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FANCY IG/TIK TOK TRAINING FOR HANDBALL? THIS MIGHT SUPRISE YOU

Why you might be chasing the last 1% but haven't done 99% of the work.


fancy instagram tik tok training exercise for handball

You've all seen the fancy exercises on IG or Tik Tok. Someone is balancing on a bosu ball, juggling kettlebells while saying the ABC backwards. They are a famous player or have a six pack - so they must know what they're talking about.


Unfortunately, the internet is a great place to find and share informantion - but some of it is also bullshit. So you need to train your bullshit sensor.


Here are a couple of things you should remember:

  1. No single exercise is better than a well thought out program

  2. One fancy exercise for 2 weeks will never be better than the basics for years

  3. Effective use of your time

  4. The overload principle


SINGLE EXERCISES VS. A PROGRAM

Athlete: “Do you know a good exercise to get faster?”

Handball Performance Hub: “Yes, of course. In fact, we know many.”


But here's the thing. Rather than worrying too much about individual exercises, it's better to think about the whole program and whether you can make it sustainable.


2 WEEKS VS. 2 YEARS

Who makes more progress?


Person A: Sees a new exercise on IG, put's it in their next workout because it says "this will make you faster". Sees a new exercise on IG, put's it in their next workout because it says "this will make you throw harder". Sees a new exercise on IG, put's it in their next workout because it says "this will make you stronger". But always switches exercises


Person B: Has a simple and time effective program that they train for 2 years and only makes small changes if progress stalls.


Most likely person A won't make progress and since they don't understand what the exercise actually does in the body they might even get injured. (Then they will go to instagram and try an exercise that will fix their injury.) Person B will be able to train consistently for 2 years, get stronger and by that get faster and throw harder. Don't be person A.


SPEND YOUR TIME WISELY

One thing to always remember as a handball player is that you need to be good at playing handball. Therefore, everything you do besides that should be as efficient as possible. You shouldn't spend a minute on an exercise that doesn't help you or where there are better options that will give you more bang for your buck.


That doesn't mean that you should do what you do on the handball field with added weight or train as specific as possible!


Often, especially in the beginning we need to train what we don't do on the court.


OVERLOAD PRINCIPLE

If we look at sports science, we've known for some time what works and what doesn't. The basics of training are pretty well understood. The art of coaching is to apply that science in practice when practice is not as it is in theory. And to do that, there are a few principles we can rely on.


The most important is the overload principle, which states that we need to put stress on our bodies in order to progress and improve our fitness. Applying this training principle leads to long-term adaptations that allow our body to work more efficiently and reach a higher level of performance in the next workout.


This is very important to understand and is one of our fundamental principles in all of our programs.


If you want to improve your bullshit detector check if the exercise can actually be overloaded measurably and continously.


THE 70-20-10 RULE

The 70-20-10 rule is originally a model of learning and development that indicates that people tend to learn 70% of their knowledge from challenging experiences and tasks, 20% from developmental relationships, and 10% from courses and training.


70% of everything we do as athletes or coaches should be things that are proven to work from research and personal experience. 20% can be things which might help. And than we supplement that with 10% of exercises and methods, we think they could work.


DO THE WORK FIRST - THEN START CHASING THE 1%

You might think that you actually need to do something "special" to gain an edge over your competition. In our experiecnce doing well planned strength trainining (consistently) is already more than most are doing. If that helps you to stay injury free and train more handball - there is your competetiive edge. If you then compete at a very high level (1. division) you can start optimising and chasing the last percentages - but you won't find those on social media ;)



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