immediately understand that the CrossFit, in some of its characteristics, doesn't follow the principles of team sport training. The fact that the training of one day is totally different respect of the yesterday one, and the one that will be tomorrow, go against the basic concept of "increment load with a systematic organization".
If we consider the handball performance model, we can see that the recovery phases are very important. One of the aim of the training should be the optimization of these recovery phases, to prepare the player to the successive high intensity action. In my opinion, the CrossFit, not providing recovery time, doesn't "teach" to the player to "manage" his energy. I think that CrossFit is highly non-specific for handball training.
Regarding the recovery concept, I think that the "Tabata" method is very interesting. This method is used in the CrossFit and consist of 4' or 8' of 4 exercise repeated with the scheme 20''of effort and 10'' of rest. This methodology reflects in a better way the performance model of the handball player.
However, personally, I like very much the great part of exercises used in the CrossFit: push-up, pull-up, jumps, kettlebell, dumbbell, barbell, etc... I think that these exercise are perfect for the strength development of the handball players. These tools, permits the administration of handball strength exercise that provide "movements freedom", being in this way highly specific for this sport.
Finally, I would like to underlined the fact that, not yet being published scientific studies on the CrossFit effects on athletes, all the words reported in this post are personal opinion about this topic. I hope to receive your comments and opinions.
Today we will talk about pre-match warm-up. Thanks to my friend and colleague Simone Lugli, I found a video about warm-up of the youth German national team of the last year.
I edited the video with the aim of have a short one, highlighting the scheme that the coach followed:
1) Joint mobility exercises
2) Ball possession with man-to-man defense
3) Static and dynamic stretching, joint mobility
4) Ball possession with man-to-man defense
5) Static and dynamic stretching, joint mobility
6) Sport-specific drill
7) Passes
8) Passes starting from two cue, with attack movements
9) Goal-keeper warm-up
10) Counter-attack
If you want to look at the complete video, you can click on this link
Let's go to the comments...
Personally, I think that this warm-up was a good one. There are some elements of joint mobility in the first part, and players seems to be free in the choice of them. This freedom, in my opinion, is a good way to mentally "enter" in the match. The exercises proposed are appropriate, also because a lot of them are based on the "kinetic chain" concept, and not on the stretching or mobility of only one muscle or body segment.
The ball possession part is very good. In particular, the drill for the exit in defense, with the ball that was passed by the other players, is perfect. The final part of the warm-up is similar to the "classic" one that was mused for many years. This doesn't mean that the "old one" is less useful that the "new one".
In the last part, before the counter-attacks, I would like to insert a "quickness exercise" with the use of the Speed Ladder. I think that this elements is very important in the pre-match warm-up.
These are my opinions and I hope to receive yours.
After more than one year of inactivity, due to my moving to Portugal and changes in my life, today I start again to write on this blog. Maybe becuase of my return in Italy, from the next days, new topics on athletic training in handball will appear.
I hope to capture your attention and interest!
In the meanwhile I opened also the Portuguese section!
