The floor will beat you every time. This sage advice comes our way in almost every issue of Handball magazine. What it means is that a player’s continued attempts of low-percentage kill shots will result in defeat.
Making a defensive choice, Tony Healy opts for a pass in his match quarterfinal against David Chapman at the Nationals in Austin, Texas. Photo by Keith Thode.
But “the floor will beat you every time” means more to the advanced player than it does to the beginner. In fact, the more advanced, the more the statement means. At the highest levels, the ability to execute shots is very even, and shot selection takes over as the determining factor in who wins and who loses.
So call this an advanced bit of instructional advice. Beginners will still benefit, but please realize a higher priority for the newer player is shot technique.
The beginner should learn to stroke the ball with solid fundamentals — to hit the kill, the pass and the serve. The beginner can agonize over shot selection later. Now is the time to play and enjoy the relative freedom from the subtleties of choosing between offense or defense, kill or pass.
Since so many handball experts talk about the importance of shot selection, there must be something to it. Furthermore, if you have any doubts of the importance, watching the pros will dispel them. The way handball is played at the highest level, shot selection is paramount.
Although the problem is often raised, solutions are rarely given. Usually some vague advice recommends that you shoot good shots while on defense and certain other good shots while on offense, or that you practice “percentage handball,” whatever that means.
The trouble with the advice is that most of us don’t know what “good” or “percentage” shots are, and no amount of explanation can teach us what is safe and what is risky.
Let’s face it: Most of us learn to play handball by simply playing. We find out what works and doesn’t work by trial and error. We formed habits early in our playing careers. These habits were usually determined by our physical characteristics, so a big person learned to hit hard pass shots, while the short, quick person learned to be a shooter, and a person with lots of stamina became a retriever. Those habits were reinforced with winning performances, and soon we had our “game.”
So when someone tells you to use percentage shots, your mind says, “Yes, that sounds logical and right.” But when you get back on the court, your old habits take over. The pressure of the game and the good feeling you get when you take your best shot removes the mental assent you gave to play percentage handball.
So how do you break out of these self-defeating playing patterns?
Try a new game: Determine before you start that in every rally you will hit five defensive shots before you attempt one offensive shot. When you are serving, start counting after the serve, because the serve is an offensive shot. Don’t worry about what kind of defensive shots to take. For starters, just don’t attempt to kill the ball. Consider every shot except the kill to be a defensive shot. After taking five defensive shots, start looking for the rally-ending kill opportunity.
Don’t relax. Just because you are not killing the ball doesn’t mean you are on vacation. You have to work just as hard to hit good defensive shots as you do to hit good offensive shots. Your opponent will soon catch on that you’re not trying to kill much today, and he will start laying back for your passes and ceiling shots.
Don’t let this tempt you. Stick to your plan; it will just be better practice.
A couple of things will surely happen:
You will find very few rallies last long enough for you to attempt a kill. Someone will err first. If you are hitting well-executed defensive shots, you will find your opponent will frequently hit the ball into the floor, far more than you would have imagined.
You will also find there are a wide variety of defensive shots from which to choose. This is one of the main reasons this type of game will improve your shot selection. You don’t have to worry about choosing among many different shots. All you have to remember is not to attempt a kill until you have hit five shots.
The reason for recommending this game is that you can’t learn shot selection until you learn the many shots at your disposal. This game will help you explore the uncharted regions of shot variety.
You may want to start by playing this new game with opponents you usually beat handily. At first it will even things out. Later, as you begin to hit good defensive shots, you will beat him worse than ever.
Then it’s time to try your new “game” against better players, or limit yourself to just one type of defensive shot against the player you’re handling with ease. In one game you might hit only ceiling shots for defensive shots, and in the next only wraparounds. You’ll soon know what your best shots are and which ones need to improve.
The idea is to get you thinking about the shots you use regularly. What you use — and use effectively — may still be determined by your physical capabilities, but you will find you have a much wider range of shots than you realized. And you will learn to use them all more effectively.
Keep your eye on the ball at all times — and follow it with your nose as demonstrated by Killian Carroll. Photo by Keith Thode.
If you’re like everyone else, you’ve been looking for an easy fix or two to improve your game.
Unfortunately, handball is such a complex game that very few rules of thumb are true all the time. However, some ploys, habits and plays work almost all the time. Consider adding an item or two at a time and we’re sure you’ll pick up a point or two en route to getting 21 first.
1. If you’re having trouble keeping your eyes on the ball, follow it around the court with your nose. Start following it with your nose all the way into your hand as your stroke the ball, and you’ll be amazed at how many hand errors you won’t be making.
2. Reach back with your hand as you backpedal in the court so you don’t have to take your eyes and nose off the ball to find out if you’re too close to the back wall.
3. Stay down on your follow-through to keep your serve off the back wall. Follow through so your stroking hand points to the spot on the front wall where you’re aiming your serve.
4. Use the Z-serve to start an important match, since it doesn’t matter if your butterflies cause you to overswing.
5. Also, use the Z-serve for your second serve after a fault. The Z doesn’t have to land near the short line to keep it from caroming off the back wall.
6. If you run sprints to improve your speed on the court, run a few while backpedaling. No matter how much you practice running forward, you won’t improve that much since you’ve been running forward all your life. Unless you’re a defensive back in football, you haven’t come close to reaching your potential for backpedalling speed.
7. No matter what stroke you use or where you’re aiming, move toward the target as you stroke the ball.
8. After you step into the service zone, take a second or two to visualize how your serve will travel after you hit it. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much more accurate you’ll become.
9. Your opponent’s front leg is the key to where he or she is aiming and how low the shot will go. The angle of the shot will be determined by the weight transfer, and you’ll get a head start on the height of the shot by the amount of bend in the front knee. If your opponent is thinking pass, there won’t be much bend. If it’s a kill attempt, the front knee will drop.
Only a handful of players can consistently execute kill shots from behind their opponents. If it doesn’t roll out, it will be a setup. Photo by Keith Thode.
10. Use the corner kill when your opponent is behind you in the deep court.
11. Use the straight kill when your opponent is in the front court with you but off to one side or the other. Hit to the opposite side.
12. Forget killing from deep court.
13. Whenever time allows, visualize a successful shot before you hit the ball.
14. Center court, as in “get back to the center after you hit the ball,” is really deeper than cutting the court in half, or 20 feet from the front and back walls. All of us can move forward faster than backward, and we need to step forward into every shot.
15. When in doubt, go cross-court with your shots. The margin of error on cross-court shots is much greater than down-the-line shots that can tend to come off the back wall.
16. Hit your pass shots so they bounce behind the short line. Otherwise the floor will slow them up, and your opponent will be able to track them down.
17. Address angling shots on an angle. Just as you face the side wall to hit a ball traveling parallel to that wall, address the flight of balls traveling on an angle with the same theory.
18. Allow yourself only one kill attempt. If your opponent picks it up, pass him or her on the next shot, since a pass will probably score while another kill attempt will likely be picked up too. The rule: Rework the rally, just as good basketball teams do.
19. When receiving service, don’t try to win the rally until you’ve successfully changed positions with the server.
20. Call your opponent’s shots before they swing (though not out loud, as that’s an avoidable). Thus, you will truly be anticipating where you should be on the court.
21. Run to a position on the court a step or two deeper than where you think you will make contact with the ball. This is called the pre-shoot position and where you’ll be able to step into every shot.
When killing the ball, get low, get set and remember to follow through with your swing. Photo by Matt Krueger
Equipment bonus: When you find a pair of court shoes you really like, buy a few pair as they will be replaced by a new model when you need another pair.
Practice bonus: Learn to hit a shot in its simplest form — for example, from close to the front wall. Once you’ve become adept at the easy version, move farther away from the target and so on until you’ve duplicated a game situation. If there’s ever a doubt as to how you should hit a shot or serve, throw the ball and take a mental picture (or video) of how you’re throwing and where you’re letting go. That will be how you hit it.
