From Data to Decisions: Six Key Takeaways from Elite Handball Performance Practitioners

That question formed the foundation of our last KINEXON Sports webinar, ​“From Data to Decisions: Applying Player Performance Data in Elite Handball.” 

Hosted by Philipp Lienemann (Sr. Manager, Product Marketing & Strategy — Club Business, KINEXON Sports), the session brought together practitioners from more than 29 countries, spanning Europe as well as Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Qatar, and even Zimbabwe — a reminder that performance analytics is becoming a truly global conversation. Rather than demonstrating technology, the discussion focused on practical implementation. The goal was not to showcase what tracking technology can measure, but to explore how practitioners translate data into actionable insights in real high-performance environments. 

As the official player and ball tracking provider of the Handball Bundesliga, KINEXON Sports works closely with clubs, coaches, and researchers to understand not only what athlete monitoring technology can measure, but how it can be applied to improve decision-making in elite sport. To explore this question, the webinar brought together two complementary perspectives: 

Philipp Winterhoff, Strength & Conditioning Coach at HSV Hamburg, shared the practical realities of implementing athlete monitoring in an elite club environment, where he manages strength and conditioning, rehabilitation, data collection, and load management. 

Dr. Clint Hansen, sports scientist and biomechanics researcher at University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein and Kiel University, complemented this applied perspective with insights from clinical biomechanics research and handball sports science. 

Throughout the discussion, six key themes consistently emerged: how to start with the right questions, how to build trust around data, why context matters, how metrics should differ by position, how data supports training and rehabilitation decisions, and why collaboration will shape the future of athlete monitoring in handball. 

Below are the six biggest takeaways from the webinar. 

Many organizations make the same mistake when implementing athlete monitoring. They invest in technology, collect thousands of data points, build impressive dashboards, and then struggle to connect those numbers to a coaching decision that actually changes what happens on court. The speakers argued that implementation should work in the opposite direction. 

Rather than asking ​“What data can we collect?”, practitioners should first ask: 

• What decision are we trying to improve? 
• What information would make that decision better? 
• Which metrics help answer that question? 

As host Philipp Lienemann summarized during the discussion: ​“We want to focus on practical applications, how coaches and practitioners translate numbers into actionable insights. We need to start with asking the question, and then work backwards from there to decide what’s the most appropriate metric.” Starting with the question prevents analysis paralysis and keeps athlete monitoring connected to coaching rather than technology. 

Practical takeaway 

Before collecting data, define the coaching or medical decision you want to support. Purpose should always come before measurement. 

The successful adoption of athlete monitoring does not come from convincing coaches that data knows more than they do. It comes from showing how data can make existing observations more objective, more specific, and easier to discuss. Philipp Winterhoff highlighted that experienced coaches often already have a strong understanding of how a team or player is performing. They can see whether training intensity is appropriate, whether a player looks fatigued, or whether the physical demands of a session match the objective. What data adds is a number, a concrete reference point that turns those observations into a shared conversation. 

“What data does is it underlines what you see and makes it a lot easier to get into a discussion with the coaches.” — Philipp Winterhoff, S&C Coach, HSV Hamburg 

This distinction is essential for building trust. Data should be viewed as complimentary evidence, not a verdict. The goal is not for tracking technology to expose coaches and criticize them for something they cannot see. The goal is to provide objective information that helps coaches, medical staff, and performance practitioners make better-informed decisions together. Long-term adoption also depends on creating shared terminology across the organization. When staff members change, concepts such as load, intensity, density, and high-speed exposure need to maintain the same meaning to ensure continuity. 

Practical takeaway 

Frame data as a tool that supports coaching expertise. Use it to strengthen conversations, not replace them. 

Collecting data is only the first step. The real challenge is understanding what that data means. Both speakers emphasized that tracking data represents only one part of the athlete’s overall picture. A dashboard can show what happened during a training session, but it cannot capture everything that influences performance: sleep, travel, recovery, personal stress, or previous workload. In handball, this challenge becomes even more complex because movement data does not always equal meaningful game demand. 

A player may sprint at high speed during a substitution, repositioning, or tactical adjustment without that movement representing the same physical stimulus as a fast-break situation. Without the right context, raw metrics can easily be misinterpreted. 

This is where the type of tracking technology matters. 

A Local Positioning System (LPS) provides positional context by tracking where players move on the court. This allows practitioners to distinguish between different movement scenarios, for example, separating a high-speed transition from a run during a substitution. 

An Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) measures acceleration and movement through a wearable sensor without positional information. While it is more portable and practical for environments such as away matches or pre-season, it cannot place every movement event into a specific game context. 

However, Philipp Winterhoff emphasized that the absence of LPS should not prevent teams from collecting data. IMU-based monitoring can provide valuable insights, especially when teams establish their own baselines and understand the limitations of the data. 

Before acting on tracking data, practitioners should consider: 

• The decision: What question are we trying to answer? 
• The session context: What was the training objective? Where are we in the match week? 
• The athlete context: What do we know about recovery, soreness, injury history, travel, and workload? 
• The relevant metrics: Which measurements actually relate to the decision? 

Practical takeaway 

Tracking data is a powerful tool, but only when interpreted in context. The value is not in the number itself, but in understanding what that number represents. 

One of the clearest messages from the discussion was that not all metrics provide the same value. While total distance remains one of the most commonly referenced measurements in sport, it rarely provides enough information on its own to guide training decisions in elite handball. 

As Philipp Winterhoff explained: ​“I don’t care if he’s running three, four, or five kilometers. What matters is how fast he does things.” — Philipp Winterhoff, S&C Coach, HSV Hamburg 

For performance practitioners, the quality and context of movement often matter more than the total amount of movement. 
Key metrics discussed included: 

• High-speed running distance 
• Acceleration load 
• Sprint count 
• Change-of-direction demands 
• Jump count and jump load 

However, the most important factor is that these metrics must be interpreted through the lens of position. 

Wingers 

Wingers typically experience the highest sprint exposure due to fast-break situations and transition demands. High-speed running and sprint profiles are therefore key indicators when evaluating their physical demands. 

Back Players 

Back-court players generate frequent accelerations, decelerations, changes of direction, and explosive actions associated with throwing. For these athletes, accumulated acceleration load, change-of-direction demands, and jump-related metrics become increasingly important. 

The discussion also highlighted shoulder load as an emerging area of interest. Because the number of throws during a game or practice, understanding cumulative throwing demands could become an important component of future rotator cuff injury prevention strategies. 

Goalkeepers 

Goalkeepers remain one of the biggest challenges for traditional tracking approaches. Their performance depends heavily on cognitive, reactive, and explosive abilities that are difficult to capture through standard speed and distance metrics. While other sports, such as ice hockey, have started developing more specific goalkeeper frameworks, handball still lacks an established monitoring model for this position. Ultimately, a single threshold cannot define every athlete’s demands. A winger’s high-speed exposure, a back player’s acceleration profile, and a goalkeeper’s reactive demands represent fundamentally different performance challenges. 

Practical takeaway 

The best metrics are not the ones that are easiest to collect. They are the ones that answer the specific question for the specific athlete and position. 

The value of athlete monitoring is not created by collecting metrics. It is created when those metrics influence what happens next. Philipp Winterhoff shared how tracking data supports weekly load management at HSV Hamburg by helping define individual targets based on the match cycle. 

Training demands are adjusted depending on where the team is in the week: 

• MD‑4 / MD‑3: Higher physical stimulus and greater load targets 
• MD‑2: Moderate intensity while preparing for competition 
• MD‑1: Reduced physical load with focus on tactical preparation 

Rather than looking at load through a single number, Winterhoff evaluates three dimensions: 

• Volume: How much work was completed 
• Intensity: How demanding the actions were 
• Density: How frequently high-intensity actions occurred within a given timeframe 

When players fall short of their target, the solution is not simply adding extra running after practice. Instead, additional workload is integrated into training exercises in a way that reflects the demands of the sport. 

As Winterhoff explained: ​“It’s better to put it into exercises in training so the player doesn’t even know. When you do it afterwards, they think they’re being punished.” — Philipp Winterhoff, S&C Coach, HSV Hamburg 

The same principle applies to rehabilitation. Dr. Clint Hansen described a return-to-play approach built around clear milestones, measurable thresholds, and stepwise progression. Athletes should advance because they meet objective criteria, not simply because a certain amount of time has passed. This is an area where handball still has significant opportunity for development. In volleyball, position-specific jump-load thresholds have become an established part of managing cumulative stress. Handball, despite relying heavily on jumping and throwing, still lacks comparable validated benchmarks. Building these position-specific norms will require long-term collaboration between clubs, researchers, and practitioners. 

Practical takeaway 

Use data to guide progression, not to create additional workload. The goal is to build the right physical stimulus at the right time while managing risk. 

The final theme of the discussion moved beyond individual clubs and focused on the future of athlete monitoring across the sport. Dr. Clint Hansen highlighted that handball’s performance analytics ecosystem is still developing compared to other major sports. Football, for example, has benefited from years of collaboration between clubs, researchers, and governing bodies that have helped create shared methodologies, public research, and common frameworks. Handball is still building that foundation. Many practitioners continue to work in isolation, research findings often take years to reach daily practice, and there is limited exchange of information between different parts of the performance ecosystem. One important example is the transition between clubs and national teams. When players leave their clubs for international competitions, the workload accumulated during those periods is often not fully shared back with the club environment. Without continuity, teams lose important context around athlete availability, fatigue, and preparation. 

As Dr. Hansen summarized: ​“We can only get better and improve player health & availability if we start working together.” — Dr. Clint Hansen, Kiel University Hospital 

Before handball can establish universal benchmarks and predictive models, the sport first needs a stronger foundation of shared understanding, consistent terminology, and collaborative research. As the discussion concluded, the goal is not simply to collect more information. It is to create an environment where clubs, federations, researchers, and practitioners can use information together to improve player health and availability. 

Practical takeaway 

The future of athlete monitoring will not be built by individual organizations alone. Progress requires collaboration, shared learning, and a commitment to improving the sport collectively. 

Throughout the webinar, one challenge repeatedly emerged: athlete monitoring only creates its full value when information remains connected across the entire athlete journey. Players spend most of their season within club environments, but many also transition between clubs and national teams throughout the year. Without consistent monitoring approaches and shared communication, important context around workload, recovery, and readiness can be lost. In a survey conducted during the webinar, practitioners identified two areas they are particularly interested in exploring further: 

• How to turn performance data into actionable insights 
• How to ensure consistent athlete monitoring throughout the year and across different environments 

Both challenges are closely connected. Better decisions require not only meaningful data, but also continuity in how that data is collected, interpreted, and shared. This topic will be the focus of our upcoming webinar: 

Club to Country: How the German Handball Federation Developed a Shared Performance Framework Across League and National Team Data 

Date: August 26^th – 2:00 – 3:00pm CET 

The session will feature Dr. Simon Overkamp, Head of Strength & Conditioning at the German Handball Federation (DHB), and explore how the national team environment approaches athlete monitoring across the club-to-country pathway. Building on the themes discussed in this webinar, the session will focus on how clubs and national teams can create a more connected performance framework — helping practitioners maintain context, improve communication, and support more consistent athlete management throughout the season. 

Register for the upcoming webinar and continue the conversation on building connected performance environments.