Planning is an important part of the coach's work. It is not possible to achieve a good result by just go through a couple of exercises. There must be some sort of structure and meaning in what you are training.

Many clubs plan many years ahead and include the goal of the sport and the economy. I won't go into the economic aspect, as this belongs to another forum.

The long time planning is the basic of the individual training session, and many coaches plan several years ahead. There is yet a certain risk connected with this, as it is not certain, that the conditions for the planning exist several years ahead. New members can replace the team and old members stop. Conditions of employment may interfere.

Following describes a planning for one year.

Before such a planning can be made, there are certain things to consider:


1. The goal
What is the goal for the coming season?

2. Practical conditions
How many training hours to you have?
Is the training based on time on a handball court and/or in a gymnasium?
Which accessories are at your disposal?
How many players do you have?

3. The player material
A very important basis for the planning is to know what kind of player material you have to your disposal. What are the players able to do? What do they want? Are they joggers or competitive players? Must you aim at the physical, technical, tactical or mental aspect? The age of the players? What is their basic knowledge? What kind of defense must be used and much more.

When you have decided you can start with an actual planning, which must show the periods, where there will be trained physically, technically and tactically.

An example is shown below:

Now you must decide which things you must work with in the short time planning in order to fulfill the long term planning. What is to be trained? To achieve a goal, the training must be organized in a way that points at the goal. It is not enough just to know the purpose of the different activities but also know the priority of the activities. If you have decided that the team must learn the collective game you have to make sure that the players are able to lean the collective game. It is of no use to start advanced attack systems if they are unable to make a simple crossover or change of positions. Therefore - the priority must be to lean the basic and then put the things together to make the final collective attack game.

The short time planning must therefore be build so the final result can be achieved.

The short time planning can now be the basis for the actual training sessions.

Here it is an advantage to know, when the players - especially young folks - are most observant and thereby have the greatest ability to lean new stuff.

To this purpose the following can be used:

The line shows, that children brings along a certain amount of interest in learning something and the interest increases after about 10 minutes to maximum. It is now, they are most receptive to new stuff. Hereafter their attention and interest will slowly decrease, but in the last 10 minutes increase a little again.

A training session could be arranged as follows:

Stuff	Place in the training session
Warming up	The first 10 minutes can be used - besides warming up -to increase the player's attention against handball. The warming up can benefit in the many different ball games and plays
Learning new stuff	When the attention is about to reach maximum i.e. after about 10 minutes
Training in shooting and goal keeper training	When the attention is high, as this kind of training requires concentration
Play against 2 goals. Repeating old stuff. Stopping and corrections	When the attention is dropping it is wise to work with known stuff. And the play against 2 goals are motivating and increases the attention
Match	Last. Now we are playing handball and that is what we came for. The coach achieves that all the players afterwards leaves with the impression of being part of the game and look forward to the next training sessions
Talk and practical things.	It is not a bad idea to start and end a session with a little talk. Explain a little about what the training sessions will include. Hand out notes, match-card etc at last, so the players remember to bring such notes home.

Don't use the same kind of order again and again. Especially children like variation in their training. They must think it is funny to join a handball session - so much fun that they return to the next session. Playing handball is playing with the ball and the younger the players are the more play must be included in the sessions.

A training session can easily start with 10 minutes warming up - then 20 minutes match, where the players have been told that they must try to use some of the stuff they have trained the previous sessions. The match will then be played when their attention is at the greatest and you have broken the pattern.

You must however be aware, that even the best planning can fail and it is important that you are able to improvise. If the planning shows that you shall train the goal keepers') and she/they are not present because of illness or other things it is of no use to put a player in the goal and blindly follow the program. Make alterations and put your focus on the field players and take up the goalkeeper training another day.