Writing exclusively for All Out Cricket, Glamorgan paceman James Harris lifts the lid on life behind the scenes with the England Performance Programme. Last week, James touched down in South Africa with the rest of the fast bowlers. Here’s part two of his diary from his first week in Potchefstroom.
Thursday December 1
I can say one thing straight off, it’s around 30 degrees and it doesn’t feel for one minute like Christmas is closing in. The fielding the previous evening had aggravated my groin injury meaning that I had to back off slightly and do a few different things to the lads. The morning was spent doing some more movement work out in the fields along with some light run-throughs, basically marking out your run-up and mock running in to bowl in order to try and get the rhythm going again having not bowled at all for a couple of months.
After lunch the boys headed to the pool to play some games, which just turned into a bit of a beasting and banging out plenty of lengths. I had to hit the gym and do yet more rehab on the groin, along with a long endurance session on the bike and some treading water. The treading water part sounded particularly easy to be honest but I was in for a shock with how tough it was having to do three-minute intervals. The day was again finished off with dinner at the sports village and an early bed. It’s pretty tiring stuff this training lark, and with Potch being particularly dead there’s not much to entertain us in the evenings.
Friday December 2
More pumping iron was the order of the morning; a long gym session working on the strength, mainly squatting, pumping out some bench presses and lots of pull ups were in store. Strength plays a huge part not only in performance but also injury prevention so they do place a pretty big emphasis on it. Having started lifting weights properly a few years ago I’ve seen a huge difference in my performance. The lads spent the afternoon doing more bowling specific drills but I was back on the bike and in the pool doing some interval sprints.
Not being a particularly strong swimmer, it’s one of the sessions that I find the toughest and mentally it’s the hardest one for me to get through. Friday night we thought we’d venture out for the first time and headed to the cinema. Being a small university town, needless to say we didn’t have the biggest choice of what to watch and came to a joint consensus to go and see the new Johnny English movie. It turned out to be OK and provided us with a bit of time outside of the campus and stopped us going crazy. It’s so easy just to end up doing and thinking about nothing but training, so getting away for a couple of hours is really important to keep the mind fresh.
Saturday December 3
If we thought that we were going to get Saturday off, we were sorely mistaken. No lie in and we were up nice and early again. We were back on the field to do what the coaches called a game but what we would call sprints. We were spilt into two teams and had to collect a load of cones on the field and bring them back to base, one at a time. Boyd, Bucky and I were one team and we bossed proceedings, winning all the games on offer.
Yet another healthy lunch and we were back on the fields for some more fitness; longer sprints were in store now and after warming up we did a sprint of 150m followed by a 200m, a 250m and a 300m and then back down 250m, 200m, and a final 150m all out sprint to finish. Only some catching was left to do and it was 20 high catches on the reel to finish what has been a pretty tough first week.
As we were all getting a little bored of the food we decided to hit Beef Boys – the local steak house – and we all demolished some monstrous fillet steaks and felt a lot more satisfied. There is one thing South Africa cannot be beaten for and that’s the quality of its steaks. It will not be that last time we visit for sure!
The original plan for this week was to get lots of fitness work in before picking up on more bowling in the coming two weeks. I think it’s planned that we all get through somewhere in the region of 60 overs. This should be enough to bowl us back into some form before hopefully getting selected for the Lions tour in the New Year.
Click here to read part one of James’ first week in South Africa.
AOC Exclusive: James Harris’ England Performance Programme Diary
Writing exclusively for All Out Cricket, Glamorgan paceman James Harris lifts the lid on life behind the scenes with the England Performance Programme. Last week, James touched down in South Africa with the rest of the fast bowlers. Here’s part two of his diary from his first week in Potchefstroom.
Thursday December 1
I can say one thing straight off, it’s around 30 degrees and it doesn’t feel for one minute like Christmas is closing in. The fielding the previous evening had aggravated my groin injury meaning that I had to back off slightly and do a few different things to the lads. The morning was spent doing some more movement work out in the fields along with some light run-throughs, basically marking out your run-up and mock running in to bowl in order to try and get the rhythm going again having not bowled at all for a couple of months.
After lunch the boys headed to the pool to play some games, which just turned into a bit of a beasting and banging out plenty of lengths. I had to hit the gym and do yet more rehab on the groin, along with a long endurance session on the bike and some treading water. The treading water part sounded particularly easy to be honest but I was in for a shock with how tough it was having to do three-minute intervals. The day was again finished off with dinner at the sports village and an early bed. It’s pretty tiring stuff this training lark, and with Potch being particularly dead there’s not much to entertain us in the evenings.
Friday December 2
More pumping iron was the order of the morning; a long gym session working on the strength, mainly squatting, pumping out some bench presses and lots of pull ups were in store. Strength plays a huge part not only in performance but also injury prevention so they do place a pretty big emphasis on it. Having started lifting weights properly a few years ago I’ve seen a huge difference in my performance. The lads spent the afternoon doing more bowling specific drills but I was back on the bike and in the pool doing some interval sprints.
Not being a particularly strong swimmer, it’s one of the sessions that I find the toughest and mentally it’s the hardest one for me to get through. Friday night we thought we’d venture out for the first time and headed to the cinema. Being a small university town, needless to say we didn’t have the biggest choice of what to watch and came to a joint consensus to go and see the new Johnny English movie. It turned out to be OK and provided us with a bit of time outside of the campus and stopped us going crazy. It’s so easy just to end up doing and thinking about nothing but training, so getting away for a couple of hours is really important to keep the mind fresh.
Saturday December 3
If we thought that we were going to get Saturday off, we were sorely mistaken. No lie in and we were up nice and early again. We were back on the field to do what the coaches called a game but what we would call sprints. We were spilt into two teams and had to collect a load of cones on the field and bring them back to base, one at a time. Boyd, Bucky and I were one team and we bossed proceedings, winning all the games on offer.
Yet another healthy lunch and we were back on the fields for some more fitness; longer sprints were in store now and after warming up we did a sprint of 150m followed by a 200m, a 250m and a 300m and then back down 250m, 200m, and a final 150m all out sprint to finish. Only some catching was left to do and it was 20 high catches on the reel to finish what has been a pretty tough first week.
As we were all getting a little bored of the food we decided to hit Beef Boys – the local steak house – and we all demolished some monstrous fillet steaks and felt a lot more satisfied. There is one thing South Africa cannot be beaten for and that’s the quality of its steaks. It will not be that last time we visit for sure!
The original plan for this week was to get lots of fitness work in before picking up on more bowling in the coming two weeks. I think it’s planned that we all get through somewhere in the region of 60 overs. This should be enough to bowl us back into some form before hopefully getting selected for the Lions tour in the New Year.
Click here to read part one of James’ first week in South Africa.