Players back for winter programme

Leicestershire County Cricket Club’s players have been back at Grace Road this week for the start of their winter programme.

The first few days have focused on fitness with the players put through their paces with a circuit session in the Mike Turner Indoor Centre this morning.

It was a tough reintroduction to training for the players, who had to do four separate fitness drills in a loop for twenty minutes.

Head of Strength and Conditioning Crofton Alexander said: “It was a combination of resistance work, body weight work and running this morning.

“The idea was for them to do twenty minutes of continuous hard work with a ten-second break between each effort. It starts being reasonably easy but gets progressively harder. There is a bit of mental training in there too because as the rounds go on, you have ten to go then nine, eight, and so on.

“It’s quite a mental hill to climb. The players partner up so they work hard as a team and also push each other. That’s what we want out of our training sessions because they are going to be competing for places.”

County’s players will have similar fitness circuit training tomorrow and then move into batting and bowling groups next week with specific cricket and strength and conditioning sessions. There will also be technical sessions, which include fitness fielding and a skills and speed session.