Netballers 'baby giraffes'

Irene van Dyk. Photo / Getty Images

New Zealand's netballers have been described as moving like "baby giraffes" by a leading strength and conditioning expert.

Matthew Kritz, an American who joined the New Zealand Academy of Sport last year as senior strength and conditioning specialist, was illustrating the fact many New Zealand athletes had reached elite level on talent alone, without sound fundamentals when it came to strength or movement.

"A lot of athletes are very talented at what they do but they're not very good in other areas, like movement and power," Kritz said at a Sparc media briefing. When pressed for examples, he mentioned this country's netballing elite.

"They move like a bunch of baby giraffes. It's a powerful, explosive sport but they have no idea how to move," he said, highlighting the way they landed after leaping as particularly "funky".

Netball New Zealand high performance manager Tracey Fear said there was some merit in Kritz's comments, which were more mischievous than malicious.

At a national level, through the work done by physio Sharon Kearney and now Kritz, Fear believed they were not far off "world's best practice" in terms of strength and movement in high performance and injury prevention.

"However, we're not satisfied we have been able to get those messages through to all levels," Fear said. "We have players entering our national programme who need a lot of remedial work. They're not all where we'd like to see them be."

One of netball's challenges was the biomechanic range of players. "Look at Laura Langman and Irene van Dyk. They're at opposite ends of the scale," Fear said.

Coincidentally (or not?), Kritz's comments come in the week it was confirmed the ANZ Championship trophy would be stopping in Australia for another year. The Melbourne Vixens host the Adelaide Thunderbirds in the all-Aussie final today after New Zealand's one remaining hope, the Waikato/Bay of Plenty Magic, faltered badly in the final few weeks of the season.

It has been a common refrain this season that the best Australian teams have been better prepared physically. They appear fitter and have dominated the physical battles in a sport that belies its non-contact status.

The always quotable Australian coach Norma Plummer thinks so, saying players on the wrong side of the Tasman had embraced professionalism a lot more quickly than here.

"Australian teams train very hard and I think if we've got to travel to train, we do so ... I'm not sure New Zealanders look at it in the same light," she told AAP.

Perhaps surprisingly, Fear said Plummer had a valid point and she "could see why she would make a generalisation like that".

Netball New Zealand are anxious for all their franchises to adopt a model where the players lived in the areas they were franchised to.

"Some of our franchises have adopted that model ... but others are compromised in their ability to be together and train together. We're still learning. Teams will be reviewing that very closely."

The likes of Kritz, who is now netball's lead conditioner, will be crucial to New Zealand closing the gap on their transtasman rivals.

The colourful Kritz spent two years in Japan improving the strength and power of elite swimmers. Before that, he was director of athlete performance at the University of California, San Diego, for eight years.

In New Zealand, he has been working across a range of sports and has been closely involved in the men's and women's hockey programmes, trying to create "German shepherds, not greyhounds".

Referring to the oft-quoted Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours of practice as the recipe for success, Kritz noted: "Ten thousand hours of doing something the wrong way doesn't amount to a hill of beans."

Kritz's argument was backed up by high performance manager Marty Toomey, who said: "Too many athletes have got to the top by doing stuff but not necessarily the right stuff."