Abstract

Team handball is one of the fastest indoor Olympic sports, played in over 150 countries all over the world, but especially in Europe and northern Africa. Players must be athletic, flamboyant, and inventive and, above all, must work together as a team. A team consists of seven players in the field and substitution of players is unlimited. The tasks of the individual players in the team are very specific, depending on their position in the field, but all act both as an attacker and a defender. The goal of this study was to detect the physical demands and physiological aspects of this sport. Method: the websites of all elite German and Swiss handball teams, competing in the 2004/2005 top league competitions in their countries (Handball Bundesliga and Swiss Handball League), were searched for the team players anthropometric data. The average anthropometric teams’ data and the ranking of the team in the national competition were presented in a graph. Also, individual players were observed during a game. Seven years later (2011/2012 competition), the scoring data of the Bundesliga teams were analysed and compared with their ranking in the league. The physiological aspects were estimated from the analysis of games. Results: Although great differences appear, the average player in the 2004/2005 season was heavily build (91,29kg), tall (190cm) and had a good anaerobic capacity level. In 60 minutes, all field players run about 60 times back and forth, change directions 5 times per minute and travel around 6000m. There seems to be a strong correlation between the average bodyweight/height of a team and the team performance in competition in both Germany and Switzerland

Keywords

physiological aspects, handball, switzerland,