The third instalment of Keeping Up With Calvin sees all-rounder Calvin Harrison turn his attention to the physical elements of pre-season. 

The 25-year-old explains how he approaches his strength and conditioning work, which habits nurtured in the winter may benefit him in the forthcoming summer, and why temptations fail to get the better of him when it comes to the weekly shop. 

Keeping Up With Calvin: Feeling The Rhythm

Keeping Up With Calvin: Balancing Act

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Fitting physical preparation around the volume of cricket we play through the winter can be tough, but it is part and parcel of pre-season. 

It’s around this time of a training block, when you’re a fair few weeks in and you’ve got a little while to go, where you have to tick off the things you’ve achieved and remember the progress you’ve made. 

You also have to be aware of how you are feeling, managing your loads so you are able to go through all of your sessions and be fit enough to keep batting or bowling. 

That can be particularly true for me as a spinner because I’m able to get through a greater volume of bowling than a seamer.

I don’t really cap myself for the number of balls I bowl.  I’ll go for at least an hour and then if there’s a spot free or batters want to face spin, then I can keep going. I manage my own load. You can sort of feel what your body is travelling like through the week.  

I still notice when there is an increase in work, though. I bowled a lot in the first session back after Christmas and that was a bit of a lesson - I felt pretty sore for the rest of the week!

Our Strength and Conditioning Coach, Liam Price, is really good at helping to build a programme which allows us to get stronger whilst still enabling us to play to our potential in the nets, which is really important. 

In terms of how my week is structured, I have three gym sessions and two conditioning sessions per week. I also do a priming session before each day, which I have introduced this year. 

In those priming sessions, I'll always do an explosive leg movement, maybe some plyometric single leg hurdle hops, then focus a bit more on my core or shoulders. Other days I might not do as much of one thing or another, but it's just about getting my body ready. 

It's not something I have really used too much before but it's definitely something I have enjoyed and will start doing now in preparation for games too. It’s a good physical and mental tool to get us into a good space. I think that is something a lot of the players do here, particularly before T20s.  

We all follow the same general gym programme but there will be intricate changes depending on the player. For heavy lifts, we will do something like a front squat on a Monday and deadlift or reverse lunge on Friday.

We’ll work out our weights by doing a three rep max test. Then across a number of weeks we will build up in an effort to increase that. We might do that through heavy sets or isometric work where you hold a position - all exercises bring about different adaptations. 

Then I have a shoulder section built into my workout to keep my recovery going from surgery last year, where others might do work on their core or calves. 

This intensity can be hard to maintain during the season, so the aim is to use this time now to become as strong and robust as possible. Once the season starts, we’ll go to the gym once or twice a week to top it up around training and games. 

We do a lot of our conditioning at Nottingham Forest’s indoor dome. We’ll wear heart rate monitors which Pricey has access to, and we’ll be trying to work into certain zones - say at 90% of our maximum heart rate. 

Those sessions can be hard work but it is so much better running with people than just grafting by yourself - others are there to push you on a little bit. 

I don’t look into the data too much. I am more of an anaerobic athlete more suited to short, sharp, movements so my heart rate goes up and down quite quickly. 

If I can’t get into the right heart rate zone for whatever reason, that might be because of my fatigue levels and it’ll mean there’s something to work on in the gym, but otherwise I’ll keep ticking over. 

We’ve also had some talks about nutrition this winter as that’s obviously something which goes hand in hand with physical preparation. It can be difficult to motivate yourself to meal prep when you’re working hard but you’re better for it, and it means you can fuel well to recover. 

We are fortunate to have lunches provided to us at Trent Bridge most of the time, and I am able to resist the urge to snack or eat badly when I am shopping because I don’t want to undo the effort that I am putting into strength and conditioning.

I try to make the most of my weekends and evenings to recover as well as I can, too. We have access to David Lloyd gym so we can get into the spa and generally switch off. That gets harder as the intensity ramps up and we get closer to the season, so it’s worth making the most of our time now.

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