Each floorball game is a practice game, until you earn your living on it

Stress affects floorball performance

Performance connected stress arousal

The figure above is showing the performance of two equal floorball players (capacity, when they are at their best), the difference is on their stress levels. A players optimal performance might be in the beginning, middle or at the end.

The first line/player will perform well or at his/her best with lower demands and stress level, while player two needs and can play at his/her best with high demands and expectations.
Do you know these curves for your players? Who will perform well in critical situations and who will be at their best with low expectations? These curves are just two examples, you would probably have as many different lines as you have players.

Floorball practices, games and drills

Each floorball game is a practice game, until you earn your living on playing floorball. That’s a quite good attitude to have, to keep the right perspective on things and situations, to try to keep the stress level on an acceptable level.

FAQ Floorball Drills for 6-10 year olds

Question: Hi Jukka, I am in Calgary working at Hockey Canada’s head office and we just ordered the drill book 6-10 yr olds..is it a hard copy drill book or is it an ebook?  Just wondering when we will get it?
Thanks
Anthony Herrington

Floorball practice drill dribbling

Answer: It’s an eBook, and its delivered “manually” after payment, through e-mail (usually after a couple of hours, like with your order), so there is not a direct download link.
Best regards,
Jukka
http://www.flrball.com

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 – Run the extra mile on practice

If you assume that the floorball teams on certain level practice the same amount of practices each week, lets say four times, and you want to outcompete your opponents, you can choose to increase the amount of floorball practices or work on improving the quality of your floorball practices and drills, in order to “run away” from the other teams.
Let’s have an theoretical example, 4 (floorball practices) x 31 (weeks, length of the season) = 124 floorball practices during a season. Each practice contains 5 floorball drills, 5 X 124= 620 drills. Each floorball drill is repeated 5 times per player during the floorball practice, 5 X 620=3100 repetitions.

Floorball 1 vs 1 practices drills

Instead of increasing the amount of floorball practices you could set up a goal that each player will run 3 meters extra every floorball drill, this would mean 3100 drills X 3 meters X 20 players = 186000 meters. Your team would with this small improvement run 186 kilometers extra during the floorball season, the result should be visible in the end of the games or at the end of the season, you would have physically and psychologically strong floorball players, they will take the extra steps needed for success. Instead of running, you could let your floorball players practice a feint while waiting. 10000 repetitions will automatize the move, 10000 hours will make you master of it!

Floorball youth practices drills and training

The power of small steps

You can of course use the same principle for improvements in general or your work towards common goals. Let’s say you can do 3 small improvement steps each day, after a month you have 90 small improvement steps and after 6 months 540. If you can make each floorball player in your team to take these small improvement steps you will have 540 X 20 players = 10800 small improvements in your floorball team.

Smart Youth Floorball Players

Smart and well trained floorball players are a floorball coaches best assets. Well-conditioned smart floorball players will beat less intelligent, yet bigger and stronger players almost every time! If a floorball coach trains the minds of his floorball players while he is drilling them, he will be rewarded in the long run.
The best time to engage your floorball players’ minds is when you are drilling their bodies. This goes like a hand in a glove with the idea of keeping your drills fun and challenging (a post couple of days ago)!

Multidimensional floorball practices and drills

Work on several things at once in your floorball drills (multidimensional practicing), but get the basics in place before adding more dimensions to the floorball drills.
While the assistant coaches are observing technique performance, a smart head coach will be drilling his floorball players minds, teaching them game situations, preparing them to think for themselves when the time comes. Never waste an opportunity to succeed, and make a point of never wasting time.

Floorball practice warm up

Why this floorball drill or practice?

Know why you are running the drill! You can use the leadership model on this page and apply it on your drills and practices (why, goal, how, result and feedback). Don’t just find some floorball drill in an old floorball coaching manual and decide that you can waste twenty minutes on it at the next practice. Locate floorball drills that will improve what your players have been doing poorly or strengthen even more what you are strong in. If your players are making poor tactical decisions during the floorball games, find floorball drills that will teach them to think about that specific game situation. There is no sense in running them through another floorball drill that teaches them something that they already know by heart.

The floorball drills found on this page are created to develop your players’ skills in game like practices and drills.

So, keep your floorball drills fun and challenging, keep your players focused and challenge them to think ahead. Do this, and you will be a successful, floorball coach!