If You Can’t Move, You Can’t Help Us!

Seren Redmond – Netball Ireland – WA/C. One of the most efficient and effective movers on the netball court.

I’m sitting down to write this after spending the first day of pre-season with the incredibly talented club that first set me on this amazing journey in the world of Netball I now find myself on. Being back where it all started has me reflecting not just on the game itself, but on what it truly takes to play at the highest level.

I always find that when I’m surrounded by amazing athletes and coaches, I get a surge of energy a real passion and flood of ideas I feel compelled to share. There’s something about being in an environment built on progression and professionalism that sharpens your thinking and challenges you to reflect more deeply on the game and on performance itself.

One line kept coming back to me today. Something Buddy Morris, one of the great S&C coaches (in my opinion), once said:

“If you can’t move, you can’t help us.”

At first glance it sounds blunt. Maybe even harsh. But the more you think about it, the more it cuts right to the truth of performance.

Because here’s the reality: you could have the sharpest tactical brain, the deepest understanding of structures and the best read of the game… but if your body won’t let you get there, it doesn’t matter. You’re capped. You’re limited. You’ll always be playing a step behind your potential. Research has consistently shown that without quality movement, athletes are not only limited in performance but also at greater risk of injury (Kiesel, Plisky, & Voight, 2007).

Think about it. If you can’t:

• Change direction explosively to shut down an attacker,

• Accelerate into a space before your opponent sees it,

• Stop, pivot, or land safely to keep possession alive...

  
  

…then all the knowledge in the world stays locked in your head. You simply can’t access it on court. Movement is the gateway. Without it, the door to performance stays closed (Young & Farrow, 2013).

And this is where so many athletes, even at the top level, get exposed. They’ve built the skills, the game sense, the tactical awareness… but they haven’t built the engine that lets them express it. And by engine, I don’t just mean the cardiovascular system! Too often athletes and coaches reduce conditioning to endless running. The true engine is a combination of strength, power, mobility, agility, reactivity and yes endurance. All the parts working together like a complete system under the hood (Bompa & Buzzichelli, 2018).

It’s like owning a Formula 1 car but never learning how to steer it around a corner.

The truth is: movement is the foundation of netball. It’s the bedrock that every pass, intercept, shot and defensive stop sits on. If you can’t move efficiently, powerfully, and reactively you are always going to limit what you can offer your team (Cook, 2010).

That’s not an opinion. That’s physics. That’s reality. And it’s backed by research showing that physical qualities like speed, agility and reactive movement are the enablers of tactical execution (Bishop et al., 2011).

So here’s the question I want you to wrestle with:

Are you working on your ability to move, or are you only working on your ability to play?

Because the best players. The ones who change games, don’t just “know” the game. They can move in the game. They have access to every position, every angle, every burst. And that’s what makes them dangerous!

If you can’t move, you can’t help us. But if you can move... truly move... you unlock every weapon you already have.

Buddy Morris puts it best when he says: “The foundation of our programme is securing biomechanical efficiency in periods of fatigue, and making sure our athletes are able to move. We are not a bunch of powerlifters, we aren’t Olympic lifters or bodybuilders, we are athletes. And the greatest criteria and commonality amongst all great athletes is movement.” 

So, that’s the real test and how we need to look at it. It’s easy to look good when you’re fresh, but the game isn’t played fresh. If you can’t move efficiently and effectively under fatigue, then it’s no use to man or beast. Netball is relentless, constant accelerations, decelerations, pivots and jumps. The question is not whether you can move in the first quarter when your legs feel great, but whether you can still move with the same quality when you’re deep in the fourth and the game is on the line.

WA/C is one of the most movement-dependent positions in the game constant changes of direction, accelerations into space, and the ability to create separation are what define success in this role.

Well, those are my thoughts at least. I’ll always leave the tactical and technical elements of netball to the netball specialists, but when it comes to movement, that’s an area I hold a deep professional interest in. This isn’t intended to be a set-in-stone concept; the aim here is to provoke thought, spark discussion and encourage reflection. Because ultimately, that’s how we develop not just athletes, but also ourselves as coaches.