The Name Of The Game

An age old discussion about the name of the sport of floorball was restarted by the highest of the parties, IFF. This time the issue seems to be twofold: make the name of the sport itself be floorball in every language and make sure everyone uses the hashtag #floorball in discussions related to the sport in any language. The discussion about the proposal has been going on in Twitter for a while now and after the Swedes started talking about it the leading executive of the Finnish Floorball Federation Jari Kinnunen's tweet started the discussion in Finland as well.

Namechange to Floorball? Kansainvälinen Salibandyliitto IFF suosittelee kansallisiinkin twiitteihin käytettäväksi hashtagia #floorball 1/3
— Jari Kinnunen (@kinnuin) January 10, 2014

The discussion sparked this blog post as I felt I could not express my feelings properly in Twitter's 140 characters. Here is how I see the proposal and my views on it as well as some questions that are still left unanswered.

Let's All Use #floorball

The only reason for this I can see is that it would (artificially) inflate the usage of the hashtag and increase the possibility of it trending some day. I can see that as a valid argument only if you have no clue how hashtags are supposed to work, namely as ways to categorize tweets. If everyone who is tweeting about floorball in Finnish or Swedish would use the hashtag its usage would increase tenfold or more but at the same time its usefulness would be killed completely. An American using #floorball to find more tweets about floorball would be presented with a few readable tweets in the midst of tons of tweets he had simply no idea what they mean. He would stop using the hashtag right then and there and he would be left with no way to find relevant content in Twitter.

On the point of getting #floorball to trend in the global Twitter, do you understand how many people are actually tweeting about the trending topics? Justin Bieber has almost 50 million followers (three times as many as there are people in Finland and Sweden combined) and if he posts anything even a little interesting he gets 200000+ retweets and who knows how many favorites. If there's a hashtag in his tweet it will get such a massive amount of visibility there is nothing the people in the tiny nordic countries can do to top it. What needs to happen to get floorball to trend? We need to get the masses in US interested in floorball. But they will use the hashtag naturally because it's in their language!

Let's Change The Name To Floorball In Every Language

 The argument for this has been branding. The secretary general of IFF, John Liljelund, said in his op-ed that there have been problems when trying to talk to people of Central European countries about floorball because they haven't known the word floorball. A loose translation of the relevant paragraph:
One of floorball's problems is the international name of the sport, or more precisely the multiplicity of the names. When we talk about floorball people shake their heads and say they've never heard of the sport. But as soon as someone mentions unihockey or innebandy they go yeah, we used to play that in school.
My question here is this. If you go talk to a Swiss in German do you assume they know English language name of the sport? Why not learn and use the name of the sport in the language used in the area? This has never been seen as an issue in any other sport.

The biggest issue, and the one that hits closest to home, is that floorball as a word simply does not fit into the Finnish language context. It is not a word that can be bent as a word in Finnish has to be. Even if the official name would be changed it would never feel natural and most likely a bastardized version of the word would become de-facto in Finland thus nullifying the efforts to standardize the name.

My View

Both of these proposals seem strange to me. The hashtag proposal is just plain stupid and probably reflects ignorance more than anything else but the name change also sounds weird. I cannot see what the concrete benefits of changing the name would be. There would need to be translations of any materials anyway so translating the name of the sport itself would not be a big deal. Likewise if someone doesn't know of the sport already the name will not make any difference whatsoever.

The only reason for all this I can see is the goal IFF set to itself: get to the olympics sooner rather than later. Now they are running out of real stuff to do and in panic coming up with all kinds of weird suggestions that might help without doing the due diligence and actually first studying the effect of said changes.

Both of these issues would be moot if there was more genuine English language discussion and content about floorball. In my view IFF should, instead of suggesting these weird gimmicks, throw resources at producing such content and sparking such discussions. There's a saying in Finland that goes something like this: the water carried into the well will not stay there.

I am not an IFF insider so I don't know anything more than what has been publicly stated so I might be well off with my conclusion. If you know more, please let me know in the comments below. And most importantly, if you can explain to me how these changes are supposed to help promote the sport concretically I'd be more than happy to change my opinion. What I've heard so far is just wishful thinking with no connection to reality.

Team Selection

The team selection is quite often a controversial thing. Higher profile teams, like national teams, might even spark public debate (or in the case of Montreal Canadiens commentary from the mayor of Montreal) but in every case there will be players and other individuals near the team who are surprised or disappointed in the selection. The old truth is that you can't please everyone and in the end the selection does come down to the subjective opinion of the coaching staff but most often the people who disagree with the team selection just don't have the facts right. In this post I try to explain the process how I see it and in the next post I will talk about how I see an individual player should react to the selection.

There are two major criteria to consider when considering a player for the team and forming the lineups.

1) The expected influence on result
2) The player development

Both of these should always play a part but the weight of each differs depending on the age group as well as the part of the season the team is in. It is a lot different for young kids compared to adult elite but also between the early parts of the regular season and the decisive game in the final series of play-offs. Obviously each coach chooses the weighing individually based on their own experience and viewpoints. Let's look at the criteria more closely.

Influence On Result

The obvious property here is the individual skills of the player in consideration but also how well the player fits into the team and the line. A line is not really good if it does not have a balanced mix of skills and personalities. What the balanced mix is depends on the team and its style of play. The goal of picking players and forming lineups is obviously to create a team that will most likely score more goals than it allows. From a coach's perspective having a line that is able to score two goals and allow only one is a lot better than a line that scores four but allows four as well.

One great tool for evaluating each player's contribution to this scoring balance is the +/- statistic. A player with relatively high value in this statistic is most likely a choice. In floorball only one assistant gets a point but it's quite often what happens before the final pass that makes the play and thus the points league might not be representative of who actually sets up the scoring opportunities. On the other hand how the lines are played might distort the statistics: a player who always plays against the top players of the opponents will obviously have more minuses than a player who plays less minutes and against weaker players.

Of course the coach should have her own opinion on the contribution of each of the available players with or without the statistics but they are nevertheless a good tool.

Player Development

To improve you need to play. Playing with a lot of responsibility and with good players in a high level game accelerates improvement. Sitting at the end of the bench or in the stands is both demotivating and useless in most cases. A regular season game early in the season does very little for a seasoned veteran but it might be very useful for a rookie. On the other hand one player might be better at a certain role but another one's individual skill development might benefit from taking that role in that game. Similarly someone might need to be benched for disciplinary reasons even though being the best choice to a line or a role.

Selecting any team is a complicated process as I was hopefully able to show in this simplified narrative. The coach considers a ton of variables and tries to build the best team for that occasion from the pool of available players and there is a lot of subjective opinion in the selection as everything cannot be objectively measured. Finally, because we are all human even the personal relationship has influence in the selection. All other things being equal it's quite easy to pick a player who is easy to work with over a player who is considered more difficult.

The 5 Things About Goalies Every Coach Should Know

Everybody agrees that goalie is the single most important player in any team. Yet goalies are usually only told to "get in the crease" and coaching them consists of different versions of "be better". This makes no sense but is actually not unexpected since most coaches don't have any idea about being a goalie. In floorball this is even more true than in most other sports as it is so much different from any other position in the game. With my background as both a goalie and a coach I hope to be able to help bridge that gap of need and offering.

In this post I list the five things I consider the most important parts of goaltending that can be understood and taught without having personal experience. There are other important aspects but I wanted to keep this short and sweet so five points it is. Please remember that reading this does not a goalie coach make but it's a step in the right direction and will hopefully be helpful for all the goalies out there who are suffering with little to no guidance.

1) Positioning

The basic rule of thumb is that the goalie's body should always be centered between the ball and the center point of the goal line with ankles just about on the crease line. Being to the side of the ball-goal center line or too deep causes the goalie to cover the goal less. It is also not wise to come too much forward as the distance required to move to a sideways pass becomes greater quickly. That said moving closer to the ball when needed is very important and should be encouraged.

To train this there should be a lot of shots from different directions and distances. The goalie should be encouraged to find points of reference to help her figure out the correct position in all situations. While close to the goal posts the goalie should check the actual position of the post with her hand for guidance. To make all this worthwhile the coach should try to pay attention to the position of the goalie and fix it if necessary. Just stop the action, walk over to the goalie and explain what is wrong with the position.

2) Posture

A good basic posture is one that covers the goal mouth well while still being balanced and ready for movement. Keeping weight low and back relatively straight helps in anticipation of movement. 50-50 weight distribution between ankles and knees is a good rule of thumb here. Preloading muscles helps make all movement explosive. Preloading means that the goalie should not sit on her feet and should not rest her hands on her legs or the floor but instead rely on the muscles to keep steady. To make sure the posture actually covers as much as possible she should try to eliminate most gaps between limbs and torso. It should be noted that no part of the body should be squeezed against any other part of the body because it causes muscle preloading in the wrong direction. 

The coach should pay attention to whether or not the posture covers the goal mouth well and whether the start of any movement seems clumsy or not. Teaching this usually requires constant hand holding to fix the posture every time it seems to go wrong. It should be noted, however, that there is no single best posture for every goalie, it is always partially individual.

3) Movement

If a goalie is good at moving around it usually means she is able to stay in the correct position while finding the correct posture quickly and effortlessly. The movement can be propelled using legs only or using hands to help. Hands should be put on the floor only if necessary but not disallowed completely. 

Training movement is probably easiest here as it mostly only requires planning drills that require the goalie to move. Teaching proper techniques should be left to goalie coaches. All kinds of movement should be in the drills: short, long, fast, slow, forward, backward, diagonal and sideways. Usually this means that there must be a pass before the shot in the drill and changing the endpoints of the pass will change the required type of movement. The goalie should be required to move along with the pass even if she knows where it will end up. It should be noted that moving long distances fast is very, very demanding physically. If your goalie says she is tired after only a dozen or even fewer repeats it usually means exactly that. It is also important to make sure the goalie has proper time to reset to the starting position. Otherwise she will just start cheating and the movement training is lost.

4) Balance

Maintaining good balance through a save or movement is very important. If the balance is lost when moving it is impossible to react to a shot quickly and if the balance is lost on the first save reacting to rebounds is impossible. If the goalie falls forward or backward or if it takes abnormally long to react after a save or movement it means she lost her balance. Also if after moving the goalie needs to "climb" back to the normal posture she most likely lost her balance. 

Being able to hold balance requires good core strength and training it is vital. Any off-rink balance training helps a lot too. To practice the actual movement concentration is very important and sometimes it makes sense to let the goalie concentrate on the balance and let the actual blocking of shots slip to secondary preference. The coach can mostly only encourage concentration but must also pay attention to any cases of lost balance and demand trying as hard as they can to keep the balance while remembering to compliment on progress and trying.

5) Reading The Play

The best goalies always seem to be a step ahead of the actual play as if they were able to read the minds of the opponents. This can be achieved by watching the little details in the players' movements and making educated guesses on what they plan. For example the blade position pretty much reveals if the player is going to shoot or pass. Obviously during a game there simply isn't enough time to consciously look at every player's blade, feet, torso, hands and head to make the guess. Instead, the goalie must rely on the unconscious part of the brain but that part also needs to be trained to focus on the right things.

That training can be done in multiple ways and obviously experience in actual gameplay is the best possible training. Any coach can improve their goalies in this aspect by running drills that have a moment of uncertainty near the shot. Give the field players a choice of shooting or passing, perhaps even a choice between multiple different passes, shot or breakaway. Making the player choose and encouraging inventive choices forces the goalie to read the play and anticipate multiple outcomes.  

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My hope is that every coach would have a basic understanding of what the most important aspects of playing in goal are and how to take advantage of that knowledge. The young and inexperienced goalies can gain a lot from a coach who is actually interested and knows at least the basics of the art of goalkeeping. And to be honest, I think that is all it takes to help a goalie to make at least some progress, no matter what level.

The Most Important Thing In A Drill

My previous post talked about figuring out the most important things to concentrate on as an individual. In this post I will go a little bit deeper and try to explain why each and every drill should be analyzed to get the maximum benefit from doing it. Too often have I seen a player just mindlessly execute drill after drill without ever considering what the point of it all is and then seeing little to no improvement in the skill the drill is supposed to train. This is at least partially always the coach's fault and I must admit being guilty of not explaining the purpose of a drill simply and clearly enough way too often. As usual I look at the issue from the point of view of a floorball coach and player but this one applies to any team sport and for the most part to any sport, even individual sports.

Once again, the most important agent in development is the athlete him/herself. Every drill contains multiple distinguishable parts and goals and the athlete is the only person who, in a normal team sport context, can choose the most important thing in the drill for themselves. Picking one or a few things to focus on is very important because the human cognitive system is not capable of concentrating on many things on conscious level at any time and conscious concentration is the key to development. If it sounds like I'm repeating myself it's because I am. And I will keep repeating it, over and over again until everybody everywhere understands the importance of this message.

For an example of what this means in practice take the simplest drill I can think of in floorball, passing to a team mate from a standing position. No movement involved, single recipient who is stationary and everything in the drill is very stable. In that drill there are at least the following parts: passing accuracy (does the recipient have to move to receive the pass), passing strength (faster is always better), pass quality (does the ball bounce or spin), reception quality (is the ball immediately in control) and general smoothness of execution. When doing a drill like this every athlete should think what should they most concentrate on, what is their achilles heel in that drill. Someone might have perfect passes but struggle when receiving a pass thus making the transition from reception to passing take too much time and effort. They should then focus on the reception part and let the other parts of the drill be handled with best possible subconscious effort.

From coach's point of view there are two important issues. First, there should always be a reason for every single drill. I have seen too many coaches run through too many training sessions with little to no consideration to how the drills executed fit into the bigger picture and what the expected gain from them is. No coach should ever just run a drill just because "that's what we always do" or "I saw this being done by some other team". Minor modifications to drills while keeping the development targets the same also makes a lot of sense to keep the team from getting bored.

The second issue for coaches is communication. When explaining the how, the coach must always explain the why. With younger players the drills are usually quite simple and figuring out the point of the drill is usually also quite simple but the coach must remember the players aren't automatically able to do it and that he/she is also a teacher and if the players are taught to train correctly at a young age they will be able to carry that all the way to the adult leagues with huge benefits on the way. With older juniors and adults the drills usually get more complex and the point might get lost in the intricacies of execution unless communicated clearly. It is also worth mentioning that it is quite a bit easier for the athlete to figure out their own goals and targets if they understand the bigger picture.

To put my message in a nutshell: know what you're doing and never just execute without thinking why. And for the coaches: never run a drill without a reason and remember to communicate the reason and the goals of the drill clearly enough. It sounds so simple when put in writing but it really isn't.

Analyzing Self

The only road to success is constant improvement, this much is known to all. What improvement means and how to achieve it seems not to be clear to everyone though. Improvement means change for the better. Please note the word change as it is the most important one in the previous sentence. What I mean is if you find that something works you cannot just rely on it to work forever. No, you must analyze it and try to find ways to improve it. In team sports context it is certain that the opponent will sooner or later figure out what you are doing and will create their own plan to counter it. If you stubbornly keep using the same thing you end up in the losers' corner.

The most important subject for improvement for anyone is their own self. Even if there are coaches and team mates and moms and dads running around trying to give their advice nobody else can actually facilitate change in an individual but said individual. If you yourself don't believe you need to change you are not going to change and if you have been taught to take whatever the coach says at face value and just oblige to his/her every wish you will never rise above the level of your coach. The key to the best improvement is analyzing your own actions and making your own plan of change according to the analysis. Nobody else but you is watching your every move 24 hours a day. If someone is, call the police.

What analyzing yourself means is taking all the information you can have and then filtering it based on the reliability of the information. Major part of this information is feedback from the coach, as he is most likely the most experienced and has a plan for improvement, but your own feelings and your team mates comments should also play a notable role. Mom and dad might have good advice but, unfortunately, more often don't. After filtering the information you must choose plan of action and stick to it until you see results or lack thereof. When you've chosen the plan yourself you know exactly how to implement it in any possible situation. It makes sense to discuss your plan with the coach and whoever else you think is reliable and experienced enough to be able to help and support you.

The importance of analyzing self is not limited to the players. The coach must also pick apart his/her own actions and try to improve them. Starting from behavior in front of the team in different situations to the team tactics to how said tactics are taught to the team everything must be scrutinized and preferably discussed with the coaching staff to find ways to improve and to avoid getting too deep in one's own little hole.

Remember that there are times when change actually results in worse. It might be a temporary slump caused by the disruption or it might actually be a step to the wrong direction. The situation must then simply be assessed again and a possible action needs to be taken. Don't be afraid of making mistakes when trying to improve, be afraid of stagnation and the fallacy that there is nothing to improve.

How Much Training Is Enough?

It is common knowledge, at least in Finland, that floorball players do not train as much as a true athlete should. In most conversations that at some point reference training and floorball people seem to dismiss floorball players as semi-lazies who might be very skilled in their sport but who don't really pass as a proper athlete when it comes to actual physical condition or commitment. The people holding that opinion are usually much more familiar with other sports but there is a quite vocal group even within the floorball community repeating the same mantra. Does it have any merit and what is the amount of work a "true" athlete should do?

If you just look at the top level of floorball in, for example, Finland, you can see people with widely differing bodies. There are the skinny floorball player prototypes as well as some that lean on the chubby side. Lately, though, the most common body type has converged towards a lean football player type, which in my opinion is the optimal. This change in the average build should tell you something but it is not the whole story. Some people are naturally that with just a little training and others can't reach it no matter what they do.

So, how much should you train to be considered athlete? The consensus currently is twenty hours a week. That's four hours a day, five days a week. Could also be considered half a working week. Time-wise that is a lot. If you have school and/or work to take care of along with a possible family there's not much time left for anything else like seeing friends and partying. Figuring out how to make sure you get that much training in a week can be difficult but let's try.

A floorball team usually is not a professional team and therefore team practice time is quite limited. It is not possible to have practice twice a day, six days a week, as people need to attend the above mentioned school and work. A semi-professional team usually trains four to six times a week together, and with an average training time of two or two and a half hours it totals way below the twenty hours needed. If a team could train eight to ten times a week it would be all there but as it's not possible it is important that the athlete adds to the total by training independently. A missed team training is important to compensate with additional individual training as well.

In many ways the need to train independently is a good thing. When the team trains together it tends to be a mishmash of what the team needs as a whole and personal needs have to subside. Of course in a professional setting the individuals can be taken as individuals quite well. But how should you train to get to that twenty hours a week? There's only so little time and so much to do.

An important thing to remember is what the biggest issues are. If you are physically behind in some certain areas it makes sense to concentrate on those issues without forgetting the big picture. Perhaps an extra high intensity interval run every week or an extra trip to the gym would be appropriate. These must of course be matched with the team training schedule to make sure the more taxing training happens in controlled manner.

Another thing to remember is that most of the extra training needed can be gained by doing ordinary things. If you live about thirty minute bike ride from work then biking instead of taking the bus or driving yourself will gain you five hours of exercise a week. Or if you live in the sixth floor then climbing the stairs each time will gain you a couple of hours too. Unfortunately walking from the couch to the fridge does not count. Add to that a half-hour interval run every morning and you're pretty much at the target.

It is quite important to consider the quality of the training as well. It doesn't really matter how much you train if you don't do it properly. A light jog will not improve your endurance and sitting at the gym watching other people lift weights while doing small talk with the cute girl/guy will not gain you any strength. Training is training even if it's done individually and with nobody yelling you to try harder. You must always keep in mind why you are training in the first place and concentrate on the important things.

Twenty hours a week is a huge amount of time in todays busy lives. Sometimes it might feel quite difficult to achieve that every single week. But remember that it is important. Very important. Floorball as a sport is physically very demanding and giving your opponent the edge by not being fit is not smart if you want to win. And winning is why we train, isn't it?

What Is Floorball?

A question I am pretty sure will pop up sooner or later is "What the heck is floorball?" so let's get that over with first. Other people have done a wonderful job at answering that question so I'll let them do it for you as well.

Please let Juha explain or read from Wikipedia. Or both. Either way, consider yourself informed.