The most important assignment for at children/youth trainer must - besides teaching the athletes to play handball - be to teach the athletes the positive aspects in the sport. If they learn to think on the positive and focus on the effective, they will be better equipped to strive for their goal.

Children think logically and the more abstract way of thinking comes later on. If you ask a child if it ever have had a day, where it left the day on the wrong side of the bed (Danish expression when everything goes wrong), the reply could very well be "No, my bed is standing against a wall and I can only leave it at the same side." That is why the planning of the training must take this way of thinking into consideration. The younger the players are the more evident and clearly the instructions must be. Encouragement and praise are keywords.

Motivation
When the children choose a sport, the most important motives are the following

To have fun
Experience success
Win the games
Learn and improve skills
Be with friends
Learn new friends
Be in better shape

which means that the coach must focus on this by:

Making the training funny and exiting
Develop a realistic view on success
Learn to loose and win
Create possibilities to develop
Create cohesiveness
Create possibility to get in better shape

The planning of the training during the puberty period (8 - 14/15 years) must take the players interest and abilities into consideration. In the beginning the assignments must be simple and easy and not too challenging, as the exercises quickly can be to difficult There must be a lot of successful experiences. But there come a time where the players suddenly stops while they before just became better and better. It now requires more to make them go on, and it can be an advantage to give them assignments - both as an individual and as a team - which they cannot cope with at first, but which are challenging to them. If they have obtained the understanding that the effort is the key to success, an understanding of the connection between responsibility and consequence have been obtained, and they are ready to move on developing their skills. Many players develop a competition against themselves to learn more and more and to be better and better in the skill of playing together with their teammates. Unfortunately others chooses to give up, at they feel that the required effort does not match their interest in the chosen sport or sport as a whole. This is clearly seen in the numbers of players in the youth department in a handball club. It can be teeming with players in the age of 9-11 years but the older teams contains a smaller and smaller number

The environment
The environment the children experience while training and playing games plays a great part in their continuous interest in the. The training must at best contain all the motives, which makes them interested in handball. One of the motives is to have fun, but there are some factors, which counteract these intentions - the ambitions of the coach and the parents. All coaches want to show that the team gets better and win more under his management and the parents want to be proud of their children. If the reactions towards errors and other things (loosing the game) are too negative, a "performance fear" arises with the players. That fear will cause the players to make greater errors and faults and at last the fear is so great, that fear of making errors is greater than the joy of making a good performance and then the questions is: It the sport still joyfully?

It might be a good idea to consider the following questions:
- How often did you react on a "good game" followed by praise?
- On errors/misunderstandings occurred did you react with encouragement or encouragement and corrections?
- How often did you confirm the players' efforts, encouragement between themselves, display of team spirit?

Hopefully the replies are: Pretty often.

Further following can be asked:
- How well did your players perform today?
- How positive an experience was the training/game for the children?
- How positive was it for you

The replies must be in the positive way, as the opposite indicates a bad mood.

Most of the players are doing it at good as possible, and if that is not satisfactory for the coach or the parents, and if there is no basis to praise and encourage the players, the ambitions with the team is most likely too high.


Competition
Children compete as soon as they are able to think the thought. They measure themselves every day and compete in running, jumping, throwing or who makes the best drawing in the school and more

In the world of sport the competition becomes more visible and complex and more are involved. It is not enough to win a game - you must win several games to win the tournament and the training reflect more or less that this must happen.

But it is important not to forget that one of the most important motives for children's participation in sport: To have fun. Of course it is fun to win, but it is also fun to participate in a match, and if the match is lost it could still be fun. If you teach the children that it is only about winning, you work with something you cannot control. If you teach the children to use, what they can control themselves - their own effort - they can never loose. And when you have seen a game, where the opponents makes one score after another and the score is 15 - 0, and then suddenly one of your own players scores a single goal and observe the joy on your team - well, then they have had a lovely experience and you must remember to praise them for not giving up, but to have continued to do their best.

The attitude towards competition grows with the age and the older the players become the more important it becomes to win. The interest to win exceeds the interest of doing ones best and bad excuses are used. As they are more aware of their own abilities and compare themselves with the others, a lacking effort from one of "the good players" can be excused because they had to play with "lesser good players" who could not catch their balls or make a decent pass. The "lesser good players" suddenly remember a sore knee, which caused them to make a bad performance. Under those circumstances the team spirit must be strong enough to prevent the total social breakdown on the team. .

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When you choose to train youth then ask yourselves with the thought on the above mentioned: What is my goal if I choose to work with children and youth?

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