Feature Team of the Week: Cricket

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;

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.

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.