The final part of our preseason blog series is for our netball players! Netball is a sport with a number of important movement patterns – sprinting, jumping, landing, pivoting. It is also a fast moving interval sport with lots of acceleration, deceleration, and change of direction. For players to withstand the high demands of the game they should all be conditioned properly.
Netballers need two types of fitness- aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic training is generally lower in intensity and utilises oxygen to burn fuel to make us move. Anaerobic is more high intensity, usually quick bursts of energy, and do not use oxygen, but glucose, to make us move. Anaerobic training includes sprinting and HIIT and can also improve our aerobic fitness simultaneously. So, if you’re just doing long slow jogs to prepare for the upcoming season, you are going to be struggling by the 3rd and 4th quarter! Try adding some short-repeated sprints to your current training program; run at 70-100% of your max speed, with rest periods between 1-4 times as long as run. For example, if you run/sprint for 50metres, have a rest for 50-200metres (depending on current fitness levels).
The type of programming will differ depending on your preferred position.
End court players such as Goal keeper and Goal Shooter cover less distance than our mid court players, so their movements are short and sharp and involve lots of jumping. Your conditioning should focus on short (1-6 seconds) high intensity runs (80-100% of max effort) with rest periods of 1-3x how long you ran for.
Mid Court players need high aerobic fitness to be able to run long distances over the course of the game but have strong anaerobic systems to tolerate the centre-pass sprints, hard drives and cuts to the ball. When incorporating the repeated running, players should focus on a higher amount of volume of anaerobic running – 3-5 sets of 4-12 reps of 7-100% of max intensity. These players should also complete some aerobic conditioning on top of this to promote better recovery during a game.
All positions need to incorporate plyometric explosive exercises to help with the jumping and landing component of the game. 2-4 sets of 4-12 reps would be a good place to start.
A generic Preseason training week may look like this:
• 2 strength sessions per week- the stronger you are, the better athlete you can be. Running becomes easier, you’ll jump higher and less chance of injury
• 1-2 Speed and Anaerobic conditioning sessions- the higher intensity training should be done early on in the session and can be included in the same session as your ball skills
• 1 Aerobic conditioning session- Should be done after the anaerobic training session(s) and can be included in the same session as your ball skills
• 1 Mobility & Recovery session (recovery session) – foam rolling, self massage, stretching, etc.
As always, it is important to check with an exercise professional prior to adding new exercises to your program so speak to you exercise physiologist or physio to get your preseason program started!
