Yoga?

someblokecalleddave

Well-Known Member
I've noticed a pattern with my fitness over the last couple of seasons, whereby, as now I'm pretty fit, the seasons finished and I still have a knock about with my kids practicing and stuff, but in the next few weeks the weathers going to close in and finally put and end to any regular practice. Jan usually sees net practice, but hardly represents anything useful with regards getting fit, so come the first match of the season I'm not in anything like what you'd call good condition. Generally it then takes around 3 or 4 months before I feel like I'm reaching peak performance once again. Looking around the web looking for ideas to maintain core strength and flexibility I stumbled across Yoga and then wondered whether there was anyone out there that practices Yoga in conjunction with their cricket? At 51 all that grunting and groaning in Gyms doesn't hold a lot of appeal, so might Yoga be a part of the solution - it also has the addition of being gentle and non impact (My knees are on their way out)?
 
Yoga [and pilates] is great! I posted this: http://www.espncricinfo.com/bdeshvind/content/story/293315.html on the '...heck, core...' thread a couple of years ago.

Only a couple of weeks ago I heard Harry talking about their new Yoga instructor at Spurs!

Highly recommend it... although, I hope to be able to offer you and the boys something worth considering at the County Ground in February. ;)

Sounds interesting Liz, we've still yet to visit the county ground.I'll have to look at Pilates I've seen the word around and have some idea that those big balls are used in some way, but that's about it.
 
No problem with yoga, but as an alternative (and a rather addictive way of getting fit through the winter) suggest finding a local parkrun event
http://www.parkrun.com
There's no charge, it's only 5km, every saturday 9am and they even email you the result with your time and a host of stats. They are very popular - last saturday in hove there were over 400 runners. You can always warm up with some yoga if you arrive early enough.
 
No problem with yoga, but as an alternative (and a rather addictive way of getting fit through the winter) suggest finding a local parkrun event
http://www.parkrun.com
There's no charge, it's only 5km, every saturday 9am and they even email you the result with your time and a host of stats. They are very popular - last saturday in hove there were over 400 runners. You can always warm up with some yoga if you arrive early enough.

I noticed you're a young un at 47, so your knees might be okay still:D. Mine were okay at 47, but last season I changed direction quick in the field and mangled one of them a bit so I have to look after it and be a bit careful. There's a bloke on here occassionally - David Hinchcliffe and Liz Ward I think says the same thing and that's that running distances like this isn't particularly cricket specific and for blokes my age you have to think about the impact aspect of running. I (When I do it) do a variation whereby for 20 minutes only I combine power-walking with sprinting. I walk 100 yards and then sprint for 10 seconds, repeat as infintum for 20 minutes, which I kind of feel emulates that running between the wickets and fielding aspect of cricket and meets the cricket specific aspect.
 
I noticed you're a young un at 47, so your knees might be okay still:D. Mine were okay at 47, but last season I changed direction quick in the field and mangled one of them a bit so I have to look after it and be a bit careful. There's a bloke on here occassionally - David Hinchcliffe and Liz Ward I think says the same thing and that's that running distances like this isn't particularly cricket specific and for blokes my age you have to think about the impact aspect of running. I (When I do it) do a variation whereby for 20 minutes only I combine power-walking with sprinting. I walk 100 yards and then sprint for 10 seconds, repeat as infintum for 20 minutes, which I kind of feel emulates that running between the wickets and fielding aspect of cricket and meets the cricket specific aspect.

I regard parkrun as having a number of advantages:
- 5km is a fairly short distance, so it's all over inside ~25mins
- you are competing mostly against yourself, so run at a pace you are happy with
- your time and pb gets emailed to you.
You start wondering what you have to do to improve on your pb.
So this leads to a) analysis of diet b) making Opportunities for exercise during the week, loss of excess flab, and so on.
Who knows maybe the build up of extra stamina to bowl some extra overs?
Not sure how feasible this is with a gammy knee though.
 
I regard parkrun as having a number of advantages:
- 5km is a fairly short distance, so it's all over inside ~25mins
- you are competing mostly against yourself, so run at a pace you are happy with
- your time and pb gets emailed to you.
You start wondering what you have to do to improve on your pb.
So this leads to a) analysis of diet b) making Opportunities for exercise during the week, loss of excess flab, and so on.
Who knows maybe the build up of extra stamina to bowl some extra overs?
Not sure how feasible this is with a gammy knee though.

Yeah days of old I'd have been up for it, trying to beat my PB, but these days with the gammy knee I'm not even sure if I'd want to sprint if it was cold, kind of want to see a few more years and get to play cricket in league matches alongside my sons. So, I'm looking for different ways of keeping ticking over through the cold winter months. Last year did badminton every week, but they've torn the venue down and the new privately owned one that's supposedly replaced it has priced me out of that as a customer.
 
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