Feature Team of the Week: Cricket
S&C Coach: Ben Warman
SHU Cricket Club have made an incredibly positive start to their
strength and conditioning work so far. With the club not having received
S&C support before, the athletes have thrown themselves into their new
training regime with a refreshingly positive and inquisitive attitude. With
many of the group being new to formal strength and conditioning, the overall
theme for the current training cycles is movement competency. This means the
athletes are focusing on developing their skill in performing the 7 Primal
Movements; squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, brace and rotate. An example
session can be seen below;
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The exercises
have been chosen to address multiple primal movements in one session, as well
as developing core/trunk control and conditioning through a time-constraint
based finisher. The main body of the session is completed at a relatively
steady pace, with an emphasis on technique rather than the weight on the bar.
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Subsequent training cycles will begin to challenge these freshly learnt
movement patterns through complexity in the form of different loading
strategies and multi-planar exercises. This will involve some typical strength
work (i.e. straight sets and reps or reps off time) as well as explorative
“obstacle course” style training to help implicit learning. By challenging each
movement pattern in a variety of contexts, the short-term goal is to facilitate
motor learning and deepen the attractor well or “groove” of each skill.
I have
no doubt that all members of the group will continue to make strong progress
over the coming weeks, solidifying their initial understanding of each primal
movement pattern. In the long-term, we hope that the athletes will be able
to transfer their new strength, range of motion and coordination into their training
sessions and matches. As cricket often involves reactive and unpredictable
movements, we believe we are providing the athletes with the skills and
physical qualities to improve as players.
