The complete guide to cricket fitness Collected & Copied from Various Sources for Cricket Lovers by Abid A. Farooqi (Midwest Gymkhana) There are not many certainties in club cricket, especially when it comes to making runs and taking wickets. However, one thing you can be sure of is that the fitter you are, the better you will perform on the pitch at the weekend. Cricket fitness, though, can a complicated and difficult subject. You just have to look at the hundreds of personal trainers, fitness books and strange looking equipment available to know it's a confusing world. I'm here to unpick the facts from snake oil so you don't waste a moment of your precious time on useless training. Plus you get the added benefit of feeling and looking good. So here is the complete course on cricket fitness, including drills: Part 1: Introduction  Why get fit for cricket?  How important is fitness & nutrition to club cricket?  The fitness requirements of cricket  Principles of Cricket Fitness: Progressive Overload  Principles of Cricket Fitness: Specificity  Principles of Cricket Fitness: Reversibility  Other Principles of Cricket Fitness  Match fitness vs gym fitness  First steps to cricket fitness  Make fitness training fun  How to warm up part 1  How to warm up part 2  Warm up video Part 2: Planning  Goal Setting  Planning your year  Rest and recovery  Off season training  Pre-season training part 1  Pre-season training part 2  In season training  Customizing your plan  Planning around your body type  Planning Q&A Part 3: Conditioning  Running technique  Introduction to interval training  Off-season conditioning  Swimming for recovery  Fielding drills  Combining nets with conditioning  Work to rest ratio  Work capacity Part 4: Strength, Speed and Power  Introduction to strength training for cricket  How strong and powerful to cricketers need to be?  How fast do cricketers need to be?  10 Principles of cricket power  Core Stability  7 Deadly sins of cricket specific core training  Strength workout for beginners  Acceleration training  Circuit Training  4 week bodyweight training plan for cricket  Introduction to speed training  Introduction to SAQ training  Drills for running between the wickets  Drills for skill and fitness  Plyometrics Part 6: Position Specific  Bowlers  Bowlers part 2  Bowlers part 3  Weight Loss for Bowlers  Wicketkeepers  Batsmen  Batsmen part 2  Batsmen part 3  Spin Bowlers Part 7: Injury Prevention  Injury prevention tips  Balance training to prevent injury  Preventing back pain  Choosing the right boots  How to stop cramp Part 8: Other Fitness Tips  Weight loss  How to cool down  Rest times for different training methods  5 Reasons to join a gym  Match fitness vs. gym fitness  How to choose a gym  Training for cricket in the gym  10 Common training mistakes  Mike Boyle on cricket fitness  Training on match days  Avoiding overtraining  Fitness for older players Part 1: Introduction Fitness training for cricket - good or bad? Fitness training for cricket is a contentious issue. Should you consider traditional gym work and running to improve your fitness for cricket? I believe fitness is essential for almost every level of cricketer, but in the interest of balance let’s review both sides: The argument against fitness training  Fun - Fitness training is boring and no fun. Who wants to pound the roads and pound iron in a sweaty gym?  Specificity - Fitness training is highly specific. Runners don't train on a bike because it's not as good as running. The only way to properly get fit for cricket is to play as much cricket as possible.  Time - Cricket is a long game and if you are talented enough you can be playing or practicing almost every day. When do you get time to squeeze in a gym session?  Age - You can't fight the march of time. There is no point in being fit if you are an older player.  Bulking Up - Too much weight training will bulk you up and ruin your timing and technique with big muscles. The argument for fitness training  Performance - Fitness improves bowling speed, hitting power, reaction times and running speed. It does this for everyone without fail (no matter how old). What's more, even highly trained elite players suffer no loss of performance through bulking up - they are not training for huge bodybuilder muscles and neither should you (for more on the science of fitness of performance see Further Reading).  Injury Prevention - Stronger bones, muscles, ligaments and tendons reduce the risk of injury.  Teamwork - Training in pairs or in a team is great for building camaraderie between teammates. Making training competitive also makes it more fun.  Variation - Playing cricket is the best way to get fit for cricket. That said, the body likes variation. Different activities cross train your body and keep your mind alert.  Health - General fitness makes you feel and look better in the rest of your life too. So while fitness should not overtake skills or actually playing cricket there really is only one way - from serious player to the park on a Sunday - an organized, specific training programmed. How important is fitness & nutrition to club cricket? "I think all sports evolve at some point where technique and skill level are almost equal and wins and losses are decided purely from a strength and conditioning angle." The difference with club level sport is that skill and technique can vary much more widely than you see at international level (where fitness is often the only difference between teams). That means a team that is less fit but has more talent will mostly outplay the fitter and less skilful side. But that's not the whole story Conditioning gives the edge All other things being equal it is your cricket specific conditioning that gives you the edge. For example, in a close game where sides are roughly equal (say, the national stages of the North Gear 2020 Premier League where standards will be high). It would take a very unlucky or mentally unprepared team to lose if they are physically capable of playing hard to the last ball:  Faster batsmen can steal more runs.  More powerful players can hit more boundaries.  Fitter bowlers can maintain pace and accuracy even at the death.  Less tired fielders have better concentration and reactions. All the technique in the world is no good if you can't maintain it under fatigue. That's why, even as club cricketers, we should look at our diet and fitness plan on the same level as our technique practice. Do you need a map to cricket fitness? Mind maps are a great way to get all your thoughts down in one easy to follow way. As I did one recently for my own cricket fitness plan I thought you might be interested in seeing it too. What the Ancient Greeks knew about cricket This is the 2nd in the "Principles of Cricket Fitness" series. To go to Part 1 click here. Ancient Greece is more famous in sport for the Olympics rather than the smack of leather on willow. These two great endeavors do have an element in common and that's how the Greeks can show cricket the way. Principle of Cricket Fitness: Progressive Overload Milo was noted as a great Greek athlete. He became so for his fabled feats of strength, the most famous being his way of keeping fit and strong in between Olympic Games: "He would train in the off years by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day until the Olympics took place. By the time the events were to take place he was carrying a four year old cow on his back." You couldn't find a better example of progressive overload if you tried and in later years this was proved by sport science to be more than just a fable. So the principle of progressive overload is this: In order to get fitter and stronger you must regularly increase the demand on your body over time. In Milo's case, he lifted more weight as the cow got heavier. You don't have to find a cow though. What you do have to do is find activity that is challenging to your body to allow yourself to get fitter. Going to the gym, sprint training, interval running or training at home is all great examples of this. But you can't just do the same exercise for the same time/distance/weight and expect to get fitter. That's where the progressive part comes in. To keep yourself improving in the middle you need to keep gradually increasing the load. You may set yourself a target of running further, or the same distance faster, lifting a bit more weight or doing a few more press ups than last week. That's why you need to plan ahead and plan to improve:  Amount of weight  Number of repetitions  Number of sets  Distance  Amount of training sessions  Time The key here is to be gradual though; progress too fast and you end up overtraining. It's also vital to get plenty of rest to allow the overload part to go ahead while you are recovering. The Ancient Greeks new this principle worked for their athletes, if you know it too you are on your way to becoming a better cricketer. Get fit for cricket by playing cricket (almost) It's been said before and will be said again: The best way to get fit for cricket is by playing cricket. That, in a nutshell, is the principle of "specificity": Your body adapts to demand put on it in a highly specific way. It's why runners can't run faster by training on a bike and why cricketers will not get any better at cricket by jogging for miles. It just doesn't happen on the pitch in the same way. So when given the option, the best form of fitness will always be the closest you can get to actually playing cricket. According to training expert Mike Boyle, most power based team sports (cricket included) have certain actions that are almost identical: sprinting, jumping, changing direction quickly and striking are far more similar than different. That means there are certain exercises that are not cricket-specific but still highly important for cricketers. After all, if you can run fast you can run fast playing cricket, hockey, football or chasing the bus. This might seem contradictory: Sprint training, core stability, mobility work or lifting weights may not seem to have any use to cricket because the law of specificity. In fact, they are sport specific rather than cricket specific. For example, if you train to run fast, you will be able to steal more quick singles. So while playing as much as possible is your number one priority. If you want to be the best you can be on the field, find time to improve your sport specificity too. Cricket fitness isn’t like riding a bike One of the most frustrating things about fitness training is as soon as you stop your improvements starting to fade. Unlike getting back on a bike, your muscles and lungs do forget. That's the third training principle: All fitness improvements reverse when training stops. Luckily the speed at which this happens is quite slow. You can take a couple of days off without worry and even a whole week now and again. Anything beyond this will see a steady decline in your cricket strength, endurance, speed and power. The obvious answer is to keep training regularly. As little as once a week can lead to improvements if you train in the right way, although more is better (as long as you get sufficient rest). Balancing Out Cricket Fitness Improvements The reversibility principle does lead to another headache. A fit cricketer needs to develop a lot of areas to be at the peak of their performance: strength, power, speed, work capacity, agility, balance and technical skills are all part of the equation. It's impossible to train all these at the same time and make progress on them all. That means you need to take a 'concentrated' approach to your training: Focus on improving 2-3 key areas at any one time while only maintaining the others (with fewer sessions. Rotate the areas you focus on regularly to get the best results, but never leave any aspect out. Unless you want your body to forget that is. The golden rules of cricket fitness The world of fitness is ever changing as new research, techniques and fads come to light. Some ideas work brilliantly for cricket and some are a waste of time.