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Women's Cricket in Australia - Fitness
for Cricket
By Sally Bailey (B.App.Sci.P.E.)
Fitness Adviser Women's Cricket in Australia
IS FITNESS IMPORTANT FOR CRICKET PLAYERS?
FITNESS COMPONENTS ARE IMPORTANT IN THE GAME OF CRICKET?SHOULD A CRICKET PLAYER GO ABOUT IMPROVING ALL THESE AREAS?
SHOULD A CRICKET PLAYER FOCUS ON FITNESS ?
STABILITY VS STRENGTH TRAINING
GENERAL PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES
EXAMPLE OF A TRAINING YEAR PLAN
APPROACHING THE END OF THE SEASON
IS FITNESS IMPORTANT FOR CRICKET PLAYERS?
At any level, the world of competitive sport is demanding. If your motivation levels to succeed at your chosen sport are high, then regardless of whether you play in the local U/17 side, or whether you represent your country, you need to commit time and effort into preparing yourself physically to meet these demands.
The game of cricket is particularly taxing - both physically and mentally. Cricket players are susceptible to a number of injuries that in some cases can be prevented if they are specifically conditioned to play the game. Achieving and maintaining an acceptable level of physical fitness is a vital ingredient towards being a balanced and consistent cricket player.
Fitness in cricket is as much about working towards an improvement in performance as it is about injury prevention. Being fit not only assists the cricket player to run faster between the wickets, jump higher to catch the ball, hit the ball harder and faster, and make quicker, more agile responses to the nature of play. Fitness is also integral in the reduction of fatigue and in the prevention of injuries - both overuse and acute.
So, once you've recognised that you need to do a bit of work on your fitness, the next step is to know what to do…
FITNESS COMPONENTS ARE IMPORTANT IN THE GAME OF CRICKET?
To begin with, it is important to understand what the actual physical demands of the game are, and what the performance objectives are of each player.
If we take just a few characteristics of the game we can use the following descriptions:
- Long and enduring - there is a minimum of one full day of play and a maximum of five consecutive days.
- Players are essentially on their feet all day.
- Repeated short sprints throughout the game - for example, batters running between wickets, fielders moving to the ball or chasing the ball, fast bowlers run-up.
- There are repeated short and fast bursts of energy - players required to accelerate and decelerate quickly and powerfully.
- The movements are frequently non-linear and require a high degree of agility - for example, fielding the ball and different levels and from different positions, cross-over throws, hip throws, diving…etc.
- All actions require a degree of flexibility about certain joints.
- The game has fast and powerful components - fast bowling, throwing, facing a fast bowler, batting…etc.
- There are many actions that need to be repeated over a long period of time.
- Movements are right or left side dominant - batting, bowling, throwing.
- High levels of concentration and mental alertness are essential.
(To be more specific, click here to view the general performance objectives of each player.)
To break things down in fitness terms, we need to know what components need to be addressed when preparing a player for cricket. They are:
Optimising your aerobic endurance is critical to the game of cricket for the following reasons:
It enhances your ability to repeat short bursts of activity over an extended period of time.
Ÿ It enables you to maintain maximum concentration levels and energy throughout a game.
It enables you to maintain high levels of skill and play for long periods of time without becoming fatigued.
To most people, "aerobic endurance" means continuous running. However, as you would know, cricket isn’t about running at the same pace for an extended period of time. The nature of the game involves a lot of sprinting, quick and fast actions, accelerating, decelerating, changing directions, as well as a lot of standing in the one position and walking around. Therefore aerobic endurance for a cricket player isn’t about "clocking up the kilometres" in training to improve your fitness. Not only is it not specific to your sport, but this type of training does carry with it the risk of developing overuse injuries or complaints.
So, your aerobic training needs to combine continuous running (to ensure you still achieve the heart and lung benefits) with sprint training (which allows you to work on movement speed without the risk of overuse injuries.) You can do this by dividing your running sessions into "units" of 15 minutes duration. The Australian Squad and the Australian Youth Squad were introduced to the concept of Unit Running in August 1997 and have since fully incorporated it into their training program.
Strength can be defined as the maximal force that can be generated by a muscle or muscle group at a specified velocity. This essentially means that being strong enables the muscles to produce a greater force. Of fundamental value, strength is an integral component of speed (running fast between the wickets) as well as power (fast bowling) development.
Generally speaking, muscular strength is instrumental in maintaining strong muscle function, preventing the risk of injuries, and treating injuries through exercise rehabilitation. With reference to cricket, strength training is vital to the game. It means bowling faster and harder, throwing the ball further, running faster between the wickets…etc. So it is obvious that the objective of the strength training program is to develop strength specifically for cricket.
When it comes to strength training, in order to improve, you need to be disciplined and active in challenging yourself during your weight training sessions. Most importantly, you need to train at a high level of intensity and you need to employ the correct technique for each exercise. This implies that it is not sufficient to follow a weight training program as if you were just going through the motions.
The Australian Squads use body weight exercises, free weights and weight machines to follow their strength training program. They have a specific strengthening program to follow that changes depending on the time of the year it is, for example, pre-season or in-season training.
To use strength specifically for cricket.
Ÿ The definition of power is strength x speed.
The above definition suggests that athletes striving towards increasing their power need to develop both their strength and speed elements. Before implementing any form of power training, it is important to develop a base level of strength, speed, agility, aerobic endurance and flexibility.
Power training places emphasis on becoming more explosive on the concentric contraction of a muscle group (or muscle groups.) The concentric contraction refers to when the muscle is shortening to overcome a force.
So functional power is achieved by proceeding from the development and subsequent maintenance of strength, speed, agility, aerobic endurance and flexibility towards development of functional power.
Flexibility basically refers to the range of movement about a joint. Being flexible allows an adequate range of motion about certain joints to avoid conditions of muscular stiffness and/ or the restriction of certain fundamental movement patterns.
Maintaining an adequate level of flexibility is integral to playing cricket well. For example, being able to move the arm through the correct movement patterns about the shoulder joint is essential when throwing or bowling.
It has also been established that strength and power gains can occur more effectively through resistance work that is accompanied by muscle lengthening or flexibility exercises. This is partly the reason why stretching is crucial before and after training. So if you balance your strength training by stretching your muscles before and after each session, your progression should be greater. To put it simply, "short" muscles limit movement and are prone to injury and soreness.
It is also important to set time aside to simply stretch. Stretching only during warm-ups and warm-downs just isn’t enough. It is crucial that players organise their time to regularly stretch either with a partner or participate in a stretch class or yoga class.
Core Stability…the buzz word in the strength and conditioning field. What's it all about?
Basically, it's important to recognise that exercises for the abdominal area are not about achieving a "six-pack." Being strong through the trunk is critical to developing good posture and preventing back soreness and injuries. With reference to cricketers, core muscular strength is vital to playing longevity and playing performance.
The aim of a solid abdominal strengthening program is to create stability through the lumbar spine. Many actions in cricket place a lot of stress on one side of the body which can cause muscle imbalances and consequently injuries if these imbalances are not addressed. Achieving lumbar stability aims to prevent this from happening.
Lumbar stability is achieved by learning how to actively contract certain muscles in the abdominal area. These muscles are the obliques and transversus abdominis, quadratus lumborum, multifidus, rotators, erector spinae and rectus abdominis. The transverse abdominis in particular is integral to lumbar stabilisation. Most people have reasonable automatic control (coughing, sneezing, laughing), however few people have the ability to actively contract this muscle with reasonable voluntary control. The objective then, is to be able to consciously and actively contract this muscle not only in a stable environment (doing sit-ups), but most importantly when you are bowling, batting, throwing…etc.
The Australian squads work through a number of drills and exercises to develop their awareness and strength in this area. The most important step is to master the technique of abdominal hollowing and bracing. (click for definition)
Abdominal Hollowing & Bracing
Abdominal hollowing refers to the "drawing-in" action of the abdominal wall. To do this, think about pulling your navel through to your spine. This action primarily recruits the transverse abdominis. This muscle can be felt on both sides of your torso just above your iliac crest (prominent part of your hip bone). If you place your fingertips here when you perform this action you should feel the muscle contract. Be careful not to suck your breath in - you should be able to breath evenly when you perform this action.
Abdominal bracing is the development of intra-abdominal pressure to generate specified muscle action.
Be careful that you are not simply tilting your pelvis and flattening your back. The technique you need to master is a localised voluntary muscle contraction - it is not a structural movement of your pelvis. Drawing in your abdominals is associated with subtle back flattening, but you are not aiming to actually tilt your pelvis in a posterior direction.
So when you are following the core strength program, concentrate on implementing this technique.
To begin with, these techniques need to be learnt in static positions in a controlled environment - that is, lying on your back with your legs stretched out in front. As your strength in this area improves, you need to gradually implement these techniques under conditions of gentle movement, increasingly dynamic movements, and finally in unstable and uncontrolled environments. The final outcome should be that you are able to hold your lumbar spine in a stable position whilst you are bowling. Obviously this progression takes place over a number of weeks/months.
So the end goal is for you to be able to consciously develop stability through your lumbar area in both stable (lying) and unstable (bowling) situations.
(Click here for more information on strength and stability training.)
Being agile is the ability to change position and direction quickly; it demands a high level of balance, stability and co-ordination. The nature of cricket brings about unpredictable movements and situations that need to be reacted to quickly.
There's more fitness on the Next Page....
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