Is there some sort of magic to the number 5 in cricket?

If you look hard enough there is always magic to numbers. In the case of the number 5 it's a handy tool to make you think more about your cricket training.

5 hours per week

John Berardi is a big advocate of training a minimum of 5 hours a week to see improvements. There is no reason this can't be extrapolated to cricket too.

Who has the time to do that? It's easier than it sounds. Those 5 hours can be broken down into 3 hours in the gym/strength training (3 hour long sessions a week for example) and a couple of hours of decent training.

As you know, training isn't always demanding enough but as long as you are doing something in your training sessions that get you out of breath you are OK.

Add a game or 2 of cricket a week and you are on the path to being stronger, faster, better looking and a better player.

5 Chin Ups

In this episode of The Fitcast, strength coach Alywyn Cosgrove makes an excellent point about the role of strength in sport.

Rightly he says that any sport that men are better than women shows that strength is important. Despite massive leaps in the women's games in the last few years, no one can argue that men can bowl faster and hit harder.

As a consequence Cosgrove recommended ensure strength is the first thing you work on. In the example he gave he said if you can't do 5 chin ups you are not strong enough.

So get working on those chins.

5x5 Workout

5x5 is also a very neat way to structure your strength training. A perfect example is here. 5 sets of 5 reps work very well, especially for those just starting out on free weight strength training (something all adult cricketers can benefit from).

Not only is it time efficient it also works to make you functionally stronger by using big compound exercises with heavy weights. Don't worry about getting too big to play, that would be like worrying that playing golf will make you into Tiger Woods.