High intensity training is taking UAE cricketer Chirag Suri to the top

Nick Watkins - Writer 09:30 11/10/2018
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  • Fit and firing: Chirag Suri has transformed his physique during his journey into professional cricket

    The UAE international has been in fine form, scoring his first hundred for the senior side against Singapore earlier this year. In an exclusive interview with Sport360 he talks about how working hard in the gym has paid off on the pitch.

    I’m in the gym three or four times a week, putting in half an hour of HIIT work. As a contracted player I also train three times a week doing a circuit with some bowling and batting every couple of days. I was a fat kid growing up and actually failed a fitness test when I was 14, during a UAE trial, so that’s when I really began to take fitness a bit more seriously.

    When I work out the idea is to get my heart rate racing, so I do a lot of high intensity stuff and I’m a firm believer of using body weight instead of free weights in the gym. So my first exercise will be on the treadmill; I do ten sets of sprints for 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off, so I jump on and off and go at high speed and I do that ten times. I’ll then do four sets of 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off on the rowing machine with the goal of reaching 600 metres in total. After that I’ll have a quick rest and drink a can of Red Bull to stay energised.

    I’ll then move on to fifteen minutes on the bike at a decent pace because that gives strength to my legs, which is important as a cricketer. I do it at 100RPM because cricket it all about short sprints, we’re not running marathons, we need to build explosiveness in our legs. When you’re playing cricket we usually only do like 20 metre sprints so you don’t need to be running long distances in the gym, just short bursts.

    When I’m done with that I’ll do 10 pull-ups, 15 push-ups and a one-minute plank, and repeat three times. What that does is strengthens the core, helping your balance and stability. You can’t be stable at the crease; you can’t hit a six or bowl the ball effectively if you’ve not got a strong core.

    Squats and leg presses I also do to build the legs and also bench presses for a bit of upper body strength. I used to go to the gym and just do curls to get bigger arms, but really that was just to look good. Legs are more important as that’s where the bulk of your strength comes from. If you see all the top international cricketers in the world you’ll see that their thighs and calf muscles are huge, which gives them a solid base to work from.

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