Part C – 4-Week Training Programme

STYD03 – 4 -week training programme

Needs analysis

Client profile:

Age: 21

Height: 5ft9

Weight: 75kg

Sport: Netball

My client is a very active person as she plays in the University Netball team, also going to the gym in her free time. When at home she also likes to play a bit of badminton and tennis with her family as she enjoys this when home. Both of these activities require a lot of training and fitness. My client is a very active player, she trains for netball 4 times a week and goes to the gym around 3-4 times a week. In netball training, there is a high physical demand, especially during game play, however; Tuesday morning sessions are normally fitness and strength and conditioning based, this means my client can give her body a rest and can work on speed training, as she needs to make short sharp movements. This also allowed Ellies body to replenish. My client has mentioned that she would like to work on strength and speed training, so she is able to get away from her defending opponent. My client also mentioned that she used to have injuries in her ankles and knees which caused her pain when participating in netball. This is the most common injuries in netball as there is a high demand on both of these joints. Another injury my client suffered from was an ACL injury and this can sometime still cause pain when playing netball, depending on the short, sharp movements. In my plan I will include exercises that can help strengthen her ankles (this could help with her ‘rolling’ them) and also going to include knee strengthening exercises to help with stability in the knee. This will then help with prevention of the injuries getting worse and can also help with reoccurrence of injuries.  Due to my client playing netball 4 times a week and going to the gym 3-4 times, I will need to place my plan around my client as she will also need rest days as it’s not good over doing it.

Injury analysis:

  • Netball is considered to have the highest rates of lower limb injuries (Gamble, 2002).
  • As previously mentioned, netball is physically a demanding sport which can test players ability in these specific areas; speed, agility, strength and explosive power (McManus et al., 2006). The most common injuries in netball is the ankle and the knees as both of these joints take the most impact e.g. jumping and changing direction.
  • Due to the body in netball always making explosive jumps and abrupt landing deceleration, (GRF) ground reaction force is extremely high, this is then again putting pressure on the lower limbs, therefore putting a threat to them and causing injuries (Steele and Milburn, 1988).
  • Ankles make up 84% of the most frequent injuries in netball, with 67% of these injuries being diagnosed as lateral ligament sprains, while another further 10% of players injuries have been sustained as a fracture to the foot or ankle (Hopper et al.,1995).
  • The Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL), rupture is also a high injury rate in netball, due to the quick change of direction when playing netball (Hopper et al.,1995).

‘Lateral ankle sprain has been identified as the single most commonly reported injury in netball.33 The mechanism of this injury in netball typically involves landing in a plantar-flexed foot position, combined with forced inversion upon landing.

  • Lateral ankle sprain has been identified as the
  • single most commonly reported injury in netball.33 The
  • mechanism of this injury in netball typically involves
  • landing in a plantar-flexed foot position, combined with
  • forced inversion upon landing.
  • Lateral ankle sprain has been identified as the
  • single most commonly reported injury in netball.33 The
  • mechanism of this injury in netball typically involves
  • landing in a plantar-flexed foot position, combined with
  • forced inversion upon landing
  • ‘Lateral ankle sprains have been identified as the single most common reported injury in netball, the mechanism of this injury in netball typically involved landing in a plantar- flexed foot position, combined with forced inversion upon landing’ (Gamble, 2002).
  • The most common way of injuring the ACL is ‘non- contact deceleration, combined with a change of direction executed with the foot planted’ (Gamble, 2002).

 

Clinical testing:

  1. Landing jump test – This will be beneficial to look at how my client lands, this will help come up with pre-rehabilitation programme to help with her stability when landing in netball. This will then help my client land better in netball and hopefully will decrease in injury rate.
  2. Back squat – This test will be used to see what strength her legs can withhold, this will help see what she can already lift as she wants to work on strength, especially in the legs as that’s where the explosive power mainly comes from.

 

 

 

Week No Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
1 Netball Training Fitness and S&C

 

Gym – HITT

 Game Day Gym- Lower body Rest day Gym- Upper body Gym- Cardio
2 Netball training Fitness and S&C

 

Gym

 Game day Gym- Lower body  Rest day Gym-Upper body Gym-Cardio
3 Netball training Fitness and S&C

 

Gym

 Game day Gym- Lower body Rest day Gym-Upper body Gym-Cardio
4 Netball training Fitness and S&C

 

Gym

 Game day Gym- Lower body Rest day Gym-Upper body Gym- Cardio

4 Week Training Programme                                               Aim: Strength

Monday Morning Training: 

These Monday sessions are 2 hours long. The sessions are mainly to look at game play, skills and ball work. Before going into netball, we start with a warmup that roughly lasts 10-15 minutes. This is where players perform static and dynamic stretches, where we then go into ball passing drills. Firstly, catching and throwing the ball between players in one third of the court, to finish the warmup, we go into 2 drills which makes the players think about timing, ball placement and intercepting the ball at the right time, this goes alongside timing. These drills also help with speed and agility, speed to get to the ball and the movement in the drills that work alongside other players.

The first hour we separate into our teams and work on team specific things e.g. man to man marking, bringing the ball down court and positioning on court to help other players, this could be for back line passes or brining the ball down court to our attack, who can then practise shooting at the same time. In the last hour, we then use everything from the first hour and put it all into practise during the game play in the second hour. We then all rotate, and all play each other, this includes all 3 times, this helps us focus on the skills we have been taught and how the team all cohere together. This can also help coaches and captains look at potential teams for games. My client has already said that she wants to work on strength training, this is useful as we only cover speed and cardiovascular endurance, so in training my client doesn’t get the opportunity to work on her strength training. “However, appropriate lower limb control and strength training have been shown to reduce knee valgus angles and moments and GRFs and increase hamstring strength while also improving performance” (Thomas et al., 2017). This suggests that involving strength training into the programme, can reduce risk of injuries as my client already has weakness, this could help her performance in netball. He also suggested that adding jump training 4 times a week will reduce knee valgus angles between 9.8 degrees- 12.3 degrees, also focusing on appropriate jump landing techniques, from unilateral to bilateral can also help with weakness (Thomas et al., 2017).

Tuesday Morning Training:

Tuesday morning session are normally fitness and strength and conditioning based; this means not much netball is being played. Once we have done our original warm up (Mondays session), we then as a team go on to working on ankle stability, as this is the most common injury in netball, especially in the team. This involves, single and double leg hopping, moving side to side and front to back. This is done with our eyes open the first time and closed the second, (closing your eyes makes to harder to balance), this is due to the three main sensory systems, vison, vestibular and proprioception. This means by taking one of these out the equation e.g. vision, this will then affect their balance (Carpenter et al.,2001). After this has finished, we usually go into team fitness games or circuits, this is to help with anaerobic endurance and muscular endurance as this is key for a netball player. Working on anaerobic endurance is crucial when playing netball as it’s important for a player to last a full game without fatiguing and making mistakes due to fitness levels decreasing.

Warm up and knee/ankle prehab:

It is important for each session that my client performs a beneficial warm up, this is because the body increases temperature, which then loosens the joints, meaning you have more movement, this also help increase blood flow to the muscles. This is also important because this means you don’t make the injuries even worse. Warming up also puts less stress on joints and tendons (Gibson, 2017). Patellofemoral pain (PEP), is a very common problem in athletes that participate in jumping, cutting and pivoting sports, these 3 things are all used in netball (Halabchi, 2017). PEP can be down to hip muscle dysfunction, poor core muscles endurance, muscle tightness, excessive foot pronation and patella malalignment. As already stated, ACL is also another high- risk injury that can happen in netball. Due to having weakness in the client’s hip adductors, (this is known as I previously tested for this), this could be a factor in why they could occur. By doing hip exercises, this will strengthen the adductor muscle’s, it has been recommended that doing 3 sets of 20-30 repetitions, will help strengthen these muscles in particular. This will also help the kinetic chain, stabilising the knee can also help the ankles. These following exercises will need to be performed before every session to ensure that the muscles are warm and ready for exercise and to help reduce injuries:

 

  1. Russian Hamstring (8×2)
  2. Walking lunges (10×2 on each leg)
  3. Adductor squeezes (8×2)
  4. Side leg raises (10×2 each leg)

 

 

 

THURSDAY SESSION- LEGS
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 
Exercise Sets Reps SS/TS/CS Load  Rest Sets Reps SS/CS/TS Load  Rest Sets Reps SS/CS/TS Load  Rest Sets Reps SS/CS/TS Load  Rest
Leg press 2 10 TS 20KG 30s 2 10 TS 30s 3 10 TS 20s 3 10 TS 15s
Goblet dumbbell squat 2 12 TS 15KG 30s 2 12 TS 30s 3 12 TS 20s 3 12 TS 15s
Squat jump 2 20 N/A 30s 2 20 TS 30s 3 20 TS 20s 3 20 TS 15s
Leg curls 2 10 20KG 30s 2 10 30s 3 10 20s 3 10 15s
Lunge squat 2 10 CS 15KG 30s 2 10 CS 30s 3 10 CS 20s 3 10 CS 15s
Walking lunges 2 10 CS 15KG 30s 2 10 CS 30s 3 10 CS 20s 3 1 CS 15s

 

 

 

SATURDAY SESSION – UPPER BODY
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 
Exercise Sets Reps SS/TS/CS Load  Rest Sets Reps SS/CS/TS Load  Rest Sets Reps SS/CS/TS Load  Rest Sets Reps SS/CS/TS Load  Rest
Front raise (DB) 2 8 TS 3KG 30s 2 8 TS 3KG 30s 3 10 TS 5KG 20s 3 15 TS 7KG 15s
Press ups with knees 2 10 TS N/A 30s 2 10 TS N/A 30s 3 12 TS N/A 20s 3 15 TS N/A 15s
Triceps dips 2 15 N/A 30s 2 15 TS N/A 30s 3 20 TS N/A 20s 3 25 TS N/A 15s
Bicep curl (DB) 2 8 3KG 30s 2 8 3KG 30s 3 10 5KG 20s 3 15 7KG 15s
Shoulder press (DB) 2 8 CS 5KG 30s 2 8 CS 5KG 30s 3 10 CS 7KG 20s 3 15 CS 10KG 15s

References:

Gamble, P. (2002). Physical Preparation for Netball – Part 1: Needs Analysis and Injury Epidemiology. Journal of Strength and Conditioning, (22), 10-15.

McManus, A., Stevenson, M. R., & Finch, C. F. (2006). Incidence and risk factors for injury in non-elite netball. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 9(1-2), 119-124.

Steele, J. R., & Milburn, P. (1988). Effect of different synthetic sport surfaces on ground reaction forces at landing in netball. Journal of Applied Biomechanics,4, 130-145.

Hopper, D., Elliott, B., & Lalor, J. (1995). A descriptive epidemiology of netball injuries during competition: a five year study. British journal of sports medicine, 29(4), 223–228. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsm.29.4.223

Thomas, Christopher & Comfort, Paul & Jones, Paul & Dos’Santos, Thomas. (2017). Strength and Conditioning for Netball: A Needs Analysis and Training Recommendations. Strength and conditioning journal. 39. 10.1519/SSC.0000000000000287.

Carpenter, C., Stanford, M., & Putnam, K. (2001). A Comparison of Eyes Open Versus Eyes Closed Balance Testing (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/48847284.pdf)

Gibson, B. (2017) : 3 Reasons Why Warming Up Is Important. Accessed from: https://www.fitness19.com/3-reasons-why-warming-up-is-important/

Halabchi, F., Abolhasani, M., Mirshahi, M., & Alizadeh, Z. (2017). Patellofemoral pain in athletes: clinical perspectives. Open access journal of sports medicine, 8, 189–203. https://doi.org/10.2147/OAJSM.S127359