How Strong Is Strong Enough For Cricket?

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Brian Wardle

Brian Wardle

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First of all I would just like to say I'm fascinated with strength training. Not only for the physical attributes it brings to my game but also for the mental aspect too. There's a certain sense of pride and confidence that strength training brings. Knowing that I have prepared better than my opponent and knowing that I have gone through hours of lifting, constantly refining and defining my goals and level of fitness.

I know there are other factors in becoming a great cricketer for example technique, body structures (for bowling), correct coaching and individual opportunities etcetera but how powerful can strength training be as a determine factor for success?! How much strength is enough? or is there even a limit to how much strength you need, want or require?

In my opinion strength training is crucial, not only for the sake of injury resistance or body function but it builds CONFIDENCE. People who lift heavy will know exactly what I mean. It takes courage and determination to step under a heavy bar and squat.

There is a reason why people don't strength train to their LIMITS and that is because they are scared!....scared they may get injured, scared they may not lift the weight, scared they may get too big and bulky.

Ok, there maybe other reasons like lack of knowledge, but in this day and age with the internet there really are no excuses to not know how to strength train correctly.

I look at baseball as an example. Although they are different sports, they have many similarities, throwing catching, running and hitting. There are college guys! who are deadlifting 500lbs for reps and squatting the same. so why therefore are cricketers so far behind. could it be due to scheduling of games. Do cricketers play too often to get in any real S&C work? or am I just making excuses.

I'm not looking for definitive answers on this, but I'm all for strength training and what it can do for sport and more importantly for cricket.

I'm also interested to know what other peoples opinions are on the matter and where you currently rate strength training on your priority list.
 
Brian

First of all, welcome to Big Cricket. I have followed the debate your article on deadlifting inspired over on Pitchvision and I would like to just pick you up on one bit of your post above. When you say there are 'no excuses' for lack of knowledge due to the internet, I would argue there are a fair few excuses BECAUSE of the internet, where everyone can seem an expert and it is much harder to know who to trust, this isn't a criticism, just an observation and I would say the Pitchvision comments would back this up.

With that out of the way, from where I sit (a junior coach who coaches club and district under 11, 12, 13s) I would love to include more S&C work, but when you only see players for a maximum of a couple of hours a week plus matches its difficult to find the time (or perhaps a better phrase would be 'find the right balance') when there are so many technical aspects of cricket to work on. I guess Liz would point out that its easier to work with kids who have better levels of strength and fitness and whilst that is undoubtably true its a difficult 'sell' to players and parents. We have introduced a lady fitness instructor at our club (parent) who comes and works on ABCs with the under 10s which has at least opened the door for the debate within the club but we are a long way from what you would consider a proper S&C programme (the under 12s have done the 'fast bowlers circuit' a few times over the course of the season)

On a personal note, for me ABCs are more important than strength in its absolute form for cricket (I would far rather work with a well balanced, co-ordinated bowler than a strong one) but that may be down to the age group I coach or just a lack of knowledge in how to get the most out of S&C, like you I will be interested in other peoples experiences/opinions.
 
Hi Tony. I'm not quite sure I understand when you say its not clear who to trust and the pitch vision comments backing it up?

Your comments about training youngsters I agree with.

What is the general audience of this forum, is it coaches who train kids or is there generally a mixed bunch of adults, coaches etc.
 
Brian Wardle said:
Hi Tony. I'm not quite sure I understand when you say its not clear who to trust and the pitch vision comments backing it up?

Your comments about training youngsters I agree with.

What is the general audience of this forum, is it coaches who train kids or is there generally a mixed bunch of adults, coaches etc.
Click to expand...

Sorry Brian, just to clarify, Liz is a well respected member of the Big Cricket community and has helped a number of us on here, but to some on the Pitchvision comments section she is just another ill informed person posting on the internet. That is the real problem, that it is nigh on impossible to take people at face value, if you are looking for (say) cricket strength and conditioning, there will be a number of theories out there as to how much is enough, what works and what doesnt and for me, although I am a level 2 coach, I am very aware of the limits to my knowledge.

As for who is on here, not enough coaches for my liking, the main traffic is generated by the spin section and that is mainly adult players, although there are a few dads on there too. Just to pick your brains, if you agree with my comments about ABCs being more important for juniors, at what stage would you think is the crossover where S&C becomes more important? The ECB are very cautious about any strength work for juniors (I think mainly because there are a lot of ECB trained coaches out there like me with little or no strength coaching experience who could easily get it badly wrong), but I went on a course with Liz earlier in the year when a presenter was really pushing S&C at the age group I coach at. I will accept the 'all children are different' answer, but in general what sort of things would you use to at least 'introduce' some strength work into their training?
 
Yeah Liz is a great person to know. She has some valuable information to share :)

I have worked with only a few children on strength but I'm currently working with a 16 year old now who is a rugby union player and is very understanding of the importance of strength training and performance. Granted this is different sport to cricket but I think if the individual can relate to strength training and understand the benefit then they are ready. That could be 12 15 or 18.

I believe Ian pont has a product called duraband which is being marketed towards young cricketers getting into fitness. You have probably no doubt heard of it. This could be a good tool to get the ball rolling with kids of 11 12 and 13.
 
To be fair to PitchVision, it is only one person with an issue and he has just criticised Ian Pont for not knowing what he is talking about as a cricket coach and accuses him of "looking both foolish and extremely ungracious" so I am more than happy to be in this company! :D

However, Tony does have a point with regard to the internet. I come across many so called 'experts' demonstrating certain exercises via YouTube. They certainly talk the talk but when it comes to technique, I cringe. Their potential for their own injury is bad enough but, in my opinion, to encourage others, mostly young men, to follow their examples is negligent.

Now I, and others with my qualifications, can spot poor technique even before the exercise has begun but what hope have the masses? I am afraid Brian, although there is a lot of information and videos out there, you are in the minority as being somebody worth listening to and watching.

If you have time Brian, I would love to know how and when you became interested. Also, why did you decide to follow the path of powerlifter as opposed to weightlifter?
 
Fair point about the internet. It's easy to get carried away with the typing sometimes...lol.

That being said there is an awful lot of useful info out there, I guess if you know where to look ;-)

Liz. Cracking question! My passion for strength training and powerlifting is something that has evolved. I have been training and playing cricket for a while now but when I first started I never related the two. Training at the start back when I was 16 was to put a bit of "size" on as all kids do, but then I began to realise over time that the two (cricket and resistance training) blended quite well together.

I stopped playing cricket when I was 18 because I lost the love for the game. I was playing almost everyday in the summer from about 11 right through to 18.

After 18 I focussed on a bit of education and that's when my interest in powerlifting began. I was introduced to it when I first started PTing at a local health club. There was a guy who was similar stature to me lifting some serious poundage. I wanted to have a go.

After building up a fair bit of strength I started competing. Its funny because when you do a power meet, everyone is comppeting against themselves rather than each other. I guess its a personal battle! Until you reach the top levels of course.

I got back into cricket only a couple of years back and this is my second season playing so just brushing up on old techniques. Its funny how things come flooding back, even the errors you used to make years ago. Lol

I then found that guys in the US particularly were using Powerlifting methods to get athletes strong and improve performance, especially in Baseball, which are quite similar in nature. The likes of eric cressey for example. And that's where my passion for the two has got me so far.

I'm still learning and guess I'm still making mistakes, but hey, you live and learn :)

I'm glad I've found people here who understand my ideals or at least try to Ùnderstand and hopefully in the future I can help produce some outstanding cricketing athletes!!
 
I am glad you have looked in Dave. I would love to know what you think; from your own perspective as well as the boys'.

S&C is Strength and Conditioning.
 

I've had a bit of a look round at videos and stuff on-line and have got more of a perspective on it now. In answer to your initial point 'How strong is strong enough for cricket'? That strikes me as being unanswerable and would be down to the individual to make a judgement at club level I would imagine, I can't see that at club level anyone would be in a position to impose on an individual that they need to lay off the pies and beer and suddenly take on the atitude of a Jock quarter back from the USA! I know from discussions with David Hinchcliffe that he's up for it and would love to see the rest of his own cricket team engage with strength and conditioning just a fraction of what he does.

At professional levels it's apparent that this is a part of both the national set up and the county set up and I think that we can summise from the current high that England are on at the minute, that S&C may be a instrumental in the improvement over the last decade or so? We've discussed on the spin thread before now the dismissal of Samit Patel from the England set up by Kevin Pieterson on the basis that he was out of condition and not making enough effort to address the situation. This is possibly a clue as to how seriously these days the national team take S&C? So as far as the professional game goes it looks to be an integral part of their set up which is seen as being essential.

But at club level it's a different matter. Club cricket in the UK sells itself on its social aspect just as much as it does with the sport aspect. One of the key gripes with some of the people on here and within club set ups relating to not getting picked is the fact that they are not in with the 'In crowd' , the first team players, that are all mates and have been with the club since they were all 8 years old and have gone through all the alcoholic rites of passage as they've gone through their teens and into their 20's and all this condoned by the club elders and people that they look up to. I've never been to a club made up of predominantly white males that doesn't have reward and penalty system for making both mistakes and records for good performance that includes drinking gallons of alcohol on a weekly or more frequent basis. Fund raising events similarly almost exclusively involve all of the team getting s**t faced and these aspects of our British drinking culture are closely inter-twined with our sport. If you socialise and drink with the boys and get the beers in you're going to fit in well and you'll get picked for the team.

Where S&C fits into that at club level I'm not sure? Individuals - David Hinchcliffe for one and myself to some extent look to optimise their performance and may incorporate S&C into their game and daily/weekly routines? Maybe increasingly with the 'Peter Andre' factor and the media obessesion with image, as well as young blokes suffering from anorexia, bulimia, feeling the need to shave their body hair off and straightening their hair some of them may be driven by vanity to use S&C in order to keep up with the perceptions of what it is to be male? That then might filter in to their chosen sports and given time they might learn to do it in a way that is specific and beneficial to their speciality.

Personally I'm uncomfortable about gyms and the way that I perceive them, for one I'm under the impression that they are a rip off, secondly they're staffed by people that are probably inadequately trained or have limited knowledge of the benefits that could be derived from the facilities, I'd be amazed to pay x amounts of membership fees to then discover that all the staff were knowledgeable with regards the best work outs for cricket. You could argue that the knowledge required to make the work outs cricket specific could be gleaned from the internet, they possibly could, but there would be a lot of mis-information you'd have to go through and possibly experience to your detriment before finding the good info.

It seems that there is potential for working with non-gym drills using resources that could be bought on a budget, but having been on this forum now for a few years and having met Liz and taken a lot of advice from her and David Hinchcliffe there is scope still to do yourself an injury without the correct advice. Maybe in the USA (baseball & American football) because they have that image conscious Jock culture aspect, the S&C industry has grown at a faster rate than it has here and perhaps they take their sports with a lot less alcohol than we do in cricket? I can see that within clubs there may be one or two blokes that might take it seriously, but part of me would half expect that they would get the p**s ripped out of them for it. "Sorry mate, I'm not drinking tonight, gotta watch my calorie intake and anyway I'm off down the gym with Mick'. It's so not club cricket in England.

With regards kids, there may be some scope to turn the previous attitude around. What with Thatcher selling off the school playing fields and subsequent governments implementing none competitive sports strategies, we now seem to be reaping the benefits. I saw a news package on the tele a week or so ago where someone took a sample of kids and set them some kind of standardised research test that tested for their agility, strength and what have you. The results that came up from the sample suggested that the kids of the UK are now more unfit than those in all other European countries and the USA.

Bob Woolmer in his book 'The art and science of cricket' has similar data looking at school kids in South Africa and the UK. (I've tried to find this and quote it exactly but the books 600 odd pages long and couldn't find it)!

As i remember it.....He notes that 15 years ago a class of 30 school kids all could perform 4 pull ups on average, whereas these days the same sample in the UK you'd be lucky to find two that could pull their own body weight.

This is not just an issue for cricket but for the whole of society in the UK. With the demographic changes that are happening and our birth rate far lower than the 2.11 that's required to sustain the economy and therefore raise taxes to pay for an ever increasing population of retired people who are living longer and stretching our medical resources etc. The last thing the country needs is a generation of people that lived a wholly sedentary lifestyle who never engaged in sport who will suddenly develop a whole range of physical problems once they reach their 30's and beyond. So, there may be some mileage and benefit in getting kids into S&C via technical and exciting looking and well equipped gyms that they might also associate with their idols? I know this is dead cyncial, but that's the way I am!

Woolmers chapter 10 'Physiology and Fitness' is well worth a read in conjunction with all this as he's on board with the whole idea at all levels and basically says that anyone taking the sport seriously needs to embrace science and technology and explore the limitations and capabilities of the human body and mind and optimise boths performance. No doubt it is the future, but here in the UK I reckon there's a lot of things to over-come from our beer culture to spivs setting up dodgy gyms to make a fast buck.

I think that's about it?​
 
"I look at baseball as an example. Although they are different sports, they have many similarities, throwing catching, running and hitting. There are college guys! who are deadlifting 500lbs for reps and squatting the same. so why therefore are cricketers so far behind. could it be due to scheduling of games. Do cricketers play too often to get in any real S&C work? or am I just making excuses".

Does this bit relate to Pro players or club players?
 
I should have just quoted this from Woolmer:)

Achieving the appropriate level of fitness for ones chosen sport, as well as the specialised routines that will hone ones fitness for your speciality, at the same time reducing the risk of injury, is now acknowledged to be a complex enterprise - the realm of the professional fitness/exercise specialist. Fitness training routines must be tailored to fit the individual.

He goes on to say that at pro level S&C is a multi-facted science requiring the input and understanding of a range of different specialists - nutritionists, physicians, bio-mechanists, physiotherapists, bio - kineticists and exercise specialists and more who all operate under the umbrella of sports science and medicine. So it sounds like it'll be a few years yet before this is available to the likes of me!
 
Thanks for that Dave, I am sure Brian and Liz will be able to provide a wider perspective, but for me as a coach (and dad) and you as someone involved with youth cricket (and a dad of similar aged boys), what would you like to see the youth section at your club doing on S&C, if anything at all?

My gut feeling is that as children get to high school age the thought that even half an evening's training session could be turned over to S&C is not going to sit well with either players or parents as they would rather see sessions based around 'skills' (I have had some success with the younger kids doing some Agility, Balance, Co-ordination, Speed (ABCs) work, but thats often seen as much to 'break up' the sessions by players and parents - perhaps thats the trick). We have two more sessions at my club before we end the season with a day of inter club Kwik / pairs hard ball cricket and a BBQ, is there anything I can give the kids to take away in terms of things they can do before we come back together as a club in February for indoor training (most of which I want to devote to technique)?
 
Actually Dave, don't restrict Tony's question to yourself. What do you think the other parents would want also? ... and, What do you think the players would want themselves? Then ask them, do they agree?
 
Hi dave (someblokecalleddave) a lot of things to consider in your statements. A couple of things that stood out.

Firstly. Why do you see gym's as a rip off?

Secondly. I would say s&c and cricket training ie skills and technique work and netting should be done separately. A great opportunity would be for the kids to learn now as they have more time off school during the summer holidays. The earlier the better in my opinion. Just learning basic movement patterns would be good and body weight movements. I think you would be surprised to find parents and kids would respond well to it. I remember going to watch england play when I was younger and was very inspired by the teams just going through their warm ups.

After writing a few posts on training over on pitchvision. I have had numerous emails on strength training for cricket. More so from the sub continent! So I think kids want to get into it and can see the benefits. I think the issue is how to find someone who can teach the basics of strength training.

The baseball guys I was talking about previously are major league prospects. So I guess you would call that semi pro? Or the equivalent.

One last thing to say :) you are very right when you talk about players taking the piss. I Don't drink alcohol and live a very active and generally healthy lifestyle. This is the exact opposite to everyone of my team mates. Its safe to say I have been on the end of some poor quality jokes at my expense, including comments about my sexuality!! I guess this can put some people off going against the grain and trying to better themselves. I guess I'm strong enough (mentally) to be able to deal with this. But some people would be affraid to go against old traditions. Heck if your even seen knocking up before the game has started people look at me strange!!

I guess it depends what level of cricket you play at. But I know every one wants to win regardless of the standard so why not invest in yourself and get a gym membership, improve your health and you might even get to play a few extra years ;-)
 
Hello, not been on here much of late, but I'll get back to this over the weekend hopefully - mental at work enrolling students at college and having my course externally verified blah, blah. Lots of cricket as well so shed loads of blogging going on!!
 
That's cool David. I have gathered things are pretty quiet here. Shame :-(

If you get the chance then please check out my cricket and fitness blog at www.cricketleeds.blog.co.uk I would appreciate your comments.

Also what is your blog. I would like to read it

All the best

Bri
 
Nice to hear from you Dave... was getting a little worried [especially as I could not access mpafirstelven.blogspot] but know how manic this time of year can be in normal circumstances.

Good Luck!
 
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