Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club - Part 3: Recovery & Rehab

In the third episode of the Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club mini-series, we learn about the rehabilitation and active recovery role of the Wattbike and how it’s used as a vital tool of off-feet conditioning, with Strength and Conditioning Coach of NCCC.

As I mentioned earlier in this mini-series, we regularly use the Wattbike on our active recovery days as a really key piece of equipment for off-feet conditioning, still getting us the results we want but reducing the stress and impact on the players.

RECOVERY IN SEASON AND OFF

The Wattbikes actually get a hammering in the off-season. Our season ends in September, then the players have October off, coming back in November. But that month off, we need the players to keep training, they can’t just go away and put weight on, as we then waste the first block November to Christmas just trying to shift the weight and get back to fitness. So the Wattbikes come in as a big component of recovery training through the 4-6 weeks off to keep fitness levels up.

In season, the bikes still act as a valuable method of off-feet training and active recovery. A game can last 8 hours, players can cover 22km distance in that time, sometimes up to 50km every 5 days so the Wattbikes are a perfect way for them to heal up, get off the feet and reduce any niggles that could become injuries if we were to continue to stress them in on-feet training.

WATTBIKES AS ‘A BIG RECOVERY WIN’

Since we’ve been using the Wattbikes, the recovery aspect that they’ve delivered has been a big win for us. And we have the data to prove it! We can see from our analysis that since using the Wattbikes, we have reduced soft tissue injuries year on year. This is vital as the availability of players has gone through the roof!

One great player example is Luke Fletcher, who absolutely smashed his individualised Wattbike programme, then played every game that season, was injury free throughout, recorded the most wickets that season and was the best batsman that year. His Wattbike recovery training had completely set him up to succeed!

USING THE BIKES FOR A MENTAL BOOST

We also had another player who had been plagued by injuries, but who loved the Wattbike so much that he bought his own for an at-home set up during his rehabilitation. He paired this with Zwift, and found that using the Wattbike and Zwift became a really important time for him to switch off mentally, even from the fact that he was technically rehabbing.

The gym had become a rehabilitation space for him, which came with its own negative thoughts and association with injury, whereas the bike gave him a different, more positive focus – it kept his rehabilitation fresh, gave him time out of the gym, away from cricket and acted as an escapism factor which really boosted his mental health as he got himself fit again.