r/Handball

Hey everyone!

I’m a 34‑year‑old coach working with a mixed youth team (ages 12–14) playing in the boys’ division. After a few sessions, it’s clear the team has big differences in skill and experience — some players have years of training, others only just started.This makes planning sessions tricky: certain drills are too easy for some, too hard for others.

I’m looking for practical training ideas, drills, and coaching insights to help develop:

Defensive systems (6‑0, 5‑1, 4‑2 — especially how to teach them to beginners)

Attacking structure (simple patterns that still challenge advanced players)

Individual technique (passing, shooting, throwing — with scalable difficulty)

Team cohesion (getting them to communicate and defend as a unit)

If you’ve coached mixed‑skill youth teams before, I’d love to hear:

What drills worked best

How you balanced difficulty

How you taught defensive discipline

How you structured attacking play for beginners

Any PDFs, videos, or session plans you recommend

I’m really hoping to gather new training material and learn how to help this group defend better and build a more effective attack.

Thanks in advance, excited to learn from this community!

Hi! I’m not sure if this is the right channel for this, but I have a question. I’ve already seen a few similar posts, although my situation is a little different.

I’m a woman and just turned 30. Over the past five years, I’ve had quite a lot going on with university, work, and personal stuff, so I’ve unfortunately neglected sports and exercise quite a bit. As a result, my fitness and endurance are currently pretty average.

Lately, I’ve really been missing being part of a team, and I’ve been thinking about getting back into handball. I played from the age of 6 to 18, but that was obviously quite a long time ago.

I used to mainly play on the wing because I was pretty quick and agile. I was never particularly strong when it came to shooting, though.

Do you think it’s realistic to give handball another try at 30, especially after such a long break? Or am I already too old to get back into it? I live in Germany and we have some clubs around in my hometown.