We are almost at the end of my series about handball. You have learned about the history, the rules, the field, the positioning, the lineups, tactics and historical games and players of handball. To wrap up this series, I would like to teach you a few exercises, that I practiced regularly during my time as a handball player. The exercises are designed to increase stamina, coordination, speed and ball control.

Before the training can begin, we have to warm up. The easiest way to do so, is by a slow run. Here you don’t want to break your speed record. Stay at 50% of your maximum speed and run approximately 40 meters (either from one goal line to the other or from one goal line to the middle line and back) per task. Examples for tasks while running are circling your arms forwards, circling them backwards, touching the ground with every third step, jumping at every third step, running sideways… You can get very creative, but remember, you don’t want to run a marathon. The length of the warm up varies from person to person. A ten years old should do the same warm up as an 18 years old.

The second step of the warm up is the stretching. Stretching is very important, because it prevents cramps and torn ligaments. For this you should think of a system. I always stretched my muscles from top to bottom. You could start by gyrating your Neck, followed by circling your shoulders forwards and backwards, circling your arms forwards and backwards, stretching your fingers by pulling them back, the same with your whole hands, rotate the upper body left and right, leaning as far as possible your upper body left and right, pulling your legs to your butt, pulling your legs to your belly and circling your feet. Every muscle should be stretched for at least 20 to 30 seconds. Most important are the muscles in the arms and the legs. So even if you have already circled your arms while running, it doesn’t hurt to do it again while stretching.

After the warm up and a short drinking break (you shouldn’t sit down again, because you don’t want your muscles to get cold again), we can finally start with the original exercises.

1. The first exercise trains the ball control and the passing skills. It doesn’t matter how advanced your handball skills are. Even in the first league, they use this exercise as warm up before every game. Ball passing.
   For this exercise, you need a partner. Stand approximately two meters away from each other and pass the ball back and forth. Since handball is a sport with a lot of movement, you don’t just stand on the same spot. As soon as the ball is between you and your teammate, you should run one step towards the ball, before catching it. You do another to steps and pass the ball back. You catch the ball while running and pass it back while running. After your pass you run backwards three steps to have enough run-up for the next pass. Remember, you are not allowed to do more than three steps with the ball in your hands. Goal is, to pass the ball at the chest of your teammate.
   1.1 This exercise is very nice, because you are able to vary it. But before doing so, you should be able to do the basic in your sleep. You can vary three things. First, the distance. If you and your teammate make almost no mistakes anymore, you can try to increase the distance from two meters to three, four or five meters. Second, the catch. As I explained in a previous article, you are able to make a zero-step, by catching a pass in your jump and landing on both feet at the same time. A skill, that is very important, but needs a lot of coordination between arms, legs and brain. When you try that out, you will see, that also the passes have to be higher, because the chest of your teammate during a jump is higher than before. The third variation is the pass. You have many different options to pass the ball. The most common pass is the direct pass. The ball flies from your hands directly into the hands of your teammate. You also could try the bounce pass (the ball touches the ground once before it ends up at the chest of your teammate), the looping shot (pass in a high curve) or a pass with your week hand.
2. The second exercise trains your coordination. The ladder. This ladder is not specific for handball. The ladder is a tool, that looks like a ladder, but is out of strings and small bars. Instead, you can also use ropes or outside just paint squares with chalk. The first task, is to step twice in every box. You can start slow and increase the speed. After that, step ones in the first box, twice in the second box, three times in the third box, than twice and once again. If that is still no problem, you can start using the outside of the ladder as well. Start not on the short side of the ladder, but on the long side. Step twice in the square all the way on the left side, then twice under it, twice in the second square, twice under it, and so on. You can try the same with three steps in the box and two steps on the outside. There are unlimited combinations, how you can use the ladder. When you are very advanced, you can also use a ball and dribble while doing exercises with the ladder.

Of course very important at handball, as well as most of the other sports is speed. How do you improve your speed? Through sprints. That is what line runs are all about. You start at the goal line (every line has to be touched with your hand) and sprint as fast as possible to the six meter line. You touch the line, run backwards to the goal line, touch it, sprint to the nine meter line, touch it, backwards to the goal line, touch it and sprint to the middle line. Important is that you use 100% of your speed, because otherwise your speed will not improve. When that is to easy for you, you can either make more sets, so repeat it three times with a short break in between, or you add more lines like the seven meter line or the circle of the middle line. This increases the amount of sprints per repetition.

3. Next, I want to tell you about ball-up. An exercise, that trains your feeling of where the ball is going to go down. It is very easy: Throw the ball up and catch it behind your back. If that works without a problem, you can change the task up and instead of catching it behind your back, you can throw it up, turn 180 or 360 degrees and catch it. You also can throw the ball, sit or lay down and catch it there, throw it up while sitting or laying and catch it while standing or throw it and catch it at a place you chose before (a few meters away). This exercise is especially for beginners.
4. Last but not least, we have the tactics, that have to be train regularly. In one of my previous article, I explained different tactics to you. Everyone of the team has to know, what he or she has to do when a play is called by your game maker. If he calls a cross over, the people who are involved, have to be able to play this cross over in their sleep.

That is already it with my article about exercises, that help you to improve your handball skills. I think, you got a pretty good overview on all the aspects of handball, and hopefully, I was able to ake you a little more interested in this very underrated sport. Most people don’t see what is so nice about handball, because either they have never played it before, or they don’t understand what is going on.