Netball Preseason Training Should Be More Than Getting Fit

The start of netball season always seems to arrive quickly.

Trials begin.

Team training starts.

Running volume increases.

Practice matches appear on the calendar.

And suddenly players are expected to sprint, jump, land, change direction and repeat high-intensity efforts for an entire game.

The problem is that many netballers enter preseason thinking preparation simply means getting fitter.

It doesn't.

A good netball preseason should prepare your body for everything the game is going to ask of it.

That means developing:

• Lower body strength

• Acceleration

• Speed

• Change of direction ability

• Deceleration

• Jumping and landing capacity

• Repeat-effort fitness

• Calf and ankle strength

• Knee control

• Sport-specific conditioning

At Pivot Sports Performance, our goal isn't simply to make netballers tired.

We want to build stronger, faster and more resilient athletes who are physically prepared for the demands of the season ahead.

What Are the Physical Demands of Netball?

Netball is sometimes underestimated as a physical sport.

But watch a high-level game closely and you will see repeated explosive movements throughout every quarter.

Players need to accelerate over short distances, stop rapidly, jump, land, reposition, change direction and immediately accelerate again.

Different positions experience slightly different demands, but qualities such as acceleration, deceleration, strength, landing ability and repeat-effort capacity are important across the court.

That is why a netball preseason program should look very different from simply going for a few runs each week.

Your conditioning needs to prepare you to play netball, not just run continuously.

1. Build Strength Before the Season Starts

Strength is one of the foundations of athletic performance.

A stronger athlete has greater potential to produce force into the ground when accelerating, jumping and changing direction.

But strength also helps the athlete tolerate the forces created when they have to stop.

That second part is particularly important in netball.

Every landing, cut and sudden stop creates forces that your muscles and tendons need to absorb.

A well-designed preseason strength program should therefore develop the entire lower body.

This could include exercises targeting:

• Quadriceps

• Hamstrings

• Glutes

• Calves

• Adductors

• Trunk

• Single-leg strength

Exercises such as squats, split squats, Romanian deadlifts, step-ups, calf raises and other single-leg exercises can form part of the program depending on the individual athlete.

For younger netballers, properly supervised resistance training can also be an important part of long-term athletic development.

Read more: Why Strength Training Is One of the Best Injury Prevention Tools for Young Athletes.

2. Don't Forget Calf and Ankle Strength

Netball places enormous repeated demands through the ankle and calf complex.

Think about how often a player:

• Accelerates

• Pushes off one leg

• Changes direction

• Jumps

• Lands

• Repositions onto their toes

Your calves are involved in almost all of these actions.

Yet calf training is often limited to a couple of sets of calf raises at the end of a gym session.

For many netball athletes, we want to build both calf strength and the ability to repeatedly produce force.

This may involve a combination of:

• Straight-knee calf raises

• Bent-knee calf raises

• Single-leg calf work

• Isometric calf exercises

• Pogos and low-level plyometrics

• Progressive jumping

• Hopping

• Higher-speed plyometric exercises

This becomes especially important for athletes with a history of ankle sprains.

If ankle injuries have interrupted previous seasons, read our guide to ankle sprain rehabilitation and return to sport.

3. Learn to Land Properly

Jumping gets a lot of attention in sport.

Landing deserves just as much.

Netball involves frequent single and double-leg landings, often while reaching for the ball, under pressure from an opponent or preparing to immediately change direction.

The ability to control these landings should be deliberately trained.

Netball Australia's KNEE Program specifically incorporates strength, balance, landing and agility exercises into an on-court warm-up designed to improve movement efficiency and reduce injury risk.

Research in junior female netball players has also found that neuromuscular training can improve landing biomechanics associated with ACL injury risk.

Preseason gives athletes time to develop these skills before competition intensity increases.

Training might progress from:

Double-leg landing

to

Single-leg landing

to

Jump and land

to

Land and change direction

to

Reactive and sport-specific landing tasks.

Eventually, landing shouldn't exist as an isolated drill.

It should become part of how the athlete naturally moves.

4. Train Deceleration, Not Just Acceleration

Everyone wants to become faster.

Far fewer athletes spend enough time learning how to stop.

But in netball, the ability to decelerate effectively can be just as important as acceleration.

Every time you sprint towards a contest or lead into space, you eventually need to absorb that momentum.

Poor deceleration ability can result in:

• Slower changes of direction

• Poor body positioning

• Longer stopping distances

• Reduced ability to reposition quickly

• Greater mechanical stress through the lower limb

That is why preseason training should progressively expose athletes to faster stopping movements.

A progression may include:

1. Controlled deceleration drills

2. Faster linear deceleration

3. Lateral stopping

4. Planned change of direction

5. Reactive agility

6. Netball-specific movement under pressure

Good agility isn't simply about moving your feet quickly.

It is about being able to produce force, absorb force and redirect force efficiently.

5. Build Acceleration and Speed

Netball athletes rarely get the opportunity to reach maximum sprinting speed during a match.

But that doesn't mean speed training is irrelevant.

Being faster improves the player's ability to create separation, close space and get into position.

And because most netball movements occur over relatively short distances, acceleration becomes particularly valuable.

Players can train acceleration through short, high-quality efforts such as:

• 5 metre accelerations

• 10 metre accelerations

• Different starting positions

• Lateral-to-linear acceleration

• Reactive accelerations

• Partner or ball-based drills

These should be performed with adequate recovery.

If the objective is speed, the goal is quality, not exhaustion.

Twenty metres of genuinely fast sprinting with good recovery is very different from turning a speed session into another conditioning session.

6. Include Plyometric Training

Plyometrics are exercises involving rapid force production and the stretch-shortening cycle.

In practical terms, that means training athletes to become better at movements such as:

• Jumping

• Hopping

• Bounding

• Rebounding

• Landing

• Quickly producing force

For netballers, plyometrics can help bridge the gap between gym strength and athletic movement.

A preseason progression might start with simple pogo jumps and landing drills before progressing towards:

• Repeated jumps

• Lateral hops

• Single-leg hops

• Bounds

• Drop landings

• Reactive jumps

• Change-of-direction combinations

Plyometric training shouldn't simply involve completing hundreds of jumps.

Like sprint training, quality matters.

The volume and difficulty should match the athlete's training history, strength and current capacity.

7. Conditioning Should Look Like Netball

One of the biggest mistakes we see during preseason is using running fitness as the only measure of conditioning.

Long continuous running can improve aerobic fitness.

But netball isn't a continuous running sport.

Players repeatedly alternate between movement and recovery while accelerating, stopping, jumping and changing direction.

That means preseason conditioning should gradually become more specific as