Common Attractors to Effective Overhead Throwing

My approach to coaching fast bowlers and skill acquisition is based on a mathematical model known as the dynamical systems theory (DST).

‘DST is grounded in differential calculus and has emerged from the science of behavioural psychology as a useful tool in predicting the behaviour of complex systems like ecological environments, economies, and political systems’.

-R Sullivan

Like most athletic actions it’s not about building robots who perform the same way in a rigid model; it’s about making sure the “attractors” which are the key basic, essential, fixed movements are stable in the technical completion of the action. The individuality and idiosyncratic elements are the “fluctuators,” changeable components that have degrees of freedom that do not negatively impact bowling performance. When the system’s attractors are stable, it becomes more “robust” (resistant to perturbations) and more “resilient” (resistant to state change/tissue failure)

Fluctuators help us adapt to the environment but are specific to individual bowlers. It’s their own method of organizing and adapting to the environment (self-organizing). There is a careful balance needed when coaching as to ensure the fluctuators don’t become too rigid as is evident in the younger generation of athletes. This serves only to develop a generation of ‘anti-fragile’ athletes where any variability causes a dramatic decrease in performance.

These are the “big three” inter-muscular hard skills/attractors, for bowlers, in my opinion:

Hip shoulder separation [both feet pointing forward on delivery]
Contralateral upper limb extension (long arm pull)
Blocked Front foot contact [Braced front leg]

Each of the above 3 are affected by intra muscular actions that ultimately dictate their effectiveness. The key to any overhead throwing efficiency is to make your attractors stable (but not too stable) and to have some fluctuations available for adjustability, but not too many.

So why do I think these are they key technical determinates [attractors] of fast bowling?

The majority of top level fast bowlers hit them.
If by not hitting the attractors negatively impacts on performance
If by not hitting he attractors causes injury
‘Pacelab’ testing- data driven approach to fast bowling performance

To increase the stability of the attractor sites the bowler must first be able to reduce muscle slack. In my fast bowling model, I believe there are 2 layers to increasing the stability of bowling nodes [inter-muscular attractors]

Layer 1- Intra muscle coordination-Co contraction to eliminate muscle slack

Layer 2- Inter muscle sequencing- RSSSA [Range/Sequencing/ Speed/ Separation/ Alignment]

The key to hitting the technical attractors is the ability to co contract around key positions. To pre-tense the muscle around the joint before performing a dynamic action. This is why isometric training is key to the success of highly coordinated and force driven skill of fast bowling.

There are 4 intra muscular sites on top of the 3 inter muscular sites [right arm bowler]

When back foot lands -Back foot contact

Co contraction around right ankle, right knee and hip

When the front leg extends forward

Co contraction around left glute, hamstring, quad and hip flexor

When front foot lands- Front foot contact

Co contraction around left ankle, left knee and left hip

Upper body bowling and lead arm anterior/posterior loaded

Co contraction around right pec, right rotator cuff, left shoulder rear deltoid and scapula region

There are 3 mechanism that have an impact on the quality of contraction.

Spring mass model
Crossed extensor reflex
Swing leg retraction and foot plant from above

It’s beyond the scope of this article to cover these three in depth.

Reducing the muscle slack through isometrically con contracting the decelerators/agonist and accelerators/antagonist is a key determinant of fast bowling

What is muscle slack?

Imagine a rope bridge that is loose versus a bridge that is tight before you want to walk across it. The time it takes for the ladder to tense to have enough tension for you to walk over on it in physiological terms, is called ‘muscle slack’. In fast bowling or any athletic skill, it is time lost. One of the recent proponents of muscle slack is Dutch athletics coach Frans Bosch. He believes that the speed at which muscles can build up their tension and overcome muscle slack is usually more important to performance than the amount of force they can eventually produce. During an isometric co-contraction, an agonist-antagonist pair will contract with the same amount of torque around the same joint. Due to the equivalent torques being applied, a net force of zero is achieved and thus, no motion will occur at the limb. This guarantees stability around nodes that are essential for fast bowling. These need to be stable whilst, individual nuances, idiosyncrasies and fluctuations occur elsewhere without negatively effecting performance.

This concept of muscle slack is also why in a basic single response jump a smaller countermovement, or the quick dip and drive is so effective in adding inches – it pretensions the muscles. However, there is a balancing act and anthropometry often dictates the amount of ‘dip’ or ‘pre-tension’ required to store energy. There are two types of fast bowlers. Knee or hip dominant. Knee dominant fast bowlers need more movement to access the SSC. Whereas highly reactive and stiff hip dominant fast bowlers require a smaller ‘dip’ as the elastic recoil in the tendon is what generates the movement. This is clearly evident on back foot contact [BFC].

This has massive implications for strength and athletic preparation training. Knee dominant or as they are often called static, pushers and muscle driven athletes, as opposed to spring, pullers and fascia driven hip athletes are required to have the ability to manage muscle slack more effectively than their more stiff/reactive counterparts. This is why isometric training is essential for a knee dominant bowler. They haven’t the natural capacity to manage the slack so isometric training is essential to them. However, the majority of training has a disproportionate focus on the concentric element of strength training and muscle slack has reached worrying levels in cricket.

In cricket, the best bowlers make smaller countermovement’s and allow storage of elastic energy to work. However, in the modern age of ‘S&C job justification’ training based on large countermovement’s like back squatting will lead to longer muscle slack and poorer performance. Knee dominant fast bowlers who require the use of large counter movements when delivering the cricket ball are trying to take the slack out of their system. A fast bowler with a lot of muscle slack is not springy and takes a too much time to generate force. Plyometric exercises that involve a rebound like a depth jump, absorption exercises that teach the muscles to co-contract and develop tension quickly like depth drops, ‘double bounce’ jumps, stutter reps on compound lift, dead start partial or full range lifts, exercises that require a fast turn-around [small amortization phase] between eccentric and concentric and isometric exercises help eliminate muscle slack in the fast bowler.

In my often-controversial opinion, I believe there is a mismanagement of muscle slack that has reached epidemic proportions in athletic preparation training. Managing muscle slack is one of the most performance determining factors in fast bowling. The inaccurate focus on the concentric portion of weight lifting/general strength training has led to a culture of using training concepts that may actually be counterproductive for one of the most explosive and coordinative sports skills going, fast bowling. It is assumed, and I was one of them that if an explosive concentric contraction was preceded by an eccentric contraction then the subsequent dynamic action will be a more powerful movement. However here it falls short. The SSC takes 0.25sec (250millisecond) to complete. Any longer it’s seen as a longer contraction and any shorter will be seen as a short one. Most artificial (gym/strength/compound/jumps etc.) explosive movements will be around the 0.25sec mark and these are seen as the sport specific exercises in the gym. This is the foundation of velocity-based training [VBT] and the measuring of bar speed. However, I do question its value but open to being convinced otherwise. Yes, I understand the whole ‘training the full curve argument’ but currently my training has gone in a different direction.

One of the new kinematic terminology made popular and reintroduced into athletic preparation recently thanks mainly to the work of Frans Bosch is ‘swing leg retraction. So, what is it and how is it relevant for fast bowlers?

Swing leg retraction can be seen as a feed-forward motion where the swing-leg is retracted at constant angular velocity throughout the second half of the swing phase during sprinting or any high velocity locomotive motion like fast bowling. The stiffness on back foot contact has a direct impact on the effectiveness of this motion. Crossed extensor reflex due to the stiffness of the contralateral leg sets up a sequence concluding with swing leg retraction and foot plant form above. Foot plant above guarantees a stable pelvis and a fulcrum at the hip joint as opposed to at the knee joint. This is why I place a premium on training the stiffness on back foot contact and the isometric and eccentric strength on front foot contact.

The idea is that the foot-strike should not “slide into” contact with the ground but rather should be directed from above with the line of expected Ground Reaction Forces (GRFs) we are hoping to create.

The most important direction for a fast bowler isn’t the vertical but rather the anterior/posterior direction. Here is a direct quote from a recent study.

“Force imparted by the stride leg against the direction of the throw appears to contribute strongly to achieve maximum throwing velocity”

Stride Leg Ground Reaction Forces Predict Throwing Velocity in Adult Recreational Baseball Pitchers (McNally, Borstad, Onate, Chaudhari; JSCR Oct 2015)

The fact that the stride leg is applying force AGAINST the direction of the delivery means that this force is being applied in a posterior direction. The back leg keeps the momentum going towards the batter in an anterior direction, but the bowler must “slam on the brakes” and stop the momentum by applying force backwards with the front leg- negative acceleration. Think of the car analogy and the passengers in the back seat. A sudden emergency stop will send the passengers hurtling forward! The passengers are your upper body, whilst the car is the lower half of the bowling action.

Notice on the slow-motion clip I recently took using XSENS, a kinematic analysis tool, how the lead leg not only compresses vertically downwards, but claws backwards in a direction opposite of the delivery before it rotates over due to residual momentum of the trunk and hips following through:

This “clawback” mechanism can also be seen on world class sprinters. Notice how they make contact with the ground when producing maximum force

Now the question is: How do you train this mechanism not only mechanically, but using training modalities in the weight room and track to ensure it transfers properly to fast bowling and develops strength/power over the range of motion expressed in the delivery

Here is an example of training the swing leg retraction for a Left arm bowler

‘Swing-leg retraction can improve the stability of spring-mass running. With retraction, the spring-mass model is stable across the full range of biological running speeds and can overcome larger disturbances in the angle of attack and leg stiffness. In the stabilization of running humans and animals, we believe both stance-leg dynamics and swing-leg rotational movements are important control features’

-André Seyfarth, Hartmut Geyer, Hugh Herr

Just to reiterate the importance of the BFC and how it sets up the subsequent key attractor of braced front leg. This is an extract from my bowling matrix

‘The greater the vertical displacement of the hips without losing horizontal momentum the greater the gravitational momentum into the delivery. However, this increases the dynamic complexity of the sequence. Neutral pelvis setting up the correct position on FFC to optimise the GRF [ground reaction forces] Pelvis remains neutral while trunk slightly rotates towards bowling arm to produce torque. STIFF Back foot LANDING [see above consequences-crossed extensor reflexes]-Accelerate back foot to front foot. If you land and unable to be in control of the PRE-TURN due to the fact you either ‘Sink’ laterally or have heel contact [meaning you’re on the back foot too long] the whole sequence is out of time. The upper body continues whilst the back leg has yet to pivot and allow the hip to square up. Correct timing of the pre-turn- allows the extension of front leg towards target and subsequent hip shoulder separation’

While back leg after BFC [back foot contact] doesn’t necessarily or directly correlate with increased ball velocity, lead leg posterior force does. To achieve the correct sequence leading into FFC does however depend on BFC effectiveness and the stiffness of the tendons on contact.

A study by Burgess and Colleagues evaluated the effectiveness of each modality in regard to improvements in tendon stiffness. In the study, isometric, single leg calf raises, increased tendon stiffness by 61.6% compared to only a 29% increase in stiffness from single leg drop jumps. Combining these findings with those of Kubo and colleagues the evidence clearly highlights the potency of isometric at improving tendon stiffness.

A stiffer tendon will allow more force to be quickly transmitted from the muscle to the connecting structures to produce joint motion by reducing the need to take up the slack, which would otherwise be present with a compliant tendon. Therefore, a stiffer tendon may allow for quicker, more efficient transmission of force compared to a more compliant tendon and therefore, possibly greater rate of force development. These improvements are critical for an effective bowling sequence.

Anthropometry will dictate your ability to co contract around the key attractors sites

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkMrhcxgSqH/?taken-by=steffanjones105

Knee dominant bowlers rely on strength to complete dynamic actions and due to the time needed to apply force there are ‘idiosyncrasies’ that occur, such as large knee flexion on back foot contact. Knee dominant throwers have the inability to eliminate muscle slack therefore ‘self-organise’ to complete the skill. They find a way to complete the skill that’s specific to their anthropometry. In effect these nuisances are the fluctuators. They key is to make sure the fluctuators don’t negatively affect performances.

About Steffan Jones

Steffan Jones is the former Somerset, Northamptonshire, Kent and Derbyshire fast bowler who forged a career out of getting the best out of himself physically. He is an ex-pro cricketer of 20yrs, and is the last dual pro between rugby & cricket. Steffan is recognized as a global Fast-bowling performance expert.

Steffan is currently one of the small number of people in the world who hold an ECB level 3 qualification as well as a UKSCA accreditation in strength & conditioning. He is the leading coach in England on teaching and using heavy ball contrast training for fast bowler development.

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