Joel is a Physiotherapist from Flow Physio Co Sutherland with a passion for helping sportspeople perform at their best. Today he talks through the Netball Australia KNEE Program for improving performance and reducing injury risk.
What is the Netball KNEE Program?
The Netball KNEE program is a court-side warm up to help players prepare to play, move efficiently and land safely. It was designed by Netball Australia and a bunch of experts from various fields for people of all levels.
The goal is to build strength and control of your body in short, sharp movements that are specific to netball. What we’ve seen it do is improve performance and reduce chance of injuries - because you’re stronger, faster and fitter!
Why do the Netball Knee Program?
Knees and ankles are the most common injuries in netballers and most of these injuries occur when landing. The Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) represents roughly 1/3 of serious injuries reported in netballers every year.
The KNEE Program is based on injury prevention programs that have been proven effective in reducing lower limb injuries generally and specifically reducing ACL injuries from 40–70% (Netball Australia).
How can we implement it?
What we want to do at Flow is to provide an individualised exercise program for any netballer that comes into the clinic based on this program. We want to teach you this program to be able to use it as your warm up for training and games to reduce your injury risk and improve your performance on the court.
We would run you through a 1 on 1 assessment, looking at injury history and where you want to improve, then we will design a program individualised for you that you can complete in our group classes here in the clinic.
If you want to use this as a fitness session for you and a few team members, we can organise sessions just for you and your teammates. If you want to work individually on improving yourself, we are happy to work with that too!
Get in touch and we can chat about how it might work best for you!
