Cricket Fitness

Cricketers need to be fit to play.

Shoulder to hip training

On initial appearance cricket may not appear to be the most physical of sports. Brief periods of activity are followed by longer periods of rest. Apart from fast bowlers who can perform long series of overs, the rest of the team do not look to be that active.

However, this is a mistaken concept as it is precisely this intermittent high intensity activity that requires the Cricketer to be very fit. The movements are fast and dynamic and have to be sustained throughout a morning or afternoon in the field.

The Cricketer’’s body has to be very strong to be able to withstand the high impacts and forces that are produced when bowling and throwing. We have looked at agility training for fielding here, but now we look at exercises to help throwing and batting.

Cricket Upper body and trunk Fitness Programme

The following exercises are a good way of starting a fitness programme. Once you have developed the ability to do these activities well, you can add more exercises using weights such as dumbbells and barbells.

Shoulder exercises:
The shoulder does not work in isolation of other body parts, so these exercises help develop overall shoulder strength before moving onto throwing and bowling actions. This sequence works on connecting the hip to shoulder:

You can also do more traditional exercises that utilise multi joints.

Press ups – perform a normal press up with your chest touching the floor, but as your arms straighten try and arch your upper back to its full range of movement, then go back down to the floor.

Dips- Place your hands on two parallel bars and jump up until your arms are straight and your weight is supported through your hands, keeping your feet off the floor. Bend your arms until your shoulders are level with your elbows, and then straighten up again.

Pull ups- hang from an overhead bar and pull yourself up until your chin is above the bar. Lower yourself until your arms are fully straight, and then repeat.

Crawling is a great way to develop the hip-shoulder complex too:

 Medicine ball exercises.

These can be performed with a 2-3 kg medicine ball for beginners and junior athletes, as you get stronger and more proficient, work up towards using a 10kg medicine ball. Try 5 repetitions of each exercise, having about 30 seconds rest between the sets.

• Hitters throw – stand in a normal hitting stance with the medicine ball held level with your back shoulder in both hands, then throw it forward with maximal effort in line with a normal swing.
• Standing figure 8– Stand back to back with a partner and exchange the medicine ball behind your back at waist level as quickly as possible receiving on one side and returning on the other side.
• Speed rotations– Similar to the figure8 s, but this time with throwing and catching with arms fully extended instead of handing.
• Standing side throw- Stand in a batting stance, this time with the ball in two hands at hip height, then throw forward maximally with hip and torso rotation.
• Granny throw –Start with the medicine ball above your head in two hands, lower quickly between your legs and bum into a parallel squat position and then use your legs and shoulders to throw the ball directly above your head.
• Standing backwards throw- Same as the granny throw, but throw the ball up and behind your head.
• Squat and throw.– same as the Granny throw, but this time start with the ball held at chin height with extended arms and the elbows pointing outwards.

Here are some exercises put together in a sequence.

Intermittent exercises:

Try these following intervals as a way of developing cricket fitness. Make sure that you have warmed up thoroughly before starting.

•10 metre shuttle runs. Run between two cones 10metres apart as many times as you can in 20 seconds. Rest 10 seconds, and repeat 7 more times.

•Run for 45 seconds, 60 seconds, 75 seconds, 60 seconds, 45 seconds as hard as you can. The rest interval is the time of the next run.

•Run at about 75% of your fastest pace for 30 seconds, then walk for 30 seconds. Do this for a total of 20 times.

Weekly routine

Try and do some activity on every day that you are not playing cricket, even if it is just doing the cricket warm up. You can either do the shoulder exercises and medicine ball throws on separate days from the intermittent training, or immediately before them, depending on your schedule. Do not do the same exercises on consecutive days.

Unfortunately, the England Cricket Board (ECB) appears to have adopted a flawed stance in its coach education programme: it is telling coaches that posture is linked to personality! It actually tells cricket coaches to use the Myers Briggs personality test to see how a player moves.

The Myers Briggs Test has been debunked (see here) as a personality test, let alone then trying to use it base fitness work on!. The ECB is paying £1000 a day for a consultant to deliver this “education”. The money would be better spent on developing a sound, systematic approach to cricket fitness!.

Cricket coaches looking to help their team improve fitness why not attend our 1 day Foundation in Athletic Development course.