Floorball – Four steps building up stress or arousal

Connected to personality you can also talk about stress or arousal, how you are, perceive and react on things, will affect the level of stress or arousal.

Stress can be described as a process with four steps that will lead to a particular end.
Step 1 – Environmental demand, competition, new skill etc. (physical and psychological)
Step 2 – Individuals perception of the environmental demands. The perception of the demands will vary between your atheletes (Amount of psychological or physical “threat” perceived)
Step 3 – Response, if your player feel an imbalance between demands and capability, this will create arousal, anxiety, muscle tension, attention changes
Step 4 – Behavior (performance or outcome)

Floorball practices for 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 years old players

Stress occurs when there is a perceived imbalance between physical and psychological demands and the individuals capability to meet the perceived demands. Too high levels of stress will affect your floorball players performance, but there are also research done, showing an increased risk for injuries.

The more important the floorball event/match is, the more stress provoking it will be. Mental training and feedback can be used on each step (1-4) to adjust the level of stress and to help your player to perform at his/her best. Some players need help to lower the “stress level” (step 1-4), when others might need the opposite, meaning they need to be “stressed” up a little bit to perform at their best (step 1-4).

Floorball – Waterboy Leadership

We are a team

The statement “First-teamer will not be a correct word. I need all of you. You need each other. We are a TEAM.” That statement shows how important José Mourinho sees each player in his team. To not be eaten up by the competition from other teams and unhealthy competition within the team, he is creating a culture, where everybody feels and knows that they are an important piece in the team puzzle. Each player should act like a leader regardless of the rank or position within the team, with this I’m meaning the players take responsibility for their own role, results and therefore also for the teams results, they are leaders from their position, during practices, games and outside football. Each player is part of the leadership team within the team, no role is a small role!

Floorball feedback, value it

Maybe this is why Samuel Eto’o accepted to play in a “not central” role his last season 2010 in Internazionale and take a big defensive responsibility, instead of beeing in a central role, like he is playing now.
With this vision everyone needs to show “leadership”, take responsibility for the results, inspire teammates and therefore also act in a positive way towards their teammates, be a leader. No matter what your position is within your team within the team (defense, midfield, forward or a waterboy…), how old you are, what earlier experience you have, you have the power of showing leadership, no one can take that away from you if, you decide to do it. Make your players aware of this, this is what Mourinho is doing.

“For example, in my team I love to have Geremi on the bench because he’s a low-profile player who is ready to help, ready to fight for the team, ready to do the job I want him to do.” /José Mourinho

“Why drive Aston Martin all the time, when i have Ferrari and Porsche as well? That would just be stupid” /José Mourinho

You are a key player

Positive culture creates a positive spiral and positive spiral creates positive results. Remember every role is an important role! Think of an orchestra, one false tone from somebody and… or think of this example.

Xvxn if my computxr is old, it works vxry wxll, xxcxpt for onx tangxnt kxy. You could think it wouldn’t affxct this txxt, but somxhow it’s dxstroying it. Somxtimxs you might say to your sxlf that your xfforts arx not visiblx, you arx just onx small pixcx in thx puzzlx and no onx will rxcognizx if you don’t do your bxst, but bxlixvx mx, your xfforts will makx diffxrxncx, sincx a txam will nxxd all of it’s playxrs in order to function and pxrform wxll. So nxxt time you think your xfforts will not makx diffxrxncx, rxmxmbxr my old computxr, you arx a kxy playxr and your xfforts will makx diffxrxncx!

Youth Floorball and Hockey – Can these be combined?

Floorball and hockey will be the theme for a couple of posts and I rather talk about floorball and hockey (combination / co-operation), than floorbal vs. hockey (competition), even if I will be forced to use floorball vs. hockey as well.

This first post will be a general post about hockey and floorball and the first question is, can these two sports floorball and hockey benefit from each other?

I think they absolutely can, floorball and hockey are very similar sports when it comes to required technical skills, tactics, game understanding and systems. The first and hard practical obstacle will be in combining these two sports, since both are played during the same season (winter). Therefore both floorball and hockey will be “fighting” to get the same athletes/youth players into their teams.

Hockey and Floorball practice game together

I think co-operation between hockey and floorball is the key. At least in the teams I’m engaged in “we” have managed to do this, hockey practices are mainly on Mondays and Thursdays and floorball practices are on Wednesdays, co-operation instead of competition.

I will continue to dig into this theme in several posts, from a coach perspective, a player perspective and a parents perspective.