Beyond the National Team Window: How the DHB Connects Performance Data

The German Handball Federation (DHB) works with its players for around nine weeks in non-Olympic years and up to 15 weeks in Olympic years. The rest of the time, athletes train and compete with their clubs. That raises a fundamental question: How do you build continuity when you only see the athlete for a limited part of the year? For Dr. Simon Overkamp, Head of Strength & Conditioning at the DHB, the answer starts with understanding what is happening beyond the national-team window. 

A national-team camp provides only a snapshot of an athlete’s season. By the time players arrive, they already bring weeks or months of training, competition, travel, recovery and life outside sport with them. That context matters when deciding what an athlete needs next. The DHB therefore combines information from the club environment with data collected during national-team camps. Individual baselines, subjective readiness and objective movement data help create a more continuous picture of each athlete rather than treating every camp as a fresh starting point. 

“We can only manage what we measure.” — Dr. Simon Overkamp, German Handball Federation 

For Overkamp, monitoring is not about collecting data for its own sake. The purpose is to understand the individual athlete well enough to make more informed decisions on training periodization and game preparation when the national team has only limited time with them. 

One of the distinctions Overkamp emphasizes is the difference between load and demand. Load describes the stimulus an athlete receives: minutes played, distance covered, jumps, strength work or other measurable inputs. Demand is the effect that stimulus has on the athlete. The same training stimulus does not necessarily represent the same demand every day. How an athlete responds depends on factors such as fatigue and readiness. 

That is why the DHB combines objective measurements with subjective information. Athletes complete daily readiness questionnaires covering factors such as sleep, soreness, mood and stress, while objective data provides insight into what they have actually done. Crucially, the comparison is individual. Rather than asking whether one player is doing more than another, the DHB looks at how an athlete’s current demands compare with their own history. The result is a more useful question than simply asking whether a number is high or low: Is this normal for this athlete, at this point in the season? 

This individual approach becomes particularly valuable when an athlete is returning from injury. In one example discussed during the webinar, practice and match tracking data obtained from the German Handball Bundesliga (HBL) showed that an athlete returning from an ACL injury was still unable to reach around 95% of their previous maximum speed despite training and competing. 

For a wing player, maximum speed is an important part of the physical requirements of the position. The data therefore provided an additional piece of evidence that the athlete had not yet fully regained the physical capacity required for the role. The point was not that a single number determines selection. Rather, the deviation from the athlete’s own baseline prompted a closer look at what was behind it and whether further preparation was needed. That is where monitoring becomes useful: not as the decision itself, but as information that helps explain what may be happening and supports the next training or match intervention. 

Continuity also depends on what happens between national-team camps. The DHB receives the Handball Bundesliga’s player and ball tracking data provided by KINEXON Sports during the season and uses it as part of its ongoing monitoring process. During national-team periods, portable movement monitoring adds another layer of information, particularly around high-intensity mechanical demands such as jumps, high-speed running and changes in speed. 

The process works in both directions. 

Club and national-team staff need to communicate, understand the context behind the numbers and ultimately work toward the same objective: understanding what the athlete needs across both environments . Data collected during national-team periods can also be shared back with clubs, helping them understand the state in which an athlete returns. For Overkamp, that relationship is not simply about data access. It requires communication, trust and a shared understanding of what the information is meant to support. 

The same principle extends to training itself. National-team windows are short, schedules are dense, and athletes may arrive with very different levels of fatigue and recent match exposure. That makes the question of how much training to provide just as important as deciding what to train. 

“How much of something you do is sometimes even more important than knowing what to do.” — Dr. Simon Overkamp, German Handball Federation 

For the DHB, this means using monitoring to individualize training without losing the team environment. Players may participate in the same practice while receiving different amounts of exposure depending on their recent load and individual needs. The objective is not simply to add more training. It is to find the amount that supports performance while protecting the athlete’s ability to remain available. 

The DHB’s approach highlights a broader challenge for national-team performance management. When an organization controls only a small part of an athlete’s season, it cannot rely on national-team data alone. A meaningful performance picture has to connect what happened before camp, what is happening during camp and what the athlete needs when they return to their club. 

That means combining individual history, subjective readiness, objective movement data and communication between the people responsible for the athlete. The technology is one part of that framework. The bigger goal is continuity: understanding the athlete well enough to make more informed decisions around training periodization, return-to-play, and generally player availability, even when the environment changes. 

Want to see how the DHB puts this approach into practice? In our webinar, Dr. Simon Overkamp shares how the federation connects club competition data, individual baselines, readiness and athlete monitoring across the national-team cycle. 

Watch the recording