Things To Do To Improve Firtness In The Off-season

Top Contributors
Zack

Zack

Member
Cricket season is only a couple of months away for me. I wondering what things I could do to help improve my fitness for cricket? I have some weights and a exercise bike down stairs. Will using these things help me at all? I am 15, 16 this year. Any advice would be appreciated.

Edit: Was meant to say fitness in the heading, my bad. :p
 
Things to improve: spelling. :p


If Melbourne gets a couple of dry days in a row, I make sure to rug up and hit the nets. It has worked sheer wonders for both my fitness and morale. I'm sure that sessions with weights and on the exercise bike will help, but I have no idea as to how intense, how long or how frequent those sessions should be.
 
You are still very young so one of the most important things you can do to help your development is restrict the amount of "endurance training" you do.

At your age, muscle fibres are still developing and if you wish to specialise in cricket as your sport you must consider what type of sport cricket is and the best type of training you can do to help.

Cricket is an anaerobic sport, despite it being a "long game". Training for endurance will be detrimental to your performance as you will develop less powerful red muscle fibres rather than white muscle fibres that are associated with more explosive powerful sports.

Many studies have shown the benefits of interval training for anaerobic sports over aerobic training and for more information you should google Gibala study.

I am assuming you have a good base fitness and are in good health, however, before starting this type of exercise program I strongly suggest having a medical or fitness assessment with a healthcare professional or Strength and Conditioning coach.

I work as an S&C coach at Guernsey cricket with links to the Sussex County Cricket academy where we send our players who show potential to be professional players.

Along with developing their anaerobic fitness we also build up their strength as the players in the academy set up tend to be more muscular than our bowlers in particular however, once again you should seek a good S&C coach to help you with this as poor technique could ruin your season before you have even started.

In order of importance I would order off season training as so.

1) Anaerobic fitness - purely because it is very easy to complete without much technical know how. A great session we do is 7 second run from a start line with 14 second recovery back to the start line. Repeat 6 times. Take a 60 second rest after the 6 rep and repeat 5 sets.

2) Core strength - Squats will help with this but we also do a lot of anti flexion, extension and rotation work to condition the core and reduce the risk of back injuries.

3) Mobility and Flexibility - If you can't move well, you will have movement compensation patterns that will lead to injury. You need to have mobility in your ankles, stability at your knees, mobility in your hips, stability in your lower back, mobility in your mid back, mobile and stable shoulders.

4) * Strength Training - Squats, and retraction exercises (pulling exercises) are great to focus on due to the demands of cricket on the shoulder.

* Strength training should be up at number 1 with anaerobic conditioning but due to the technical nature of lifting efficiently along with the risk of injury without proper instruction I have rated this number 4 as without correct coaching the risks outweigh the benefits.

Andy
 
I would like to say about practice with some of the most important cricket tools to have consistent performance. Batsmen often struggle to select good shots for bouncer delivery. Therefore, they have to use a bowling machine in their regular practice to retain consistency in performance.
 
Andy offers excellent advice. I would add to that by saying some people are more endurance suited and others are more strength-power suited.

Endurance guys tend to be medium pace or spin bowlers who can run in all day, power guys are the big hitters and fast bowlers. You can train yourself to improve either skill, but you will get better improvements if you train for your "type". It's easy to work out, just think what you enjoy more, endurance or strength training. Natural selection is at work!

Power and strength gets all the focus these days (as it should) but there is also a place for the batsman who can score a double hundred and the medium pacer who can wibble through 25 overs a day without losing accuracy!

I would say finding out your type and training to that type will help you stick to your fitness training and become a greater success.
 
Some good tips above. But don't over complicate things fitness-wise. At 15 you should be spending the majority of your time improving your batting, bowling & fielding skills. If you work hard on all 3 areas your fitness will improve as a direct result.
 
I don't fully agree.

Yes, skill development is the priority, but you don't play to get fit, you get fit to play. Building a base of movement mastery better body awareness will help with a player learning skills. A guy who can squat, hip hinge, press, pull and stabilise his core is in a really good place!

Of course there is not substitute in the gym for bowling 15 overs uphill into the wind. However, the right training will mean that you recover better from your efforts, are reducing injury risk and improving bowling speed.
 
So our young friend has to decide between "not over complicating things fitness-wise" and "building a base of movement mastery."

I know what makes more sense at 15. But I do sincerely hope he takes something positive out of this thread.
 
Yes, perhaps I should have said it more clearly: Be an athlete. Learn how to move well in any situation, and you will learn how to move well as a cricketer.

Simplicity and learning to be an athlete are not mutually exclusive goals.
 
I've just written a post on all the areas we work on with the Guernsey national squad including sample programs for each area and also some video demonstrations of some particularly useful exercises.
These are all things that we are using at the moment with a variety of age groups from 17 up to senior. The guys are right you should be training to be an athlete. If you even watch teams like Denmark and Italy play they have 11 athletes on the field and move extremely well and put fielders under pressure with their running between wickets and their ability to squeeze a field when fielding. I hope the below post helps you.

Andy

http://www.cricketfitnesscoach.com/...ter-hit-ball-harder-bowl-faster-throw-faster/
 
Nets start in a months time, probably at my lowest ebb fitness-wise any ideas of what I can do. I know Shahidipak over on the wristspin thread is working on his press-ups. I've just done 10 of these here - just wondering if the position of the hands means they're too close to the body or is it bad when they are wide?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top