Handball team timeouts under the scientific microscope  

Team timeouts are an integral part of handball; however, very little research has been done in this particular field.

Heinz Hausmann and his son David, the former an EHF Master Coach and mental coach, the latter also a handball and mental coach, have set out to change this.

The purpose of their newly published study was to determine whether there are any differences in behaviour, timing and possible reasoning between team timeouts taken by the eventual winning teams' coaches and the eventual losing teams' coaches.

A total of 750 matches in four different competitions, Austria’s first and second national men's leagues as well as at the Women’s EHF EURO 2016 and the Men’s EHF EURO 2018, have been analysed.

Their study under the question “Does the current application of team timeouts match the psychological theory of directly controlling activation of athletes?” has been made available to the European Handball Federation.

Download the full study