SportsShoes Blog

Well I had my scan and have got the all clear as far as a stress fracture goes which is great news. This means i can now get back on the excercising and fitness work. If it had been a stress fracture al i could have done was rest really until it had healed as they can hang around for a long time unless it heals properly. I’ve now got a course of Physio to do and have lots of excercises to help strengthen the weak muscles in my lower left back. Hopefully i can keep on with the excercises and get my back sorted and pain free before proper training and nets start again in January. I am starting running as of Monday so ill be blogging on that and letting you know how it goes!!

What a complete joke England were in the Stanford Twenty/20 competition. The completely bottled it and got taken to the cleaners by a well organised Stanford XI (which was pretty much a West Indies team with 2 exceptions). Pieterson said they had been distracted in their preparations and that the players mind was not focussed on the game. Personally im not having that excuse, if you can’t motivate and focus yourself in a game for your country and for $1million each then their is something seriously wrong. No matter how much of a circus it looked like and ended up, the England boys should have been able to get themselves fired up and seriously motivated, especially after all the hype in the media leading up to the event. But in true English cricketing form we bottled it when it counted most. Maybe the confidence and belief we all thought Peiterson had instilled in England isnt quite what we thought it was. They just have to bounce back strongly in India next month.

And also well played to the Stanfors team. They looked well organised, fired up and on great form. They outplayed us!!

Well after my trip to the Physio about my back the other day i have been showed a few Pilates excercises to do to help with my core stability. The Physio said that I really need to work on my abdominal muscles as they are fairly week in places due to my bowling action. If you could draw a line on my body showing where I am strongest it would go diagonallyfrom my right shoulder to my left leg (I hope that makes sense!!), this is due to my bowling action as i have naturally built up more strength in these places because of the amount they have been used. So i have excercises which will work on strengthening up these areas, especially my lower abdominals which are a major factor in my back troubles. As well as this I have been given stretches and excercises to help my posture, unfortunately i went through a phase which some of you may have encountered where as a teenager I had awfull posture and spent alot of time looking at the floor ( i had my moody moments qite a bit, im a changed man now though!), this has just exaggerated any back problems I have had. So im on the road to recovery and getting myself in better shape for when i start my cricket training again in January, hopefuly there will be no more ‘glass back’ situations for me this year!!

Well im going to the physio tonight to go for a session which is specifically focussed on core stability so hopefully ill learn some new excercises to help with this. Its something very important to quick bowlers due to the pressure and strain on your back and the twisting motions during cricket.

Since I first had a stress problem with my back when i was about 13-14 i have had a weak back which has caused me problems on and off for about 7 years now. I really want to build on my strength this winter to try and stop problems like this occuring. With new weights sets and a multi-gym station in my spare room at home now I will get plenty of chance to work on this once i have the all clear on my back.

MRI scan on my back is next week which is surprisingly quick, hopefully they can just tell me its muscle problems which are slightly easier to help as you can do excercises and stretches to aid recovery. If it is a stress fracture or the begginings of a stress fracture then all I can do is wait and rest it which is going to frustrate me, but it will push me into starting my cardio with some nice cold winter runs instead of my nice indoor workouts!!!

Well seen as I’m not doing much as far as training goes due to a possible stress fracture in my lower back I thought I would talk about Australias defeat to India in the recent test match.

Now as an avid England fan I love to see the Aussies lose and it is looking like they aren’t the Cricket super-power the have been for the past 15-20 years. They’ve lost Shane Warne (pretty much the greatest spin bowler ever), Adam Gilchrist (one of the best wicketkeeper-batsmen ever), Glen McGrath (arguably the best and most accurate fast bowler ever) and also several other highly rated players (Langer, Gillespie, Kasprowicz, Martyn, Tait) were not playing for various reasons. There are 5 players missing from the Ashes team who whitewashed England last winter. This will have caused quite a bit of disruption for them, with so many new faces in a team which has barely changed in about about 5 years. The departures of so many world class players has left them floundering a bit. They have struggled to replace Warne with a genuinely class spinner, they have a couple of new faces but they are no where near Warnes class, yet. Brett Lee is now their strike bowler but does not have the deadly accuracy of Glen McGrath at the other end, which helped form a deadly partnership which could rip through any batting line up in no time.

Their batting does not now have as much depth as it used to when they had Gilchrist coming in at number 7 or 8, a luxury any team would love. They still have world class batters like Ponting and Hayden but the line up does not make bowelrs hearts drop quite as much as it used to. I’m not saying that they are now a poor side or that they are going to be easy t o beat in the next Ashes but they look as though they have a few more cracks in their armour and they have more weaknesses we can expose, as long as we are on good form.

If both England and Australias form keeps going the same way it is now then we have a serious chance of regaining the Ashes. We are a team full of confidence and we are on a great streak of wins.  India this winter will be a stern challenge and is the real acid test for Pietersons captaincy, he will have to get the most out of his players against a team who are on great form and in some of the hardest cricketing conditions around. The Australian team should never be written off as they always have match winners in the team but it will be interesting to see how their relatively new-look team gels over the winter and whether the new boys can cement places or they will have to keep looking for replacements for some of the greatest players ever to wear an Australian cap. Fingers crossed they don’t find the next Shane Warne before next summer!!

Bring on that global warming stuff that’s what I say (I notice they call it climate change now to try and keep folk interested). I’m only joking, I do care about our planet really, but our weather just seems to be getting wetter, colder and more miserable. I have to try really hard to remember a nice stretch of sunny days this year.

Anyway, enough of the moaning - we need to remember the old saying - ‘there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes’. I quite like that one and think it’s pretty true. So I guess we’re all diving into our kit bags and boxes to dig out the winter training gear - gone are the shorts and vests to be replaced by tights and base layers.

My ride in the peaks last week has really fired me up for a solid winter of training and racing. As I enter my 40th year next year I intend to do all I can to improve my fitness and prove that age is no barrier in the sports I’ve chosen. Who knows, if I choose my races carefully I might pick up a prize or two next year (in the old buggers category!!!)

This week, I rested Monday but did 2 decent dog ’strides’ - my new dog exercise grading system = walking, striding, jogging and running. Tuesday I took my eldest son to Bingley Harriers for the first time and ran with him. He loved it, did really well and wants to go with the longer distance group next week. Wednesday - 2 dog strides. Thursday ran with the harriers in the evening - 9.67 miles in 1hr 3 mins (Martin had a Garmin with him) which was a reasonably hot pace as we did quite a bit of climbing. Friday rode to work and back on the bike. Saturday 1hr 15 on the fells this morning. The old legs felt a bit tired on the hills but otherwise it was nice to get out in the daylight.

Tomorrow depends on the weather - if by chance it’s nice I want to get out on the roadie for a longish ride. If it’s rubbish (more likely) I’ll go for a long run or mountain bike ride.

Now the season has finished it’s time for a rest for a month or so then I will be going back to fitness training as I have not been the best with fitness over the past couple of years. I struggled a lot at the begining of the season for fitness and also avoiding injury. I want to work on my upper body strength in my shoulders and arms aswell as my core stability, as I have a lot of back problems.  Unfortunately it will be time to go runing again soon, which I’m not a massive fan of but I need to get my stamina and aerobic fitness back up to scratch.

So over the next few months I will be keeping you up to date with how its all going and what I have been getting up to!

Well its come right at the wrong time, I was just hitting form with the ball and now the season is over. I’m not happy, very bad timing!

Now the seasons over i will be resting for about 2 months then i will be back in the gym to work on fitness and strength, especially my back as i have been having problems with it for the past few weeks. I need few months of gym work and some good training sessions over the winter to get myself as fit as i should be. Hopefully i can have an injury free winter which has been a major problem for me the past few seasons. Then i’ll be back with a vengeance!!

I was back in the 1st team again this week and was back in the wickets. We played at Keighley who are up for promotion. I bowled 1st change and took 3 wickets for 2 runs in my first 3 overs, which I was very happy with then i came back on at the death and kept it tight. I finished with 3 wickets for 26 runs in 10 overs.

Everything feels as though it has clicked into place with my bowling over the past few weeks. Just bad timing, it’s come right at the end of season.

Finally made my triumphant return to 1^st team action this weekend, and surprisingly after 1 practice session in about 4 weeks my bowling was spot on!! Figures of 10(overs)-1(maiden)-2(wickets)-26(runs) was better than I was expecting. I tooka couple of wickets in the middle and just tried to tie things down, which I think i did pretty well. My bowling felt much more fluid and had good rythm. Hopefully I can have a strong end to the season and pick up a few more wickets!