Western suburban magpies turn to tennis balls to practice during locking

While the suspension of The Knock-On Effect NSW Cup may have halted the pace of magpies in third-placed Western suburbs, it hasn’t stopped them from doing anything and everything, including using tennis balls — to stay ready to play.

Because the Greater Sydney lockout has limited opportunities for team training and contact sessions, coach Ben Gardiner has invented new COVID-19 safe training methods to keep magpies fit and firing.

NSWRL’s major and community competitions were suspended after the NSW government set the Greater Sydney area to close in order to survive the COVID-19 epidemic.

As government regulations have been, we have made changes to the training so that the boys can still stay fit and keep hand-eye coordination more than anything, Gardiner told nswrl.com.au.

For the past three weeks, when they have only been able to practice with partners or alone because they have been in their own area, we have attended a Zoom-oriented session on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I go to my local park, they go to their local park (and) I send them a session plan of what they are going to do and what they have to bring the previous weekend, and they did different skills, tennis ball skills and just be imaginative to be honest.

Gardiner and other coaching staff use a variety of methods to ensure that players can return to the best possible condition when the competition hopefully continues, from tennis-related hand-eye exercises to individual wrestling through Zoom.

We couldn’t get in touch, so we did a lot of shoulder rolls that made forward rolls from the legs and came back up after touching the back of the shoulders, Gardiner said.

(We do) wrestling-style exercises ourselves with a lot of nuclear power and core movements with great repetition, so we can get the movement of being on earth when we have to rotate and move.

Gardiner also gave an idea of ​​exercises where training becomes more creative, including hand wall drilling.

Basically, you feed it (tennis ball) from your right hand, hit the brick wall, the ball bounces back and you grab it with your left hand, Gardiner explained.

So, it’s just options for that – right hand, catch and pass, left hand, then take turns and then you throw it, so they have to move and adjust their feet.

And these exercises come from tennis, so I look at a lot of different things and in a nutshell there’s talk of stimulating the players, enjoying (and) making sure the connection is smooth with the players.