This is a guest article from Steffan Jones

There's a lot of confusion around strength, conditioning and fitness for cricket. Today I want to give you my perspective as a former first-class fast bowler turned strength coach.

The role of strength and conditioning, or S&C, for all cricketers is to improve your performance. Injuries are handled by the physio. In a nutshell, one builds you the other fixes you!

There is a balance to be found. Of course it's vital not to push too far and cause problems, but you also must do enough to get a performance increase. Yes, there is a risk of injury because you're putting external stress on the body, but as long as you make sure the right stress is applied at the right time, it's a calculated risk to make you better.

The worst thing you can do is spend all your fitness time doing "prehab" work in the name of injury prevention and at the cost of enhancing performance. That will not cut it.

Prehab is only a small part of the session. It is vital to activate and stabilise certain smaller muscles in the body, and increase your mobility at key joints. The core is not just a buzz phrase as it is crucial to lower back and shoulder health. It should never dominate your training.

Without a proper periodised program that is designed to make you stronger - and therefore faster, more powerful, and better conditioned - your performance will not be improved on the field.

That's what separates a good S&C plan with an adequate one; having the knowledge and confidence to push yourself as far as possible safely. To do that you have to know yourself and your body well through putting in the hours in the gym as well as at the nets.

From fitness to technique, and back

Many critics will say that this approach takes players away from the most important aspects of learning good cricket technique.

This just is not true. I have trained dozens of fast bowlers from schoolboy to professional level since I retired, and in every case when the player got stronger, he also became a better cricketer.

I admit that my methods are specifically designed to take gym strength onto the field with specific plans to develop arm speed and transfer of power into the ball. You don't always find that to be the case and perhaps that is where the critics are right.

Where they are wrong is saying that technique is the most important element. I have even heard people say it is the only thing.

Technique isn't the only thing, its a small thing in your development.

You need to get good at the basics, but modern coaching is not about creating textbook templates, it's about building technique for your own body, style and game.

If technique was the only thing, women cricketers with excellent actions would be bowling as quick as men. The reason there is such a difference is speed is all down to how much more strength elite male bowlers have compared to elite female bowlers.

This fact proves the value of high performance strength and power training for all cricketers at all levels.

You can find out more about my proven methods, and download your copy of my plan for fast bowlers by clicking here.