Research articles

Playful training and teaching in ball games

April 30, 2025

🇸🇪 Summary in Danish

Lotte Stausgaard Skrubbeltrang¹, Anders Broe Dahl Christensen²,
Christian Thue Bjørndal³ & Niels Nygaard Rossing²¹ University College of Northern Denmark, Aalborg; ² Aalborg University, Denmark;
³ Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo

Many sports communities for children and young people today are dominated by a focus on competition, enhancing skills and performance. Although deliberate play and more playful approaches in sports offer many benefits, several international studies have shown that children and young people are playing less and less in their free time and in organized sports. Since coaches and educators are rarely trained to create more playful activities, it is important to inspire coaches to use more playful activities. In this article, we introduce two didactic tools developed in connection with the research and development project “Lykkeleg,” which can support coaches in creating playful sports activities. Inspired by Dion Sommer and Jean Côté, we have developed a sports pedagogical play pendulum that supports coaches and educators in considering which forms of play can and should be introduced.Inspired by Roger Caillois’ four play qualities, we have designed a didactic tool, the “play-mixer”, to adjust the focus on play in training. Based on the model, a simple dribbling exercise in e.g., handball can be randomly chosen with a die before the exercise (alea), become an animal dribbling – like dribbling like a snake (mimicry), competitive dribbling – who performs the most different dribbles (agon), or dizzy dribbling that makes players disoriented (ilinx). The article will introduce some of the experienced qualities (joy, togetherness) that the material has brought, but also some of the barriers (coach perception, changed coach role) that arise when the playful coaching material is used in practice by volunteer coaches.

Get the play article in Danish.

LOTTE STAUSGAARD SKRUBBELTRANG is an assistant professor in Social Education, UCN, in Aalborg. She teaches in subjects related to health, sports and “skole-fritdspædagogik”. She is affiliated with the research centre Inclusion and Exclusion in Educational Practice and the research group Movement, Health and Well-being, where she works with issues related to movement in the school day for children with special needs and a more inclusive community sports. Lotte has a bachelor’s degree in sports science and a master’s degree in Learning and Change Processes. In 2018 she defended her Ph.D. in sports sociology at Aalborg University. Before Lotte moved to UCN, she worked at Aalborg University, where she since 2012 taught subjects and supervised projects related to ball games, outdoor life, pedagogy, didactics and sports sociology.

ANDERS BROE DAHL CHRISTENSEN is a Højskole teacher at the Sports Academy in Aarhus, where he teaches triathlon and swimming. In addition, he is a board member of Aarhus Beach Volleyball Club with responsibility for fundraising and club tournaments. Anders has a master’s degree in sports sciences and psychology from Aalborg University and has since 2022 taught and supervised projects in ball games and outdoor life, with a special focus on sports and health psychology. In his research, Anders has been interested in goal setting in sports, with a focus on how athletes learn to work with and set goals. Most recently, Anders has worked with coach education in handball with a focus on user-involving methods and playful forms of training.

CHRISTIAN THUE BJØRNDAL is an associate professor at the Department of Sport and Social Sciences at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. He has a master’s degree in coaching and sports psychology, and in 2017 defended his doctorate in talent development in Norwegian handball. Bjørndal’s research is interdisciplinary and combines perspectives from sports science, pedagogy and sociology. He is particularly interested in sustainable talent development, coach education and how social and cultural factors affect athletes’ learning, motivation and development. In addition to his academic activities, he has extensive experience as a handball coach at youth and elite level, and is a certified EHF Master Coach.

NIELS NYGAARD ROSSING is an associate professor of applied sports psychology at the Department of Health Science and Technology at Aalborg University. For a number of years, Niels has conducted research in talent development in handball and football, where he has been particularly interested in investigating resources and barriers in the framework around the talents. Niels has therefore investigated the birthplace effect, relative age effect and also investigated particularly successful environments that are able to promote both participation and development. In recent years, Niels has been particularly concerned with developing concrete tools to promote sports participation and athletes’ development and performance. In addition, Niels has in recent years also worked as a mental coach in Elitesport Aalborg and at the academy in the football club in AaB.

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