Over the last 9 years since retiring from professional cricket I’ve spent the majority of my time coaching young fast bowlers, both girls and boys. I’ve been in a unique position of working with the real novices to the very elite. What I have found really interesting is how each individual learns a new skill irrespective of their level.
My passion is teaching bowlers to bowl fast without constraints and refining their technique that allows them to fulfill their physical potential. I’ll be honest I was never a ‘technique’ loving player and thought it was less important than physical preparedness. However the more I’ve researched, learned and experienced over the last 9 years the more its’ taught me that at the very least technical coaching needs the same amount of focus and care and attention as physical preparation training.
‘There’s no point being physically strong and powerful if your action leaks energy or has energy blockage in the chain and the effort isn’t directed at the target. Likewise there’s no point having the most clinical and ‘clean’ action if you can’t generate enough force to bowl the ball above medium pace.
So that’s why my coaching methods are now more holistic. My methods synergistically combine technical work with physical work with an appreciation of motor learning and how we acquire new skills. With time coaches will realise you need a huge amount of knowledge and understanding that isn’t taught in the coach education syllabuses. The body is a complex system and nothing works in isolation. As coaches we need a broad understanding and what governs the dynamics of fast bowling coaching
Unlike other sports, cricket is an individual skilled sport within a team ‘event’. It is a unique and challenging sport to coach. It is a highly technical sport with a mixture of closed and open skills. Fast bowling is one of the most coordinative challenging skills any athlete can do. It is a closed skill that has key ‘nodes’ or ‘attractors’ that need to be habitual for bowlers to reach their genetic potential.
Whatever the view on ‘building robots’ to bowl the same way the fact and physics demonstrate there is an ideal framework to bowl. Individuality occurs between these ‘nodes’ and in the art/craft of bowling. Most coaches can identify a flaw but not all can successfully intervene and enhance performance.
Fast bowling is less to do with muscles but more to do with tendons and the brain! Motor learning and skill acquisition is a careful process and the understanding and appreciation of the ability for each bowler to acquire these skills is essential. Bowlers learn in different ways and at differing rates.
Every athlete possesses a unique disposition/temperament and stage of motor skill development. For this reason, all sports preparatory measures, no matter how specific or general, must be appropriated according to the neuro-psychological specifics of the athlete populations with whom one works” -James Smith. ‘The Governing Dynamics of Coaching
To bowl genuinely fast, upward of 90mph you need the right genetics. Unfortunately you cannot choose your parents! If you were lucky enough to be born with a better genetic profile and gifted with faster-firing muscle fibers in the relevant areas of the body then you will probably “naturally” bowl faster than the general population. However that’s not to say that guarantees success and pace can’t be increased for those more ‘normal’ bowlers.
Power and speed-strength can still be developed but getting the right coaching intervention methods and training techniques is the difference between pace enhancement and pace consolidation or as Dr Anatoliy Bondarchuk refers to it as positive, negative or neutral transfer of training. As we know the body is a complex system and it doesn’t work in isolation. Training in isolation is a reductionist approach and doesn’t transfer to performance. Strength, speed and power training is more than just numbers.
“Strength training is coordination training against resistance” – Frans Bosch
True strength/power training is about transferring those gains into a highly coordinative and unique closed skill of fast bowling. Training in this way, combining technical intervention, skill based drills, power and strength work is the best way to train at all levels.
Not only do we need to focus on coordination in strength training, but also we need to bring a variable and ever changing approach to technical training. If we create rigid rules and framework that only apply in certain situations like basic static drills, then bowlers will fail when they encounter something new. I think this is why many bowlers who spend time drilling give up or don’t see any improvements in their actions. The new ‘rigid changes’ that have been made need to be progressed and challenged.
Due to the fact fast bowling is a closed skill in a flexible environment it requires a highly specialized and unique training approach. Basic technical drilling is essential but progression into a more ‘realistic’ environment is key for transfer of performance. Dr Anatoliy Bondarchuk also believed that anything below 80% intensity doesn’t transfer to sports performance. It’s just a totally different motor engram.
The aim of any bowling coach should be to create anti-fragile bowlers and not fragile bowlers. Bowlers who simply specialize and perform strength sessions and bowl in indoor centers all off-season without exposing themselves to other sports become fragile bowlers. They excel when environments are constant like the indoor centers or fitness testing but break down when things are constantly changing. There are also bowlers who are great with the drills but when that new framework is put into a game environment it breaks down.
How do we improve technique and movement patterns? The common mantra is that perfect practice makes perfect performance, but in reality movement is improved not by exploring its core (i.e. perfect technique), but by exploring its limits (i.e. where it breaks down). You have to constantly test and push the body to its limits in order to improve. Fast bowlers will fail in this zone, but in the right environment they can also learn to do things better in the process.
Improving performance is a fine art and as mentioned earlier understanding how the brain works and how we learn is key. Drills for drills sake won’t work. Put those drills into a stressful environment to encourage adaptation, progression and transfer to ‘game readiness’ will work.
How to manipulate change?
However bowlers will learn and improve at differing rates and as coaches we need to respect the stages of motor skill development/learning. The key to building the anti-fragile bowler is to progress through these stages as quickly as possible whilst mastering each stage. Spending too long at the basic unskilled level will fail to transfer to performance and ultimately lead to drop out.
There are 4 stages of learning and skill acquisition
- UNSKILLED [Incompetence]-UNCONSCIOUS
- UNSKILLED [Incompetence]-CONSCIOUS
- SKILLED [Competence]-CONSCIOUS
- SKILLED [Competence]-UNCONSCIOUS
Variability of technical drilling
Keep it interesting. Maintain motivation to keep drilling.
Repetition = Motor Learning
Boredom = Lack of Repetition = Drop Out
Respect the stages of learning:
- Stage 1: Unskilled – Unconscious
- Stage 2: Unskilled – Conscious
- Stage 3: Skilled – Conscious
- Stage 4: Skilled – Unconscious
“You may be closer than you think. Don’t give up”
It’s been clear to me that it takes every individual different overloading method to move from one to the other.
You have to overload your technique for it to change. Adaptation craves overload. Just doing 10,000 normal bodyweight repetitions won’t work or may work at the novice level but won’t, as the bowler gets older, has a higher training age and is more skilled. Firstly boredom will kick in and therefore motivation to perform reps will be low and also the body will not find the need to adapt and change. Remember it’s done thousands of the ‘poor versions’ before.
“I’ve walked millions of steps over time but that doesn’t make me an expert walker. Repetition of a skill has to be purposeful and variable”
You need to stress the key positions with skill-stability training. It’s a system I developed that respects the process of motor learning. It’s more likely that the changes to a bowlers technique are relatively small so doing something similar to what you’ve been doing will have little or no effect. Skill-stability paradigm with its combination of specific strength and corrective strength training is the answer and as a bowling performance coach is essential to create permanent change
Overload your technique and in particular key nodes/positions/key pace indicators/attractors in your bowling action. The focus on isometric contraction locks key nodes of the bowling action in place. IT’S LIKE A ‘STRAIGHT JACKET’ AROUND THE AGONIST AND ANTAGONIST MUSCLES AROUND A JOINT. Training the co-contractors and eliminating muscle slack around these attractor sites.
Unless a coach overloads the bowler’s technique and encourages adaptation though stress in some form or another all external queuing intervention methods are worthless. The changes simply don’t stick. The body and the brain has no desire or need to change! To activate the Reticular Activating System [RAS], in a sense the ‘on button’ of the brain it needs stimulating. Overload stimulates!
“An organism isn’t interested in a stimulus it considers mundane. For effective learning to occur all non-reflexive stimuli must clear the RAS [Reticular Activating System]. This is in simple terms is the ‘ON’ button for the brain and motor learning”
Doing the same mundane non-stimulating drills without progression will never turn on the ‘ON’ button. This is why a lot of fast bowlers fall out of favor with technical work.
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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