Cricket Athlete training
Hugo’s Acceleration Training Story
Primary sport: Cricket
Age: 16yrs
Began Acceleration training at: 12yrs
Goal:
Our training goal with Hugo was to advance his performance on the field for cricket so he was at his peak performance to be selected for state representative teams.
Areas of Improvement:
Hugo needed improvements in his cricket performance, including his quickness on the field, agility between the wickets, core stability, and injury reduction in bowling.
How we helped Hugo:
Hugo completed an Initial Performance Testing Session for Acceleration’s coaches to learn more about his movement patterns, sprinting form, upper and lower body strength and more. This gave us the data to write him a specific program to work on areas needing improvement.
Hugo was coached through weekly strength and conditioning sessions with monthly programming rolling over to create the most success.
He did this through Individualised Training at our Brisbane Central location. 60-minute sessions including 30-minutes of flexibility, dynamic warmup, speed and agility work and then 30-minutes of strength, power, steering, mobility and recovery.
Watch this video of him during the speed and agility part of one of his training sessions.
Results:
Hugo’s 20m sprinting time majorly improved from 3.96 seconds in 2021 to 3.51 seconds in 2023. This is an impressive statistic for a young athlete.
As a result of his hard work during his Acceleration sessions and his cricket matches, Hugo was selected to represent Japan’s U19 National Cricket team at the ACC U19s Men’s Asia Cup in India, November 2024!
At the Age of 15, he was able to exceed his initial goal of representing his state to represent his country in cricket for the Men’s U19 team. His performance during the Asia Cup was very successful and the Acceleration team is proud to have been a part of his journey to get there.
“Tani-Kelly first took two wickets for 42 runs in his eight overs, playing a key role in slowing India’s scoring after a fast start…Promoted to open the batting, he then became the first Japanese player to register a half-century against an ICC Full Member, striking six boundaries in his 111-ball innings.” – Japan Cricket Association, 2024.
What Hugo had to say:
“In many aspects, Acceleration training has improved my cricket skills. Every activity in the Acceleration program is specifically chosen to help me become a better athlete and cricket player.
I had to significantly increase my strength and speed when I began the Acceleration program. My technique and leg drive were the first things that improved in my first acceleration workouts. This improved my ability to field and reach the ball quicker on the cricket pitch. It also improved my ability to run between wickets, allowing me to take more chances and score more, additionally helping my running between wickets to take riskier singles and get more runs.
To improve my power hitting and ability to hit boundaries on the cricket field, going to the gym was inevitable but I had no idea what to do. The exercises in Acceleration’s program were straightforward but targeted at strengthening my legs and core. This aided me in my innings against India since, when facing faster bowling, a strong core and balance helped me to score more boundaries.” – Hugo Kelly, 2025
Video of Hugo in action at the ACC Men’s U19 Asia Cup
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Learn more about our Individualised Training today!
Written By
Evelyn Briggs
Sales and Marketing Manager
13/03/2025
Image: Japan Cricket Association
