Since his retirement from professional cricket in 2011, former Derbyshire, Kent, Northamptonshire and Somerset seamer Steffan Jones has focused his efforts on coaching fast bowlers. He is currently Director of Sports Performance and Wellbeing at Wellington School, and has previously helped at Derbyshire in particular as a bowling coach. Here, he writes for LastWordOnSports about the Stages of Learning involved for seamers, addressing in particular those who coach young quicks.



Over the last five years since retiring from professional cricket, I’ve spent the majority of my time coaching young fast bowlers, both girls and boys.

Admittedly, the majority have been county or even international standard, but I’ve found it really interesting on how each individual learns a new skill irrespective of their level.

The Importance of Technical Coaching

As we all know my passion is teaching bowlers to bowl fast and refining their technique that allows them to fulfil their physical potential.

Personally, I was never a ‘technique’ loving player and thought it was less important than physical preparedness; my ex-coaches would vouch for that!

However, the more I’ve researched, learned and experienced over the last five years, the more it’s taught me that at the very least, technical coaching needs the same amount of focus and care and attention as strength and conditioning training.

There’s no point being physically strong and powerful if your action leaks energy everywhere and the effort isn’t directed at the target. We have too many bowlers, some playing international cricket who now look like Tarzan but bowl like Jane.

Understanding and appreciating every link in the kinetic chain is key to performance in fast bowling.

Likewise there’s no point having the most clinical and ‘clean’ action if you can’t generate enough force to bowl the ball above medium pace. The batsman couldn’t care less that your action looks like Brett Lee, he just knows you’re bowling the ball at a nice pace to smack for six!

That’s why my coaching methods are now more holistic. I see myself as a unique performance bowling coach. My methods synergistically combine technical work with physical work. I would like to think it’s unique but with time coaches will realise you need an understanding of both to truly make a difference to your bowlers.

The Kinetic Chain Sequencing Drill

What I’ve experienced over the last five years regarding technical work – in particular teaching the number one technical drill in the world ‘the four tent pegs’ or ‘the kinetic chain sequencing drill’ – is that some ‘get it’ whilst other struggle. These drills provide a structure to learning the sequence of bowling fast. Similarly to learning a new language, you would firstly learn the alphabet, then a word, then a sentence, then a paragraph, chapter and finally read a book, you learn to bowl fast in the same way: by acquiring skills.

There are four stages of learning and skill acquisition, and it’s been clear to me that it takes every individual requires a different number of repetitions to move from one to the other.

Stage One: UNSKILLED-UNCONSCIOUS

Stage Two: UNSKILLED-CONSCIOUS

Stage Three: SKILLED-CONSCIOUS

Stage Four: SKILLED-UNCONSCIOUS

Even if a bowler has been playing for a long time, I would still regard the first ever session they do with the tent peg drill [Kinetic sequence drill] as the first one; no assumptions should be made.

This is obviously dependant on their current actions. If their current action ‘works’ both effectively and safely, I wouldn’t introduce them to the full drill, just an abbreviated one. Javelin throwers would always do technical drills in their session, so why would a bowler just bowl in the nets to improve?

There’s always something that can be improved. There are always drills to be done without bowling a single ball.

Open your minds and understand: a bowler doesn’t need to be bowling for forty minutes at a batsman to get better. Of course, they will do at some stage. That’s learning the art of bowling, and is crucial, but don’t be lazy coaches and just get them bowling straight away. In a 90-minute session with me, a bowler would bowl a cricket ball for twenty minutes at most at the end of the session.

Before that, they have various drills to do, working on rotational power, delivery stride, the drop step and block, hip-shoulder separation, heel contact, back foot contact drills, upper body power, arm speed work, weighted ball work and other key drills. Bowlers always have to change something from last season – whether it’s physical or technical – to improve: that’s how the body works.

One important point to remember is that nobody is perfect. However, the key message for me is that everybody should strive to improve. Let’s encourage our youngsters to always strive to be better. They don’t have to be happy with being average. There are ways to improve.

What I have seen with the drilling of the kinetic chain [4-tent pegs] is that there are four stages:

Unskilled-Unconscious: The beginner bowler attempts to do the drill and simply just goes through the motions. They can’t get the sequence together, but still believe they are doing it right. They are both unaware they are making a mistake and are unable to perform the drill properly. Unskilled-Conscious: After a few sessions and after a few additional practices away from the session, the bowler learns the whole sequence, but cannot consistently repeat it. They know what they have to do but can’t do it for a number of repetitions. They understand it, but can’t repeat it. This is where the bowler needs to realise that they have to do the drills in their own time away from the structured sessions, otherwise the new skill will never be automatic and Stage 4 is just a distant dream. Here, I prescribe them my 200 Workout, which involves 50 bodyweight squats, 50 press-ups, 50 lunges and 50 tent peg drills every day for the next three weeks. Skilled-Conscious: Having reiterated the point to the bowlers that they must keep doing the drills away from the sessions, they begin to consistently repeat the technical sequence. However, at this stage, they have to remind themselves and cannot subconsciously perform the drill. They have to tell themselves which position to get into. This is the most important stage of the bowler learning the drill. A lot of players get stuck in this phase because they have to ‘think’. They have to mentally control the movement. This stage requires patience from both the coach and the bowler. The easy thing to do here is dismiss the drill as being pointless and ineffective and move back to just bowling in the nets. The key point to remember here is that a successful outcome is not far away: keep believing in the process and the results will come. This is the phase where professional bowlers who have achieved adequate results to perform at the county level dismiss it as being a gimmick. However, as I know from observations and discussions, there can be no improvement in their performance if they dismiss this stage of learning. Skilled-Unconscious: The final stage of skill acquisition is stage 4. Here, as coaches we will be able to observe a bowler who has mastered the skill. When they go through the kinetic chain sequence, they can do it without thinking. This is when as coaches, you know you’ve made a technical change and a difference to their game. You have had an impact on that young bowler’s career. At the end of the day, that’s why we coach: it’s to have an impact and make an impression on their career. They trust us to help them.

Like I said earlier, it’s really important that the bowler understands the need for constant drilling. They need to re-visit the kinetic chain sequence progression on a weekly basis. This is how I organise the macrocycle of a young fast bowler’s skill development. If each stage is mastered, the bowler moves on quickly. The weekly training needs to be specific to their stage of learning: don’t go back to the beginning.

From experience, as a coach and as a player, coaches need to be aware that between stage 3 and 4 the bowler will get very frustrated. This is the stage where the bowler begins to doubt and blame external factors outside of their control. They start thinking too much. Evidence suggests once a player reaches the Skilled-Unconcious stage, thinking actually interferes with skill execution. External factors interfere with their thinking. When they are bowling well, thinking positively and in ‘rhythm’, they bowl without any conscious control.

Loss of Rhythm and Confidence

However, things can change very quickly in cricket. Due to various circumstances like ‘choking’ under pressure, bowling a poor ‘death’ over or having a poor game in general, a loss of form and rhythm or suffering injury, the bowlers’ mind-set changes very quickly. They start doubting themselves and begin over-thinking their bowling action.

On very rare occasions – and I’ve witnessed it live – the bowler totally loses it. They have what is commonly known as the ‘yips’. External factors, like pressure or bowling at a certain batter starts to get them thinking too much and the results are so sad to see. After this happens, the bowler would then unfortunately return to stage 1 or 2 and the long process begins again.

There is considerable evidence showing that actually thinking too much’ when you bowl is avoidable by initially coaching the bowlers in a specific way so they understand what they are doing in a ‘non-technical’ way. So, instead of coaching the young bowler to use his front arm more because it will give them direction and power, start using techniques that use analogies and descriptive examples. For example, I tell my bowlers to ‘imagine knocking the batter’s off bail off with their elbow and catching it with your hand in the air’, which produces a ‘bend and send’ motion of the arm. They can then picture what they need to do without having to over-think the technical reasoning for it. This type of analogy allows “many bits of information about a skill to be presented to the learner in one manageable chunk.” [Farrow, et al.]

Our very young bowlers [under 10] at Wellington School, Somerset, start on a very basic kinetic chain sequence drill. From experience, I’ve found youngsters struggle with position 3, the delivery phase in the KCS drill. Understanding the back foot drag, the ‘double v shape’ and the drop step is above them.

Therefore, I have abbreviated it down to three positions and given them a key name.



Position 1 – Shark fin [Back foot contact]-Mimics the elbow/coil position

Position 2 – Star fish [Front foot contact]

Position 3- Cartwheel [Delivery and follow through]

This is for players/pupils who have never bowled a ball before. Currently, our girls predominantly start at this stage. We only spend a year on this abbreviated drill before moving onto the progressive model as seen on the video clip. Within the initial drill, we are still mindful of the key points, such as feet alignment under hips, ball delivered above hip, chest lead, braced front leg and heel contact. We have found this model effective. Again, this is just how I do it; I’m not suggesting it’s perfect but it does work.

I fully appreciate technically drilling a bowling action is both tedious and a long-winded process, both for the player and the coach. Often, the coach feels he’s taking the easy option by just standing back and letting the player do his ‘walk throughs’ and hopefully the KCS drill.

However, this is not the case: it’s actually benefiting them more than we appreciate and just letting them learn by doing is the best thing we could do. Technical reinforcement work has to be done. As coaches, we need to sit back, observe and only guide them when the sequence isn’t correct.

There is a need to understand how the individual processes the information and learns. By making the whole sequence more manageable to understand and more ‘real world’ the bowler will learn quicker.

Constraints During Skill Acquisition

Coaches also need to be aware of the constraints that occur during skill acquisition. The challenge for the coach is how to integrate the vast amounts of sport science information, difference of opinion and methods into their training and competition programmes.

Constraints are not always limiting or negative factors. They are all the factors that influence learning and performance at any moment in time. Constraints can refer to the organismic [individual], the environment and ultimately the task.

The individual, environmental and task constraints all interact in order to determine the way that a performer completes a goal related task. Each influences how fast bowlers learn and acquire new skills.

Organismic constraints include factors such as body size [height, weight, and limb lengths], fitness [strength, speed, aerobic capacity, and flexibility], mental skills [concentration, confidence, emotional control or motivation], perceptual and decision-making skills [recognising patterns of play, anticipating by reading the movements of opponents] and personality factors [willingness to take risks].

If the bowler has poor general strength levels, adding special strength training and weighted ball bowling to a bowlers program will serve no purpose. The individual hasn’t the base level of strength to cope with the additional speed and power of the movement. Furthermore, some young bowlers can’t actually brace their leg on front foot contact due to poor flexibility in their hamstrings and a lack of structural strength around the knee joint.

Environmental constraints include both physical and social environmental factors. Physical factors include gravity, ambient temperature, natural light, terrain, auditory feedback or other environmental features that are not usually adaptations of the task. These constraints could include cultural norms (e.g. India produces great spin bowlers), as well as family support networks, peer groups, societal expectation (e.g. the expectation that players will be rugby players in New Zealand and long-distance runners from Kenya ).

For fast bowlers to develop in the UK and the county game, the wickets need to be improved. Currently, there are two types of wickets in the county game. There are either flat, unresponsive wickets or green top wickets. Neither of these encourages young bowlers to bowl quickly. One is too hard; the other takes little effort to be effective. This would be seen as environmental constraints. Skill acquisition is influenced by the environment our young bowlers learn in. Why bend your back and have a large flexion at the waist when actually you just have to put the ball in the right area? This is obviously a negative constraint in this instance.

Finally, task constraints are factors that are usually more closely related to performance and include the rules of the sport, the coach themself, equipment used, pitch sizes and player numbers.

For example, is the limit on bowling one bouncer per over for our young quicks conducive to developing fast bowlers?

Is the rule on ‘harsh’ leg-side wides in T20 cricket discouraging young quicks from giving it everything?

Is T20 itself putting young quicks off from trying to bowl fast?

All these are great examples of task constraints. Most of these are decided by ‘rule makers’ and need careful considerations when decisions are made because ultimately they can negatively influence the process of acquiring the skill to bowl fast. We need to avoid bowlers fearing conceding runs or bowling wides because they might be dropped. Just look at Sussex’s Tymal Mills: his economy rate in T20 cricket was initially poor, but he has been coached well, practised his skills and is now a fixture in the England T20 side.

One final task constraint that follows on from my point on breaking the skill down into manageable parts is how the coach sets out the drill. Are they aware of the stages of learning, are they knowledgable in fast bowling and what tools have they in their ‘coaches tool box’?

Do they actually know what they are doing or have simply become qualified by being good on assessment day?

This is a huge task constraint in the game at the minute. The correct message isn’t filtered down.

Instructions given by coaches about how to complete a task play a major part in determining how an athlete will attempt to achieve the set goal. Coaches need to understand that the instructions they give will determine the movements that the athletes produce to achieve the set goals. Instructions can act as a limiter to performance and discourage athletes from exploring different movement solutions.

Conclusion

To conclude, learning to bowl fast and acquiring the correct skill set to bowl fast is a long and careful process. Every coach needs the understanding of the stages of learning and the constraints that occur during skill acquisition.

Coaches need to ask the questions what, why, how and when: what needs improving, why does it need improving, how can it be improved and when is the best time to progress the drill?

The key points I’m trying to make are:

The 4-tent peg/kinetic chain sequence drill is a must for any fast bowler. It breaks the skill down into manageable chunks.

It takes repetition and time to see the benefit

There are key characteristics you will observe during the learning of the drill that represent the key stages of learning

There are three constraints that influence the stage of learning; as coaches we need to be aware of these.

Finally, every bowler should be coached in a holistic manner. Both technical work and physical work are equally as important. If one is sacrificed for the other, the bowler will truly never fulfil their genetic potential.

Williams, A.M. & Hodges, N.J. (2005). Practice, instruction and skill acquisition: Challenging tradition. Journal of Sport Sciences, 23(6), 637-650.