Winter plan of action - Throwing

I'm also writing a blog on a cricket website www.simplycricket.net so some of the content of this blog will end up on there and vice versa.

So - a winter plan? Whatever happens initially it's going to be hindered by the fact that I've pulled a muscle in my L/H calf muscle and I've been told by Liz Wizard on the simplycricket website that I need to rest it properly in order that I don't do any more damage to it. Liz is good at this stuff and has given me advice before that has then led to me getting fixed as such.

The winter plan I feel needs to lead up to the start of the season. At 47 I'm not as physically active as I was when I was younger and I have a tendency to expect my body to still do the kind of stuff I used to do as a kid. Over the last season I found that I was useless at throwing the ball in from the outfield and that everytime I did it I could sense that I was almost injuring my arm each time and it was obvious that if I continued I would in fact do some injury. Fortunately I noticed that the other 'Older' blokes were rolling the ball in and throwing it under arm if the batsmen had stopped running and wisely adopted that as an injury avoidance strategy. But at the same time I was gutted that I couldn't do what would have been easier in younger days - but then younger days would have been spent throwing rocks at objects out in the river Thames or hours spent trying to hit Swifts as they flew along river banks stuff like that where you'd be constantly exercising your arm. These days all I do is type and drive a car in between weekends, so it's not surprising that my arm isn't up to it?

So one of the things I need to do is exercises that will help with that and also practice on the technique. There's a good link on www.bbc.co.uk in the cricket pages where Paul Collingwood has a video where he covers throwing techniques and as soon as you see it and then try it - it all makes sense. Also on the www.harrowdrive.com website David has covered ways of practicing using different weight balls alternately as a method - so I'll re-visit that before I start.

How often? As yet I'm not sure and I want to do it in a way where I'm not really feeling I'm going to be wasting lots of time. I suppose what I could do is make it more cricket specific (If my leg was okay) by setting up targets opposite one another and everytime I've thrown the ball run/sprint to retrieve it, that way I'm also doing things like stooping down to pick the ball up quickly and turning to throw back in the other direction accurately which'll all add to my agility?

Anyway - my legs knackered so I'm not going to be doing that so what will I be doing this weekend? More than likely I'm going to be spot bowling trying to pitch the ball from 17 yards throwing top-spinners trying to get it to land in area 10" x 30" as that'll be fairly easy on my leg? If it proves to be too stressful on the leg I'll ease up again. I'll let you know what I decide.