This is cricket fitness myth #1, to go back to the list of cricket fitness myths click here.

"Will I get too big and muscular to play cricket if I weight train?"

This is by far the most common question I'm asked when telling cricketers they need to do resistance training.

I'll be short with you: You won't.

"If fitness professionals can't agree with each other about what is best, then what chance do cricketers have?"

Cricket strength and conditioning coach Liz Ward told me this recently and it got me to thinking. What myths exist in the cricket world that all fitness professionals can agree on?

It's a way of making a start at building a training culture in this great game. Fitness is such a vital part of cricket performance and injury prevention there is no excuse to avoid it.

Any club cricket team that talks well with each other has an instant advantage over the opposition. Does your team know how to do it?

The advantage comes from the transient way that club teams work. Players go in and out of sides and line ups change regularly from week to week. This makes it hard to gel everyone together naturally.

You could be a better cricketer in your next game if you gave more warm up time to the control system of your body: The central nervous system (CNS).

We all spend a lot of time abusing the CNS. Lucky for us this abuse can be corrected by a few simple movements, causing your muscles to fire more quickly and giving you the edge on the pitch whether it's batting bowling of fielding.

This is cricket nutrition tip of the week #4 by Dr. John Berardi.

I recommend more calories than most do. That's because there's no such thing as a stagnant metabolic set-point. Instead, metabolism chases intake. So, if you want a bigger metabolism, you need a bigger food intake. And if you're worried about fat gain with this approach, just use outcome-based decision making and adjust energy (calorie) intake every two weeks based on your results. Not much 'damage' can take place in only two weeks. So if you end up boosting your metabolism, you'll be thanking me eternally. And if it turns out you're consuming too much, you can just adjust down.

• Why you need to eat more fat (really)
• A new coaching service for cricketers
• A sensible approach to improving your core strength and stablility (and still have good abs for the beach)
• Developing rotational power. Very handy for pulling, driving, bowling and throwing
• 5 ways to bounce back from errors

The SAQ cricket fitness system promises a lot, but recently I have been wondering how effectively it delivers.

All cricket players can benefit from extra speed and agility. Whether it's running quick singles or diving about in the field. So the principle of SAQ is sound.

The SAQ book covers a plethora of excellent drills and routines to help players with this, as endorsed by the great Graham Gooch at Essex CCC.

An injury is not something any cricketer wants to think about but if you are well prepared you can cut the risk of hurting yourself significantly.

The good news is that you don't need to spend a lot of time or effort preventing injuries. After all, we would all rather be playing cricket than doing “prehabilitation”.

A good overseas player is a boon a club while a bad one can ruin a season for you. How do you find the best ones?

Overseas player and owner of player agency CricX, Steven Hirst specialises in the topic so I turned to him to get some ideas on how to source players of the right calibre for your club. Here is what we talked about.

Demand for players

1. Go to the gym. Just because a match is called off doesn't mean you have to head home. Stop off at the gym for an extra strength training session and be all the more fit for next week.
2. Talk about old games. A less taxing but more tactical method is to head for the bar and seek out the clubs retired old stagers for some “war” stories. Chances are a problem you have will have been experienced before and these guys are the ones to help you understand things better.