This is the 4th in the "Principles of Cricket Fitness" series. To go to Part 1 click here.

One of the most frustrating things about fitness training is as soon as you stop your improvements start to fade. Unlike getting back on a bike, your muscles and lungs do forget.

That's the third training principle: All fitness improvements reverse when training stops.

Luckily the speed at which this happens is quite slow. You can take a couple of days off without worry and even a whole week now and again. Anything beyond this will see a steady decline in your cricket strength, endurance, speed and power.

The obvious answer is to keep training regularly. As little as once a week can lead to improvements if you train in the right way, although more is better (as long as you get sufficient rest).

Balancing Out Cricket Fitness Improvements

The reversibility principle does lead to another headache. A fit cricketer needs to develop a lot of areas to be at the peak of their performance: strength, power, speed, work capacity, agility, balance and technical skills are all part of the equation.

It's impossible to train all these at the same time and make progress on them all.

That means you need to take a 'concentrated' approach to your training: Focus on improving 2-3 key areas at any one time while only maintaining the others (with less sessions per week).

Rotate the areas you focus on regularly to get the best results, but never leave any aspect out.

Unless you want your body to forget that is.

To go to the final part of the "Principles of Cricket Fitness" series, click here