Approaches to Wrist Strengthening in Cricket & Innovation in Artificial Intelligence

This is the first blog article for members of my Adil Rashid Cricket Academy + Synergies S&C group, also shared with my Linkedin sport science community.

*note asterix symbolises key text, further information or a key insight

Following on from a recent testimonial written for me by Senior County leg spinner Rupan, I thought I'd dive a bit deeper into methods and approaches to wrist strengthening.

As I explained in my previous post leg-spin bowling is one of the most unique delivery motions in cricket (Spratford et al., 2020) and requires extreme ranges of motion (ROM) in the arm to execute potentially 5-30 overs (30-90 deliveries) during either 1-day, twenty-twenty or test match cricket. It's no surprise then that wrist soreness/pain/injuries at the Adil Rashid Cricket Centre have one of the highest incidence rates, it's something I've been working on specifically with a few of our senior leg-spin bowlers, attempting to try and firstly assess ROM, then use a tailored progressive set of exercises to build strength, mobility and injury resilience*(1).

Whilst I've found this to be a beneficial approach and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) scores from the athletes have been positive i.e. little soreness or no pain, me being meticulous and well stubborn/a curious practitioner, thought why are they still feeling any kind of niggle? And why specifically the wrist rather than lets say the shoulder (rotator cuff). This got me doing what I think all sports science practitioners do and look at some of the evidence base that is out there around overhead sporting movements and wrist injury prevention.

After my review of the research I stumbled across what I think is somewhere close to a solution (nothing's ever perfect :)... degree's of freedom (DoF) (Bernstein, 1967) and 'axis of rotation'. It's easy sometimes as strength and conditioning coaches to incorporate exercises in single planes of motion, thinking that this will activate, mobilise and potentiate the muscle groups in question. However, sport and in particular leg spin bowling is dynamic and multi-planar in nature so a more methodical solution where all possible degree's of freedom / planes of motion are explored and utilised is potentially crucial for reducing the risk of injury and strengthening the arm-shoulder complex.

With advancements then in modern technology and Artificial intelligence I thought how can I really break this down for coaches, parents and athletes (senior/junior). Thanks to my diverse network I was pointed towards the google notebook software which I used to help me summarise a key research paper in this area, entitled: Wrist Resistance Training Improves Motor Control and Strength (Chu et al., 2018). The research article and notebook identified six joint actions / DoF in the wrist: Flexion, Pronation, Supination, Radial Deviation, Ulnar Deviation, Extension & Flexion. You can see below the infographic that google notebook created that I am now going to be sharing with the Leg spin athletes I work with as well as my AR cricket S&C membership!

This is the thing I love about applied practice, it's live/real-time and I get the opportunity to incorporate a now informed, holistic intervention in super quick time, as is the demand of performance sport!

How do you apply research informed practice in the sports you work with? And how do you interact and utilise the fast evolving world of modern technology and AI?

By Idrees Afzal, PhD

Synergies - Lead coach and Creator

About | Synergies

*(1) Whilst I assess ROM and movement, I'm not a qualified physiotherapist, I'm a S&C coach, so always as good practice I connect, collaborate and ask for advice from the physiotherapy team I work with

References

• Bernstein, N. (1967) The Coordination and Regulation of Movements.

• Chu, E., Kim, Y. S., Hill, G., Kim, Y. H., Kim, C. K., & Shim, J. K. (2018). Wrist resistance training improves motor control and strength. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 32(4), 962-969.

• Spratford, W., Elliott, B., Portus, M., Brown, N., & Alderson, J. (2020). The influence of upper-body mechanics, anthropometry and isokinetic strength on performance in wrist-spin cricket bowling. Journal of Sports Sciences, 38(3), 280-287.