Josh Kennedy: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Cricket Matters podcast. This episode is all about how to develop explosive strength and power for cricket. If you haven't listened to the last episode, which is all about strength training for cricketers, uh, I would recommend you go back and listen to that one first, James, let's jump straight in.

Why or what is explosive strength and why is it important for cricket specifically? 

James Breese: Well, let's talk about why it's important first. Cricket is a game of explosiveness. explosiveness. You, as a batsman, you're trying to hit the ball harder. Is it not a 

Josh Kennedy: game of standing around for five days and drinking tea?

James Breese: As I drink my tea, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That is the, uh, the general public's perception of village cricket on a, on a weekend. But for those with higher aspirations who want to play higher It's a game of explosiveness. It's as simple as that. You know, as a batsman, you want to hit the ball hard. Yes, there's timing involved, but there's that explosiveness to hit the ball over the ropes as a batsman.

There's an [00:01:00] explosiveness in the field. People are going to be quick and agile on the field to make those worldly catches. As a bowler, fast bowler, you try to bowl as fast as you can. You need explosiveness and power and speed and strength to do that, right? As well as moving well, which we talked about in the last episode.

And as a spin bowler, you try to put more revolutions on the ball, and to do that you need that explosive power and strength to be able to do it. Static strength, in standing in one place, isn't going to cut it, because cricket's a game of moving. So you've got to bear that in mind. If you're a powerlifter, overall strength, great.

You're standing in one place, sitting in one place. You know, that's it. But we're dynamically moving all the time. So we've got to develop explosive cricketers who are strong, but can translate that strength into explosive power. Because power It comes off the foundation of strength first. 

Josh Kennedy: I was going to say before you can be explosive and powerful you and Uh quick as well.

You need a good level of basic strength, right power and speed come from [00:02:00] strength. 

James Breese: Yep Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's the That's the idea. So to develop explosive Strong, you know explosively strong cricketers. I think is a good way to put it They've got to move well They've got to have a baseline fundamental strength, and they've got to do the right type of training to help them become explosive.

I think, and that's where most people fall down. They try and jump to the explosiveness first, thinking they're strong enough, but as a collection of athletes, I'm really sorry cricketers, but we're quite weak. We really are, in terms of athletic development compared to our peers in other sports, because it's so less developed.

You know, in fact, I see in the UK and the Northern Hemisphere, I'd say I see a lot of overweight cricketers. I think South Africa is a good example because I think most of those guys are beasts, right? They're pretty strong and powerful. That's a cultural thing when they're growing up, okay? In Asia, [00:03:00] I'm seeing a lot of weak athletes, right?

A lot of like, it's the complete opposite. Obviously, culturally, it's very different. But they're trying to do all this explosive stuff on a foundational weakness. Whereas I think in Northern Hemisphere, particularly the UK, where I see a lot, we try and do all this explosiveness on being overweight and unathletic.

That's what I'm seeing as a general, sorry to offend anybody, Just offend everyone 

Josh Kennedy: and offend the entire world. It's fine. 

James Breese: Casual observation. And that's what we need to work on. I see most of the young cricketers and athletes we've come with, they want to do all this explosive stuff, their bodies aren't ready for it.

Their bodies are just not ready for it. They think they are, you know. And they think by doing more jumps, more, doing more of these, these med ball throws, they're going to get better. They will to some point, but any training program will work to some point when you're a complete beginner. But to develop it, you've got to have a strategy behind it.

Not just focus on the tactics. 

Josh Kennedy: Yep. So what are some types of exercises that [00:04:00] help build explosive power? Well, 

James Breese: let's just start with basic plyometrics, right? Basic plyometrics, hopping sticks, jump, basic jumps, pogo jumps, jumping over mini hurdles. These sorts of things are fantastic. Because it's just, that's plyometric work, right?

Jumping down one leg on one foot, one angle, you know, these sort of things are a great starting point. Then you can start looking at med ball foes, um, wall, wall ball, slam balls sometimes as well. 

Josh Kennedy: Yeah. 

James Breese: But do kettlebell swings, control things, stuff like that. Yeah. Could kettlebell swing, can add, explode explosive strength, add a lot more di uh, you know, di add much more bigger dynamic effect to it.

So there's lots of things you can do. But before we think about this though, is, is your body strong enough? Is your body ready? We talked about this in the last episode. So, for us, we'll do these sub maximal plyometrics, but for people and our real athletes, we're going to really develop explosive strength.

Right? When we do depth jumps and drop jumps and all this, [00:05:00] all this malarkey is, can you deadlift one and a half times your body weight for men for five reps, yes or no? women 1. 25 times. Alright, now we said in the previous one for baseline strength standards, we said can you do a 50 percent of your body weight goblet squat with a dumbbell or kettlebell for 25 reps, right?

But there's another level up to this when we do a complete performance analysis and that is, can you do 75 percent body weight on each leg in a Bulgarian split squat? That's 75 percent of your body weight. So if you are a 100kg man you With 75 kilos staggered out across both hands, can you do that on one leg for 8 reps?

Right? That's the level of stamina you want to get to first that gets you into Immediate and advanced level. 

Josh Kennedy: I was gonna say and that's not elite because you know, actually Mike Boyle likes to get his athletes to body weight Yep, split squats for 10 reps each side body weight not 75 body weight 

James Breese: Yep, and all the [00:06:00] research says now I believe i'm going I need to double check this But there's a guy in australia who talked about isometric training and all his research research is coming out is that Up to about 50 to 75, I think 50 percent body weight on one leg is equivalent to two times body weight back squat, which is kind of considered the holy grail in athleticism to get people towards.

However, we don't like getting people back squatting here at Cricket Matters. Nada. Zip. No. Right? Take that out. Take that shit out. Right? On so many different levels. And I can, you can argue me till the cows come home. I see that back squat cause more back injuries and problems than any other exercise that.

happens in cricket. And yet everyone jumps to it. Give me somebody who can front squat for five to 10 reps with double 32 kilo kettlebells every day of the week. I challenge you to go and do it. All right. Challenge you to go and do it. Tell me what happens, right? Because it gives you more core control, more coordination.

It works everything [00:07:00] in sync and there's less risk involved. Yes, we could potentially do it as an advanced athlete, but why, Why waste time teaching someone mechanics of back squatting when we can get them stronger quicker by doing other stuff first. That's my, my point there. Sorry, mini rant off to the side there now.

But again, I'm going back to this explosive power speed work. Yes, submaximal plyometrics, hops, jumps, and sticks, particularly for women and female athletes. Like single leg hop and sticks. Even deceleration work. I think, um, I'm a big fan of, it's not really a plyometric, it's a strength exercise, but you can use locomotion in terms of this too.

But, you know, forward lunges. As in, like, ultimate forward lunges. It's a deceleration pattern phase. So if people can, if women can do their hop and sticks and add in these forward and back, forward lunges, it's a deceleration phase that's helping improve the core control and stability of that leg.

Josh Kennedy: [00:08:00] Absolutely, something you need to build up to though, because everyone thinks lunges and stuff like that, alternating lunges are quite difficult. Basic exercise. They're really not a basic exercise. There's a lot going on and people don't appreciate the decelerative quality of that exercise So you do need to build up to you know, starting with split squats and stuff like that before you go in near um Alternating lunges.

So if everyone if somebody has got all the basics in place, they move well good level of strength, etc Um how often Should they be looking to train for explosive strength and power? 

James Breese: Two to three times a week. Again, everything depends. What season are you? Are you off season, in season, pre season? Like, even in season.

I, I Explosive power work is not as taxing on the body as you think. So we tend to go back down to two sessions a week, don't we? In season, because it's quite refreshing. It's not exactly, we're not fatiguing the muscles. No, you're not doing it for high reps either. Very low reps. No, [00:09:00] exactly. So again, I'd say in off season, three to four times, pre season, two to three times, in season, two times a week, or one to two times a week to maintain.

Yep. I think it's a good way to put it. But I think it comes back again to the choice of exercises too. So we're a massive fan of the cable pulley machine, right? Even though it technically is a fixed machine, it's actually quite a functional machine when it comes to, you know, doing rotational work and exercises, you know, you'd half kneeling chops, half kneeling lifts, um, you know, like cross body rotation stuff, you know, there's so much stuff you can do with this, like pulls, pushes, right?

There's lots of, you know, like almost like a punch almost, Like you're using counter body movements. So we love that sort of stuff. Um, our favorite at the moment is the, the alternate kettlebell power swing. So, uh, we're doing a one side, like, uh, I don't know. We call it batter swing, but it's also a pendulum 

Josh Kennedy: swing.

If you, you probably [00:10:00] want to look it up on YouTube and you'll find it, the pendulum swing. 

James Breese: Yeah. Pendulum swing, batter swing. It's very, it looks like a, you know, smashing out the ground on one side. It looks very, very similar to baseball and how it looks that way. I'm not a fan of these people using these pretend axes and chopping and stuff like that.

It's just It's just trying to make, it's just a party trick, it's a circus trick, half the time, in my professional opinion. But again, explosive strength and power, again, it comes down to sprinting. That's a form of strength training. That's one thing we haven't mentioned, short sprints, right? No, and yeah, we haven't spoken about that.

I think we're doing a whole series on this soon, cricketers, because it's such an important element. But that's a form of strength training. It's the ultimate expression. And you can get stronger, yeah. By doing some of the work we do there. And that involves a lot of plyometric work into, into maximal sprinting.

So it's hard to describe on a podcast, everything you should be doing, right? But again, we're trying to talk about more [00:11:00] around the general philosophy, about how we, how we do it, but it comes down to our performance pyramid. If you haven't seen our performance pyramid, I highly recommend going to cricketmatters.

com, going on, clicking on our method, and you can see our coaching method and our thought process, and you can see our performance pyramid. So if you go there, you can learn more about the performance pyramid, but explosiveness is what we look at at layer three, right? So do you move well? Do you have adequate strength and aerobic capacity capabilities first, before we even look at layer three?

Most of the time you do not, unfortunately. It doesn't mean you can't get there quickly, but it means you've got to just bear this in mind. So if you want to do advanced explosive techniques like Olympic lifts, which again, I don't recommend any quicker to do it, um, Because there's so many things to go wrong and that's a very highly specialised technique that can cause issues.

We don't need to go there until you're ready for it. 

Josh Kennedy: Exactly. There are, there are, you know, if you are proficient in the Olympic lifts and you've been [00:12:00] coached by someone who knows what they're doing, absolutely the Olympic lifts are great, but most people aren't. So there are other things you can do like kettlebell power swings and pendulum swings and stuff like that, which are, you know, good enough.

Kettlebell jugs. Those are gonna hit. Kettlebell jerks, yep, absolutely. They've been, research shows they're great for developing power. Exactly, and 

James Breese: in fact, just on that note, I think there's one test you can do. If you stand here and disagree with me and say, look, hey James, yeah, I want to do Olympic lifts, I think that's the cool way, because all the research says that's the best way to develop explosive power and speed.

Cool, get it, understand it. Get you or one of your athletes or yourself to sit in a deep squat with a barbell over your head for two minutes. Can you sit in that position for two minutes? You talk with all the best Olympic weightlifters in the world. They'll do that easy, do that easy. They don't even think about it, right?

They're elite athletes who move well, and they're powerful and explosive. And it's those guys on the Olympic stage are incredible. Look at the stretching routines of, Those Olympic weightlifters, it is insane, [00:13:00] particularly the Chinese groups, right? They stretch, they move well, they have functional muscle that does it, and they're highly skilled because that's all they practice day in, day out.

You might want to warm up before you 

Josh Kennedy: even try that test because you might break yourself. 

James Breese: Exactly. Anyway, it's a good little test for like something I always say to everyone who comes to me, goes, Hey James, I want to do Olympic lifting. Cool. Good on deep squat sets. Hand it here now. Most of the time, 15 seconds.

No, I'm done. I can't do that. Yeah, cool. Not ready yet. Keep going. No, tough shit. 

Josh Kennedy: I think that's, uh, I think that's a good place to end. There we go. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. And if you would like our free training plan, then go to cricketmatters. com forward slash train.

And remember, our goal is to make you a better cricketer.