30-15 Intermittent Fitness Test

Hi,

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.

Greetings

Match analysis: which is the real performance of the handball players?

Hi,

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.

I hope to shared useful information.

Greetings

Handball and CrossFit

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.

Greetings