How To Keep Strong, Fit & Performing Your Best

Netball performance requires a diverse set of physical attributes and dynamic movements, such as strength, power, jumping, repeat sprints, change of direction, and on-ball skills. These movements have a severe impact on the body; wearing it down slowly during the season. This only compounds as the season drags on, and is then exposed as the intensity of finals erupts. This is where we start to see an increase in injuries. We are here to help our local netballer’s get ahead with injury prevention and keeping their body better for longer.

Most injuries in netball occur to knees and ankles when landing. For example, ACL injuries represent approximately 25% of serious injuries (Netball Australia National Insurance Data). We are here to help prevent those injuries from occurring. 

We asked our expert team of physiotherapists, osteopaths, exercise physiologists and exercise scientists what they’d tell someone who’s heading into finals and looking to perform their best.

Hint: you can’t eliminate risk entirely, but the right preparation makes a real difference to your on-court performance and whether you’re still able to perform at your best come finals.

Here’s what our team our experts would start with, and some our free netball warmup guide to pin up in your club rooms!

1. Physical Preparation

Injuries occur more often when the body has not been prepared for the demands of the activity. This means your personal training and injury prevention techniques needs to cover more than just fitness and conditioning. Some key focuses we’d recommend you look at include:

Resistance Training

Strength and power are two vital attributes when it comes to performing at your best during hyper-competitive moments, such as the 4th quarter in a massive game, or during a pivotal stretch to kick the game off. Strength and power training not only maintain your physical ability that you built during the off-season and pre-season, but evidence actually shows that it can be improved, without compromising your body. Injury risks are reduced, and performance improves.

In-season club training doesn’t always help, with the focus often being on conditioning, in small-sided games, skill-based drills, and traditional running blocks to help develop and maintain aerobic (sustained effort) and anaerobic capacity (short, burst effort). These activities often come at the expense of strength training, so it is important you include this in your personal time. This is something our team of exercise scientists are already assisting a range of athletes in our region with, and we’re keen to keep helping out.

Plyometrics

Training your body to jump, land, pivot, fall, and change direction are vital to netball. You need to be ready for the violent turns, bursts of speed, and power that you need to exert to perform at your best and help with injury prevention.

Balance & Proprioception

Proprioception, often referred to as ‘muscle memory’, is the fancy word for your body’s ability to sense its own movement and position. Because netball involves constant sprinting, sudden stops, and leaping into the air only to land hard on one foot, your body needs to understand exactly how to handle that impact. Training your body awareness (your brain’s ability to know where your feet and joints are without looking!) is essential for safe landings and controlling your movements.

Mobility

Keeping your joints working through their full range of motion is essential. Great mobility helps you move freely without restriction, and having this mobility in your hips, ankles, back, hamstrings, and shoulders is essential for the movements that Netball creates. Poor mobility can cause other parts of your body to over-compensate, leaving other areas like your knees or lower back exposed to injury.

Key Takeaway

When your body is physically prepared, you can start to run faster, jump higher, and play harder, whilst also reducing your risk of injury. Our expert team can build a program specific to your body, your position, and time of season. We can also provide hands-on treatment to help you get through the small niggles that inevitably come up.

The Netball Australia ‘KNEE’ program is a great protocol that has been specifically designed for Australian Netballer’s to prevent injuries.

2. Never Skip The Warmup!

We can’t stress this enough! It’s the easiest lever you can pull on game-day, but often the first to get skipped when time is tight (or there’s a huge line to get taped up!).

A proper warm-up should include:

• Light aerobic activity to get your heart rate and blood flow up and running.
• Dynamic movements and stretches to active your muscles, joints, and tendons.
• Netball-specific movements, like jumping, landing, cutting, accelerating, etc.

For Netballers, Netball Australia’s KNEE program is a well-researched on-court warmup designed specifically to reduce the occurrence of lower-body injuries such as ACL tears. It is a vital tool for any injury prevention strategy.

Key Takeaway:

Your body performs at its best when it’s ready for the sport specific movements. Make sure your warm up reflects what you’re about to go out and do.

3. Build Your Load Gradually

As we previously mentioned, continuing to build your strength and power is essential in the run up to/in finals. However, if you go too hard, too soon, you will break down. It can be tempting to start squeezing in too many extras, but sudden increases will escalate the likelihood of overuse injuries like tendinopathies and stress fractures. 

It’s important to increase your training load gradually, and intelligently. This is where utilising one of O-health’s expert team can become your greatest advantage. We can create your personalised plan and meet your body and goals exactly where they are. We get you in the treatment rooms, and then into the gym, all in the same facility. This way, you don’t get forgotten about, and your plan is co-ordinated between your team.

Key Takeaway:

Don’t increase your load blindly. Make sure it’s set to a level where you’ll see improvement without compromising what already exists.

4. Recovery Isn’t Optional

Recovery becomes just as important as training during the finals. 

Focus on:

• Getting 7-9 hours of quality sleep each night.
• Staying well hydrated.
• Eating enough carbs to fuel your performance and protein to support muscle recovery.
• Taking an active recovery day, doing things such as walking, cycling, or stretching.
• Managing soreness early before it develops into an injury

Key Takeaway:
Recovery is where the ability to gain starts. Don’t ignore it. This is one of the most important factors of injury prevention

5. Listen To Your Body

That tight calf, the sore ankle, or the aching knee aren’t things that are just going to go away by themselves. If they feel like they have, there’s a great chance they’re still bubbling underneath. 

Getting it looked at early can help:

• Reduce pain
• Improve movement
• Prevent further injuries to areas of the body that are compensating 
• Get you back to full performance faster

Takeaway:

The earlier you get an injury looked at, the better your chances of staying on the court or field for the games that matter most.

Need a Hand Getting Finals Ready?

Finals are too important to leave your body to chance. Whether you’re managing a sore hamstring, coming back from an ankle sprain, or just want to make sure you’re performing at your best, our expert team can help with:

• Injury assessment and treatment
• Sports taping and bracing
• Strength and rehab programs
• Return-to-sport planning
• Injury prevention screening

There’s a misconception that you need to drag your body over the line until it’s finals. We’re here to tell you that’s not true, and there is work that can be done now that’ll make a genuine difference to your performance.

Good luck to every player and team taking the court or field this finals series. Play hard, recover well, and give your body every chance to see the season through.

Book an assessment with our team today.

 Download our free netball warmup guide – pin this up in your club rooms!