20 Days to first net session

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Twenty days to our first net session. Not sure what the situation is with regards the youth team (Joe and Ben), but they'll probably start that same weekend?

Joe and I went out for a bit of a run and pre-nets training and today we've been doing some core strength exercises - planks and press-ups. Last nights run went okay with Joe upping his game a bit and coming away a little more enthused. I'm being a little cautious and not over-doing it, so I'm working at the same rate as Joe. If it seems that's insufficient I'll do more independently, but at the moment my priority is to see that Joe gets off to a good start.

One of the main things I'm concerned about and I know affects blokes my age is my knees so I'm working with this on a frequent basis...

I'm even contemplating maybe doing a few yoga sessions as they're good for balance and core strength stuff.

I've also got Joe doing this as well...

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Pre season

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Our first net session will be on Feb 14th, a little over 3 weeks away. I've been doing some stretching and a few exercises gradually working towards that date. I've been encouraging my now Twitter/Facebook and Tumblr obsessed son to do the same and we're in a press-up competition which I'm still managing to keep in front of him with. I might try and get him on the pull-up bars as well as I recall he was better than me at that last year.

Joe who is still in recovery with another year still before the physio's said he'd have built up his muscle mass again is really out of condition. I know in a few weeks time he's got cross country and he'll struggle with that, at the moment he's still doing football at school, so he's not really going to get much out of that although he likes a bit of football.

The one area I'm worried about with regards my own condition is my legs and cardio. I've got no muscle bulk in either top or bottom sections of my legs and this by my reckoning can cause a high risk situation with my knees. So I'm in need strengthening all aspects of my legs and get some cardio work going. I know Liz Ward advocates power walking... low impact, cardio and works on a lots of muscles, so tonight I got started with this and got Joe to come along too to see how he'd get on.

Joe, more so than Ben will,  if allowed will just watch Youtube all day long from the moment he gets up to the moment he goes to bed. At school and generally out and  about - (like a footballer), he wont run unless he needs to and then again like a footballer he'll stop after just a few minutes and say he's knackered! So he needs to do something!

So we set out - 10 minutes heading towards a big hill - go as far as we could for 10 minutes up the hill and then back again via a slightly longer route. So all in all a 20 minute cardio work-out with some work on the legs. I came through okay and recovered really quickly once back indoors. Joe on the other hand struggled, saying that his leg hurts where the break was (Excuse)? and generally looked really out of condition and couldn't even managed to trot every now and then to keep up with me walking. So... I need to do some work with Joe, as I get fitter myself. Hopefully I'm going to be able to drag him along with me and he'll lose some weight and gain some stamina. We'll have to see how it goes...

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Cricket Tanzania

Just seen this on the news, a good story involving cricket, rather than the usual stuff... cricket on the decline, rows about England's performance in the last test etc.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/25758579

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Glimmers of Spring

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In the last week or so on the way home and going into work, I've noticed the light changing - the sun coming up earlier and going down later, but today walking home I noticed catkins on the trees, so already natures showing some indication that spring is on its way which will be good news for all of those people that are up to their necks in water from the floods.

I stopped off and had a look at the paddock and that's in a right sorry state, very saturated with water. The seed that I put down at the end of the same which did take looks very sorry for itself with big gaps between clumps of new grass, so it looks as though I'm going to have to put down more to get the grass established again in the crease where we bat.

In the meantime if you're interested in photography or know anyone who is studying photography have a look at the link on the page at the top here, you or they might find it useful.