The Mental Game: Cognitive Training, Creativity, and Game Intelligence in Handball

Top handball athletes Andy Schmid, Uwe Gensheimer, and Domagoj Duvnjak not only perceive everything that is happening around them, but they can also foresee the next game situations, allowing them to anticipate their opponents and win games. This mental speed sets the foundation to create master performances in extremely complex situations. This book offers both a theoretical framework in which anticipation, perception, attention, and memory processes play a big role in training as well as diagnostic tools and useful examples for training cognitive abilities. To round out training, the authors also include more than 70 game activities which can be incorporated into practice to train players' cognitive skills and improve their mental game.

Prof. Dr. Daniel Memmert is executive head of the Institute of Exercise Training and Sport Informatics at the German Sports University Cologne. His main research areas are movement science, sport psychology, and sport informatics. He holds trainer licenses in soccer, snowboarding, and alpine skiing, and he is the author of books on modern sport training. In addition, he cooperates with national and international professional clubs, the German national team, and DAX companies. He organized the first international master's degree in Game Analysis. Prof. Dr. Stefan König is professor at the Sports Center as well as director of the Research Center for Secondary Education at the Weingarten University of Education. His scientific work focuses on training science (effects of training processes in school, recreational, and health sports); school sports research (effects of physical education, school sports concepts, sports teacher research); sports game research (mediation concepts, tactics, leadership behavior); and research methodology (mixed methods research).