Nowadays, sport psychology is an integral part of modern preparation not only in the field of elite sports but also in youth training, which plays an important role in the National Academy of Handball.

Sport psychologist Dr. Ágota Lénárt, associate professor and Head of the Sport Psychology Department at the University of Physical Education and her colleagues have been working together with NEKA students in small groups on ten occasions since last autumn. The renowned expert talked to our website about the objectives and the experience so far:

– Our joint work began with a series of tests focusing on athletes' coping patterns, their anxiety, their self-confidence and their relationship with the team. Furthermore, the young people were subjected to a projective test so that additional psychological information could be obtained from their drawing tasks. Of course, we were also curious about the kids' views on what they expected from these activities, irrespective of whether they had ever met a sport psychologist or had ever been exposed to sport psychology. We asked them what seemed for them to be of help, what they could see as problematic, anything worth of improvement or modification.

Following the ten group sessions, we will repeat this series of tests to assess how young people rate these meetings, what they liked or disliked about them, what they could use best, and what else they would need. We plan to continue the work in the next three months in a consultative manner, when we will really be looking at how the matches are evolving, where they are at.

Mental error correction is very important, and if the motivational base needs to be further strengthened, then we deal with it as well, in other words, we want to help them with focus on the given situations.

– How can one summarize the essence of the sessions, what exactly is going on?

– As we have promised, our focus is primarily on learning the different methods. You should think of it as getting a little bundle to be able to set out on the road, and the package will help you solve the various situations on your own. The kids need to learn how to ease their anxiety, how to get themselves into an optimal state for a match, and if they make a mistake, how to mentally correct it, but also, how to turn the attention function on and how to release it, as well as to include strategy and tactics among the methods for the interests of the team. During the sessions, you will learn the basic methods of sport psychology, one general task from each large group, and of course, we will try to do it in a fun and playful way.

In addition to the methods, we went in the direction of personality psychology, on one hand giving the children the opportunity to develop on their own and on the other hand trying to open them up to discover what sport psychology can do for them.

– The publication titled Téthelyzetben (“When there is a lot at stake”) is a real success story. By having its tenth edition published, it is still up-to-date and valuable. 

– We would like to help young people in their self-development, so everyone has received this book. This includes, among other things, relaxation, switching to a resting tone, mental training, imagining the series of movements, and related error correction, modelling, attention focusing, various tasks related to strategy and tactics are all part of it, as these to this day all constitute the most important arsenal of sport psychology.

– The hundred and twenty boys and girls playing handball at the academy are of various age groups, thus based on that have they been treated differently by professionals?

– When we work in team sports, we consider it very important that it must be made possible for the team to be built as well. The groups working at NEKA are at different levels, the smallest of which are, of course, in the form of formation and storm, where everyone is looking for a place and trying to attract attention through individual performance. Older athletes are already figuring out the essence of handball, what they are preparing for, what career path they are planning for themselves, and they have realized that working in a team is more beneficial to everyone than just personal interests. In their situation, things tend to shift towards norm-setting and operation. Whatever the case, it is clear that we also aim to foster team building and further cohesion at each level. Youngsters look a lot up to the big ones, and if a role model mentions the importance of mental status and performing in situations when there is much at stake, then junior athletes will appreciate that and find it important, too. By showing them this pattern, they point out its role and importance for the young ones. It is a process of socialization, and if the adult national team handball players accept and do that, then the little ones will tell us that this is what we want, too.

– Do coaches get feedback on the performance of their team's players after completing the sessions? 

– We not only share that information, what they get from the test, but also what we taught about it. We would like to see the coaches relying on that too, so if someone misses a throw, for example, it would be good if they not just drew their attention to the mistake from a professional perspective, but also that the athlete should correct the error from a mental point of view, the way it has been learnt in the group. It means we want to encourage them to integrate every day not only the physical but also the mental part into their training activities.