In the last few days, three giants in their fields all made statements about the role of exercise that put together couldn't be ignored.

First, batting great Geoff Boycott found himself agreeing that training in the gym is too disconnected from playing cricket to be effective.

Then strength coach Vern Gambetta said: "I can’t believe how many strength coaches hang out the weight room waiting for practice to end so they can do their job. Then they have the players go through a weight workout that has no relationship to what just happened on the field."

Which is pretty much the same thing: There are fewer crossovers in weight training than we think.

But the final nail in the coffin of current training methods came from Dr. John Berardi on his site:

"These data came in the form of a study I recently worked on at the University of Texas.

In this study, nearly 100 initially sedentary participants either stayed sedentary (about half of them) OR began exercising (the other half). They exercisers were given a program to follow that added up to about 5 1/2 to 6 hours of activity per week and that lasted for a total of 12 weeks. The non-exercisers did nothing for the 12 weeks except show up for measurement sessions.

I was shocked to find that even with 3+ hours of training per week with a weightlifting coach and 2+ hours of training per week with a body-weight circuit instructor didn't really work. The formerly sedentary participants didn't do much better than their couch-sitting counterparts.

That's right, without dietary control, 12 weeks of high intensity training produced a fairly disappointing 1% loss of body fat. In terms of raw data, the participants lost only 1 pound of fat and gained 2 pounds of lean vs. the placebo group.

Frankly, that sucks."

• Top players, former players and coaches don't see a connection between exercise and cricket performance.
• Research has show exercise alone makes only very small differences to all important body composition.

So should we all give up with this exercise lark and start playing more cricket instead?

The problem is that it's easy to put different parts of our lives into handy boxes: When you are in the gym you are strength training and when you are playing cricket you are a cricketer.  But these elements are intertwined together.

Training remains important for injury prevention and performance reasons, it just has to be the right sort of training: That with the most crossover to the field (commonly known as functional training).

Good functional training must be combined with effective nutrition, enough sleep and control of stress both in life and on the pitch. You body and mind is a complete system and need to be treated as such if you are going to get the best from yourself.

That's why Boycott, Gambetta and Berardi (all experts in their particular fields) all find the same conclusions from different angles.

But as they go on to say: If you put it all together better, including exercise, you become a superstar.

Are you putting it altogether?

Photo Credit: gin soak