The season starts in a few weeks and your team must be dying to play the first game. Every team works extremely hard in preparation and can't wait to get back on the court. Unfortunately, this initial euphoria often doesn't last that long and after 3-4 weeks in the season, participation in training and morale of the team drops.
Of course it's not easy to keep the tension in the team high for a whole season, otherwise every coach and every team would easily manage it. But it is exactly this very important task that often decides whether you achieve your goals with your team or not. That's why I want to give you 6 concrete hacks that you can use to keep your team spirit high and achieve your goals together!
Hack #1 - Set goals before the start of the season, together with your team
Ideally, your team consists of 12-18 players and with such a large number of people, it is no wonder that not everyone has the same goals. Some might just be into handball to get some exercise and hang out with their friends, for others there's no other goal possible than the championship. In addition, as a trainer, you also have your own goals, of course. For this reason, it is fundamentally important that you and your team set goals that each individual player can identify with. If one of your players does not identify with the goals, then later on they will lack the motivation and passion to work towards them. That's why the goal-setting process really needs to involve everyone within the team.
The earlier you set clear goals with your team, the better. From my point of view, the goals should already have been set at the start of the season preparation, so that every single training session in the preparation is already dedicated to the goals. If that's not the case for you at the moment, then you don't need to worry and wait until next season. It's never too late to set goals. You probably know the saying "Better late than never" and so it is with goals.
Now let's talk a little more about the goal setting process. This is best done at the coach level and at the team level at the same time. Give your players the task of relaxing and thinking about team goals and individual goals. At the same time you think about team goals and individual goals for each of your players, either alone or if you have a coaching team, then together with your coaching team. Then you set up a meeting with your team, e.g. before a training session or just on a normal evening in a bar or restaurant and you talk about the goals. It's not important that you push through your own goals, but that in the end 1-2 team goals emerge that really every player and every member of the coaching team can identify with.
Hack #2 - Set Team Goals and Individual Goals
Any coach can set a simple team goal for their team. But in order to really get every player involved and improve from training session to training session and from game to game, you have to take a little more time and immerse yourself in the world of individual goals. You set individual goals with each player individually and adapted to their situation and position. For some players it can already start with the participation in training, that he manages to be present at 80% of the training sessions. Another player, who is always there anyway and plays on the left wing as a lead player, could, for example, have a shot percentage as an objective. In the whole season he achieves a shot percentage of at least 75% or in 10 games he achieves a shot percentage of at least 80%. For a defender it can also be the number of blocks or steals or the tackle rate.
At this point, you and the players are free to get creative, as long as you set goals that really improve the player. Think about which goal in the individual area has the greatest influence on achieving the team goal.
Of course, you can not only set individual goals together with your players, but also for yourself. Here are a few examples to get you into thinking:
In 10 games you manage to use each player for at least 5 minutes and win the game.
You plan 90% of all training sessions a day in advance.
You give 10 minutes of stability training twice a week to prevent injuries.
You do a detailed opponent analysis and game preparation for 8 games.
If you set the individual goals in such a way that they support the team goals, then you are well on the way to achieving all goals together with your team and having a successful season.
Hack #3 - Write down the goals on a poster
Just by writing down the goals, we increase the probability that we will achieve them. You should work with your team to create a poster that captures the team's goals, and on which everyone can write down their own goals. For example, you can stick a team photo in the middle of the poster and then write down the goals around it. Finally, each team member should sign the poster with their name in order to creating a conscious bond with the goals.
This addresses also the subconscious of each individual player, since he has made his own decision to achieve the goals and has committed himself to doing so with his signature. Now, whenever your players see the poster, they feel a direct connection to the recorded goals. This brings us straight to…
Hack #4 - Always keep the goals in mind
A season can drag on quite a bit... if you add the season preparation, then we are usually in action from July to May, almost the whole year. Accordingly, one of the most important tasks for you as a coach is to keep the mood in your team up for the entire season. If you're in a hot championship race from start to finish, then it's obviously a lot easier than if you're slouching between 4th and 7th place in the secured middle field. But since we don't want to leave the mood of our team to external factors, but rather take responsibility for it ourselves, we always have to keep our goals in mind.
So how can you always keep your goals in mind so that your team is still on fire in February and the training participation scratches the 110% mark?
With 2-3 simple tricks, it's a lot easier than you think. Make sure that the poster with your goals is always present. It hangs in your dressing room during practice so players can see it when they change. A quick glance is enough to refresh the promise that goes with the poster. Of course, it will also be hung up in your dressing room at every home game and taken to every away game in order to place it there in the dressing room. If you now give speeches before the game or training, you can always point out your goals and point to the poster. As a result, it is not only in the subconscious but also in the conscious mind.
In addition, you can also point out the goals from time to time during ongoing training, e.g. when things get a bit sluggish and the motivation needs to be refreshed a bit.
A story or an image for your team can also be particularly helpful, e.g. for our men's legendary European Championship title in 2016, the "Bad Boys" (German national team). You can create an image for yourself, write your own story and always keep it in mind with a short slogan. We see that very often in the women's Bundesliga (1. Division women in germany), for example, where we have teams like the Wildcats, Flames and Vipers.
Hack #5 - Measurability & regular feedback
A fundamentally important characteristic of effective goals is measurability. We need goals that are precisely measurable in order to be able to evaluate our progress and the achievement of goals at all. At this point I would like to show you a very well-known goal that many coaches proclaim, although it is not measurable: "We want to have the best defense in the league". What many coaches want to say with that and what a much better formulated goal is: "We want to have conceded the fewest goals at the end of the season".
You probably noticed the difference very quickly. It's impossible to measure whether we really have the best defense in the league. Maybe we're the only team playing without resin and that's why we rarely concede goals in every home game. Or we play extremely slowly and that's why teams against us have significantly fewer attacks. So we can't really measure whether we have the best defense in the league or whether we're getting few goals for other reasons. The goal "We want to have conceded the fewest goals at the end of the season", on the other hand, is very easy to measure. You can theoretically look at the table after each game to see if you're on the right track to reaching the goal. And at the end of the season, every team has the same number of games and you have the result in black and white, whether you have reached your goal or not.
So if you have set really specific and measurable goals with your team and with your individual players, then you should provide regular feedback. This way you can make sure that you are always on the right path. For example, a shot percentage can be given as feedback after each game. You can look at the training participation with your players every month to draw a conclusion. Just look at your goal to decide on a matching feedback rhythm.
Hack #6 - A roadmap to the championship
One tool I've particularly enjoyed over the past few years is a championship roadmap. This is also a poster on which a path with wavy lines is drawn from the start of the season to the championship. This way, the teams we played against were listed in order. So first the opponent from the 1st game, then from the 2nd game etc...
After every game we went into the dressing room and when we won, we chose the most important player of the day, who then pasted our club logo over the name of the opponents team. As a result, we always had a precise path in mind, which games were still ahead of us and how the previous games had turned out.
Creating such a roadmap is really not difficult and if you and your team aim for the championship, then give it a try. I liked it so much that it's still stuck in my head years later.
There was a lot to implement in this article. If you really want to be successful with your team, then step out of your comfort zone and implement the steps in this article. You will not regret it :)
Thanks for reading and see you soon on the court,
Malte