Custom Bats Cricket Forum
General Cricket => Cricket Training, Fitness and Injuries => Topic started by: steiner on March 12, 2011, 12:09:06 AM
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Does anyone have any thoughts re. piling on muscle? as I find it really noticeable over the last year or 2 the amount of players that seem to be building themselves up.
England seem to be the main exponents - admitedlly Tremlett has always been built like an out-house but Pietersen, Strauss, Bresnan, Anderson, Shazad have really noticeably beefed up.
This seems a new thing - can only think of Hayden and Akhtar maybe of previous generations who carried much muscle, indeed in the case of Akhtar and Shane Watson it's always been cited as a cause of their numerous injuries.
Just wandering in light of this apparent sea-change in thinking whether anyone has had experience of bulking up and whether this has had a positive effect on their game?
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A lot of the batsmen do it to look good on the beach and on the balcony in their vest tops, with the guns and tattoos out
the bowlers do it to improve stamina, speed and consistency
but then I am a bitter, jealous weedy batsman with no tat's and who looks rubbish in a vest!!!!!!!!
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The benifits are obsvious but if your doing it to help your game you are better off toning up not bulking up as too much muscle will hinder fast bowling but may help batting
To bulk up eat chicken best way lots of chicken and beef forget all these protein shakes and crap unless you can afford £100+ a month to do it right as my mate does
Do you want to bulk up or tone up then as bulk up high weight low reps tone up low weight high reps :)
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The benifits are obsvious but if your doing it to help your game you are better off toning up not bulking up as too much muscle will hinder fast bowling but may help batting
To bulk up eat chicken best way lots of chicken and beef forget all these protein shakes and crap unless you can afford £100+ a month to do it right as my mate does
Do you want to bulk up or tone up then as bulk up high weight low reps tone up low weight high reps :)
Don't have to spend £100+ a month on protein shakes. Most of the companies use the same formula, just slightly different tasting. Maximuscle are one of the most highly rated, I used them for a while because my gym gave me free stuff from them. However my housemate, who's a rugby leaguer, uses this stuff http://www.predatornutrition.com/pd-syngex-5lb-free-predator-shaker.cfm it works for him, and if you take one a day, or 2 every day that you train, you get a good 1.5-2 months worth of it. £32 as well. However roco's right, bulking up means doing fewer reps of a higher amount.
It does have a decent impact on your game, more power, and more muscular endurance as well. It'll also have a psychological effect, if you notice you've gotten bigger you'll feel as though you can hit the ball harder, and probably will due to the psych. effects of it!
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Be interested what difference it makes to power can see bulking up helping for pulls etc where bottom hand comes into play more not so sure about drives as think you need to ensure timing in place.
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Did not mean £100 on just protein shakes my mate uses the shakes plus lean tablet things plus this plus that I just used chicken beef weights and beer then went from 11st to 17st then trimmed back up to a slim looking 16st ;)
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Just seems like a change of approach of late - always thought overly bulky was a kind of negative for cricketers.
Tempted to put it down to IPL - more muscle=bigger hits=bigger paydays but in Englands case it seems to be driven by Flower - read about them carrying a brick in each arm all day etc. so they obviously have some theory behind it.
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its all down to teams wanting to be fitter so they tone up more been a growing trend for many years
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If you are lookin for supplements try http://www.myprotein.com/uk/pages/home or http://www.bodybuildingwarehouse.co.uk/
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myprotein is good, just dont sign up for their emails, as you get like 3 a day haha!
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I wouldnt say any teams or players are as bulky as your making out. The players have increased overall fitness as times change more emphesis has been put on fitness training and strict diets which means players are fitter than ever hence lower body fat percentages which shows off more muscle tone but it is just tone very little size as such with the odd exception such as Shoaib but I'm sure thats down to the gear he's been taking over the years as his water retention is ridiculous! But for anyone wanting to bulk up I work in this field 90% of all results are in the diet, nail your diet e.g 1g of protein per lb of body weight sometimes 2g per lb depending on your goals. Only 10% of results are down to training ideally if you want to increase power/size I'd go with a 5 x 5 set/rep or an 8 x 8 depending again on goals! Supplements should always be used as part of a programme but they are only to supplement your diet and arent miracle workers. Sorry for rambling can talk for hours on things like this!
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Outlaw - would you happen to have any links to sample meal plans for such things?
always find it a chore working out %s of fat/protein/carbs etc and would like to just be able to use a 'cheat' menu to start with to take the working out out of the equation.
cheers
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Depends on what you mean by bulking up, if you train specifically to get larger you will develop a mix of muscle fibres and that won't be overly beneficial to your game as it is mainly based around achieving a look.
However if you train with the intention of just improving your physical conditioning and don't worry about looks it will definitely help you out in the long run. Sprint training alone will improve your ability to recover from short, sharp bursts of running which will help with your running between the wickets and mobility in the field too.
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You genetically have a mix of muscle fibres anyway and as cricket is a mix of various things a range of muscle fibres is beneficial. By doing sprint training also are aiding the conversion of slow to fast twitch fibres which is what I think your claiming is unbeneficial in the first part of your post! Also bulking up is not all about achieving a look strongmen do purely bulking and that is based around achieving pure power/mass, cutting is more of achieving a look as you aim to strip bodyfat whilst retaining muscle mass. And Steiner there's plenty of diet plans on the internet however these are just a bog standard outline obviously it all comes down to your individual goals/needs as to what you eat as people are different and also the source/manufacturer of foods can also lead to a different nutritional breakdown but to put it simply anyone wanting to purely bulk up needs to eat big and eat clean and supplement well.
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I've no desire to argue. I feel you bring some good knowledge to the conversation Outlaw, however I also think you are slightly misinformed.
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I wasn't arguing just what you put was contradictory in my opinion with regards to muscle fibres as the type of training you suggest (which is good for cricket) has a similar effect on fibre stimulation to weight training which you where against. You may think I have been misinformed however all I have stated are facts not opinion, but each to their own.
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I took inspiration from C Ronaldo as he put weights around his legs when he went football training and that has obviously helped him with his speed and power.
Instead of doing generic weight building as I don't know what is a good work out or not and I played different shots with weights in my hands. This definately helped with the power of shots as you're using the direct muscles whilst weight training that you would when playing shots in a game. I wouldn't say this is the best way to train, but it was a quick way of adding power to your shots.
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i dont think u have to have massive amounts of mussle or power to hit the ball hard,.
i am a big lad(mostly fat not muscle)
allthough i do have muscley arms but i know team mates that are a 3rd of size of me and can hit the ball just as hard due to timing!
its all well and good having brute force(like i have) but with out timing its nothing
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What i find is hitting the ball on the floor for 4's seem to work better for my game than trying to smash everything in the air and giving the chance to be caught when i dont time it as well.
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Definetely agree with what Matt said thats a simple way to improve your hand speed through the ball in a cricket specific situation I think there was a company who brought out a system with a weighted bat to swing with cant remember who or what but it sticks in my mind! Cricket is a sport where your shape doesn't really affect the ability to hit the cricket ball as has been said it is timing and having excessive muscle mass for a cricketer can negatively affect your game as it could cause you to hold different shapes when batting however you need to be pretty big for this, same with golf one of our clients used to play golf as a hobby and packed on some serious size over a few months the increase in his lats meant his swing plane was all over the place and balls everywhere haha!
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Very interesting. When I was 17 I started going to the gym and put on 2 stones in a period of a year or so. Me, my team mates and coaches have definitely noticed that I got a lot slower in my bowling. I used to be a opening bowler at U17. Now usually just a part timer, so I am concentrating on my batting now. Well I guess you win some and you lose some. So my advice is if you are thinking of gyming it out. You possibly will sacrifice looks for speed. I might be wrong, maybe more specific training would increase your bowling speed, with a professional cricket specific workout. If anyone has any Cricket specific workouts, please do share.
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I'm no expert on the biomechanics of bowling before I start but a bowling action is all about smoothness, the smoother and more grooved your action the quicker you'll bowl so muscle mass doesn't really come into it too much. My guess is that through your increase in muscle mass via the gym which will have caused you to have a change in shape your bowling action will have changed without you neccesarily knowing due to your changing shape similar to what I mentioned with the golf swing in my previous post which will have resulted in your loss of pace as the action wouldn't be as fluent. Which is why most fast bowlers these days do strength programmes based on improving muscular endurance to enable them to bowl for longer without fatigue etc, this is basically a low weight high rep programme so as not to increase size. But as I said I'm no expert on bowling side of things, did some work with one of the Derbyshire players during the winter if you want an idea of some cricket related gym training pm me happy to help.