Joe Leach says he probably needs to bowl with extra pace to boost his international ambitions with England after admitting: "you can never stand still."
The Worcestershire all-rounder had a 2015 season to remember and he was voted the club's Player's Player Of The Year after taking 59 wickets and also scoring nearly 500 runs in the County Championship.
But challenging for a Lions and full England spot are also on Leach's list of ambitions in the game.
He is working this winter with bowling coach Matt Mason on adding that additional pace – one of the reasons why he opted not to return to Australia for a second season of grade cricket.
Leach said: "Why have I not gone not away this winter? There are two or three reasons. I didn't think I could do another 12 months of solid cricket. It would have been too much on the body.
"I'd done 18 months in a row in a completely different role to what I'm used to. We spoke about fatigue at the back end of the season.
"I'd also just bought a house and there were a couple of technical things in my game I wanted to work on because you can never stand still."
Leach added: "I've wanted to try and put on a bit more pace. Ultimately I want to be competing for Lions and England spots.
"To do that I probably need to bowl a bit quicker than I am at the moment.
"I'm working with Mase (Matt Mason) on that. I don't think it is something that is necessarily going to be instantaneous.
"It could take a little bit of time to work on – even if it is 12-18 months – so it might not necessarily be evident next season.
"Hopefully it will be but these things you can never tell. In the past, I've picked things up pretty quickly but you don't want to count your chickens in that respect.
"It can be quite hard to make technical changes."
