Like to Bowl Fast? Here are our Top 4 Tips from an expert.

1. Maintaining Strength and Fitness

Players work hard to develop a strong and robust body to deal with the stress of the long cricket season, but if not maintained your body can fail you come finals.

Your Pre-season has hopefully included progressive gym and running based training and included some heavy resistance exercises. While the total amount of volume will need to be dropped in season, it is crucial to keep some intensity in your training to maintain the fitness you worked hard to achieve.

Key areas to focus on are Hamstrings, Glutes, Core, and shoulders. These are common areas for injury which can significantly derail your season.

Gym once per week, incorporating one of the following

• Core exercise

• Squats/lunge

• Deadlift variation

• Isolated hamstring exercise

• Upper body push movement

• Upper body pull movement

To maintain some high-speed running try incorporating run throughs/ strides at greater than 85% of your sprinting speed at the end of each warm up. This will help maintain hamstring strength and minimize the risk of a running related hamstring injury.

 

2. Load Management

For fast bowlers, load can be thought of as the number of overs bowled per week. Our body likes consistency, but needs frequent rest and recovery. It also does not like large and rapid increase in load. This is especially true for young, fast bowlers who are not yet developed and susceptible to overuse injuries of the back.

A great guideline for your bowling load is

• Avoid bowling more than 2 days in a row

• Avoid bowling more than 4 days in a week

• Take an easy week every 4-5 weeks

• Take a week off bowling every 10-12 weeks.

For specific guidelines for junior bowlers, refer to Cricket Australia’s website below.

3. Optimizing Recovery

Fast bowling is very stressful on the body and muscle stiffness is very common. It’s good to get in the habit of stretching and foam rolling after training and games. This will reduce discomfort and can help keep you moving freely. Key areas to focus on are the back, hamstrings, adductors, and calfs. Low-intensity activity such as walking or gentle cycling can help increase the blood flow of our muscles and is great the day after a big game. This combined with good sleep, plenty of fluids, and a high-quality diet will keep you feeling your best over the long season.

4. Respecting Pain

While some stiffness is expected, pain that limits training, is over bone or in the lower back should be assessed by a health professional with experience in cricket and overuse injuries. Due to the high demands of bowling, overuse injuries in bone are frequently seen with back stress fractures being one of the most common cricket injuries especially in adolescence. These do not always begin with extreme pain and the sooner they are identified the shorter the recovery generally is.

Enjoy this summer of cricket, listen to your body and remember – prevention is ALWAYS better than the cure.

Yours in health,
Marcus Berryman

Marcus is an experienced, premier grade cricketer notching up over 100 games at that level. He combines his first knowledge of cricket with his professional Physiotherapy skills to be the “go-to” cricket physio in our area. If you or someone you know is looking for some help with an injury, you can contact Marcus here marcusb@balwynsportsphysio.com.au or book online