The strategy in lasting 12 hours was to prevent any single part of my body from having a total breakdown. For if even one part of your body goes kaput, you are doomed. This is as true for a short match as it is for a 12 hour marathon.
A painful blister on the thumb will end your day just as suredly as a sprained ankle!
The secret to optimum performance, of course, is preparation and injury prevention. Abiding by the following actions helped me finish the 12 hour squashathon. In the case of a long weekend of tournament matches, these common sense actions are just as relevant.
Stretch after the game
The Wrist
How do you use the wrist in squash? Answer: You don't. Although this isn't completely true, it is the best way to learn good basic technique. As long as your wrist is cocked, you hardly need to move your wrist at all when you are playing basic strokes. When you watch the Pros, it might look like they are using their wrist a lot. But the motion that appears to be wrist movement is actually a more powerful turning of the elbow and forearm. Of course this is not true of all pros. Some use deceptive wristy shots on every other stroke.
This forearm/elbow motion is very difficult to describe in words, and is more easily understood by watching it done. Moreover, in the end, it is the timing of this motion in conjunction with the rest of the swing that really counts. Keeping a stiff wrist will add to your consistency and accuracy, especially when striving for the 'clinger' down the wall. Believe it or not, keeping a steady wrist will also add to your power.
You can use the wrist for deception of course. This is usually done from the front court when you have a bit of time. It can be very effective, especially when used in moderation.
Drop Shots: The Side Wall Is Your Friend
'When in doubt keep the ball tight to the side wall.' This advice applies to just about any situation in squash, but especially to the drop shot. Even a shot that is a foot above the tin is a reasonable shot if the ball stays close to the side wall. You have moved your opponent forward, and he still can't do anything with the ball.
When playing a drop shot, you should almost always go for the nick...but err on the side of hitting the floor first, not the side wall. This is very important, because a shot that hits the floor first will stay close to the side wall. Whereas a shot that hits the side wall first will pop out away from the wall. This seems elementary, but it is worth repeating and taking to heart.
Employing this tactic allows you to use the drop shot to work your opponent, without fear of losing points to the tin. It is the combination of good reliable drop shots and good deep shots that will bring your opponent to his knees.
Coach Kayler's Squash Tip of the Month:
The High Backhand Volley
A high backhand volley is any volley above head height on the backhand side. It is generally regarded as the most difficult standard shot in squash. All aspiring players must master this shot.
Because of the nature of this shot, it is virtually impossible to put a lot of power behind the ball. You can't use your legs, torso or chest to gain any power. It is even difficult to use your wrist or elbow effectively. So what is the solution?
I have found that the best way to handle this shot is to hit a conservative, but accurate, high deep drive into the back corner. Concentrate on accuracy rather than power. Use your arm in a 'curtain drawing' motion. Move your arm the way you would draw a high curtain, straight across, rather than moving your arm in an arc. This allows you to play THROUGH the ball and will increase your accuracy. Note that this is easy to practice by yourself. Just stand in the back corner of the court near the wall and hit the ball over and over again to yourself.
Experts can use their wrist to hit devastating drop shots from this position, but that is folly for the intermediate player.
Learn the Fundamentals First
What are the ten fundamental tactics of squash? Here they are in the order that I think you should learn them.
- Hit the ball into the back corners of the court
- Keep the ball close to the side wall
- Recover to the center of the court (the T)
- Watch the ball at all times
- Make your opponent run
- Volley whenever possible
These next four are important, but should probably not be concentrated on until the first six have received a great deal of attention.
- Go for short shots whenever you have an opening
- Minimize the distance you run on the court
- Vary how hard you hit the ball
- Know when to delay your strokes
When to Hit Delayed Shots
Note this is a separate issue than 'How to hit delayed shots.' I won't touch that issue here. But I think 'when' is just as important as 'how' and is less understood. Hitting a delayed shot in the wrong situation just gives your opponent more time to get to the ball. Using delayed strokes in the right situations will have your opponent twisting and spinning like a corkscrew.
So what is the right situation? The answer is simple. Use delayed strokes when your opponent is currently under only slight pressure. If your opponent will recover easily to the T from your last shot, delay your next shot so that he will have to come to a complete dead stop on the T. Freezing him like this will actually cause him to exert more energy to get going again. It also breaks his rhythm. He will hesitate mentally, wondering about which shot you are going to hit and that will also delay his reaction to your shot. If you are lucky, he may even try to anticipate your next shot before you hit it, and that is when the twisting starts.
Of course, you should never delay your strokes when you have your opponent 'on the ropes'. It will only give him more time to regain the T. In this situation, you should be thinking, 'volley, volley, volley'.
Undoing Bad Habits
Let's face it, we all have a few bad habits on the squash court we'd like to get rid of. Some people are lazy getting back to the T. Others continually hit the ball off the wrong foot, or use a stiff arm (tennis) swing.
Some players may have been playing squash for many years, and rather than take the time to learn the correct technique, they cling to their bad habits, and never make it past the C level.
There is only one path to breaking bad habits. First you have to consciously learn what you are doing wrong - and how to do it right. (You may have to ask a pro for help here.) Then you must drill the new technique into your muscles. The key to doing this is NOT PLAYING ANY COMPETITIVE GAMES until after you have drilled the new technique into your system. In order for your brain and muscles to accept a new way of doing something, they need to make a clean break from the old habit.
If you continue to play the occasional competitive game while you learn the new technique, it will take ten times as long to rid yourself of the bad habit. The reason is simple. When you play a game, your mind is focused on strategy and tactics rather than technique. Consequently, you slip back into your old technique and thereby destroy any gains you might have been making in your solo practice session.
It takes self-discipline and patience to remove bad habits, but the rewards are great. Keep at it.
Economy of Motion
The situation: The score is 1-1 in games and you feel that the match has been pretty even up to this point. The rallies have been long and hard. As you come out for the third game you look at your opponent and...aghast...he has hardly broken a sweat!
How could this be? You know you are in better shape than he is. The answer is that your opponent moves around the court more efficiently than you do. Or to put it another way, your opponent moves around less of the court than you do.
The real key to efficient court movement is reducing how far you run on the court. For any given ball, you can hit it in any number of court positions. Your goal for improving your court efficiency is to play the ball at its closest point to the T.
Try this drill. Make a rectangle on the court with colored tape. The rectangle should be centered around the T, about 3 yards (2.5 meters) wide and 4 yards (3.25 meters) long. Now play a practice game with one restriction: you must keep at least one foot within the rectangle at all times. (Lose the point rather than break the restriction!)
This drill forces you to do two things:
- Volley the ball when it passes near the T.
- Stretch further for balls in the corners.
To do this drill successfully you must try to react quicker than normal, stretch further than normal, and resist the temptation to step outside the box. The advantages to staying inside this small rectangle are numerous:
- it improves your reactions and anticipation (volley more)
- it improves your retrieval skills (stretch further)
- it improves your patience (wait for the ball to come to you)
- it preserves your energy
After a few weeks, the whole court will seem smaller.
Playing Under Pressure
It is often said that playing people who are better than you is the best way to improve quickly. I think this is probably true. The problem is, of course, that everyone knows this, so no one wants to play weaker players. In the end, you may find it difficult to find better players who are willing to play you more than once. This is why you should play in tournaments if you really want to improve quickly.
The reason that playing better players is so conducive to improving your game is twofold. First, you are forced to concentrate all your mind and energy on the game, just to stay in the rally. If you relax just a little bit against a stronger player, you will quickly lose a whole string of points. When your concentration is focused, your brain is in optimal learning mode.
Second, and most important, you get practice playing shots under extreme pressure. The key here is realizing that once you have played a shot enough times under x amount of pressure, you will get pretty good at returning the shot. Then, x amount of pressure doesn't really seem like very much pressure at all, and you are ready for x + 1 amount of pressure. Translation: you have improved your game one notch.
So what this means is that the real benchmark of quality in squash is not 'How well do you play your shots', but rather 'At what level of pressure (pace?) do you still play your shots well.' The corollary to this, of course, is '..and how long can you keep up that pace.' After all, you need to maintain that pace for the duration of the match.
The Most Underused Weapon
If you've ever watched a Pro serve, it may look like he is just putting the ball into play, and isn't really trying to achieve any advantage. For the most part this observation is correct. At the Pro level, very little advantage can be gained by a 'good' serve. A pro can always make a decent return, no matter what the server does. The only thing the server does not want to do is hit the ball out, thus giving his opponent a free point. So the Pro serves conservatively, and lets his opponent make the first move.
Well, in my opinion, this is a bad approach at the amateur level. Amateur players get in all sorts of trouble when faced with a 'good' serve. Therefore, I believe this is one instance when imitating the Pros is not a good idea.
So what constitutes a good serve? There are a couple of different serves that can be effective in squash, but by far the most effective is the high lob serve. This serve is aimed very high on the front wall, strikes the sidewall near the out of court line, and dies in the back corner. I recommend to all beginning players that they perfect this serve as soon as possible. They will win countless points outright, and many by forcing a weak return.
You may, from time to time, hit one out of court; but if you spend time practicing it, the odds will be in your favor. You can increase the effectiveness of the lob serve, by throwing in a few hard bodyline serves, and hard back-wall-nick serves too. Keep your opponent guessing!
Taking the offensive on the serve is an invaluable lesson to learn in squash. If you can force your opponent to make a weak return, you can often dictate the rest of the rally, and finally win the point while tiring your opponent.
Lost the first two games? What now?
It's a 'best of five' match, and you are behind 2-0. What should you do?
Chances are, if you continue playing the same way you played the first two games, you are going to lose the match. You must try something! Put your opponent off his winning rhythm. He has probably figured you out, and knows where you are weak. It is time to shake things up.
But what can you change? The first thing you should think of is tempo. If you were playing strokes with lots of length and patience, try going for more volleys and drop shots, and increase the power on your shots. Speed up the time between points too! On the other hand, if you feel the pace of the game was already pretty fast, you should slow down the game. Play lots of lobs and high crosscourts to good length. Take your time between points. Whichever you choose, make sure it is really exagerated. A small change won't change anything. Make him think, 'Hey, what's going on? This wasn't the guy I was just playing!'
Another thing you can change is your shot selection. Instead of going for the same old shots, start mixing things up. Go for the reverse corner from the back court, or hit the skid boast. Play a drop shot from a deep position. Start serving from the left hand side. Tactically, there may not be any rhyme or reason to your new behavior, but it will take your opponents mind off the game, and onto your strange new behavior. And this alone is worth a few extra points a game, believe me.
If done well, changing your tactics mid game will a) expose new weaknesses in your opponent, b) throw off his concentration, c) increase your own concentration and confidence, and 4) turn the momentum of the game.
Remember, by changing a losing game, you've got nothing to lose, and everything to win.
Playing the Ball in the Back Corners
The key thing to remember when playing a ball in the back corner of the court is not to try to hit the ball too hard, but rather concentrate on lobbing the ball high onto the front wall, so that it floats all the way back to the back wall. This way your opponent can not cut it off with a volley.
In the back corner, you will find that you simply don't have enough room to generate any real power. If you try to power it out of the corner, you will often set up your opponent with an easy volley. Or worse, you will hit a boast and set up your opponent for the easy kill. The high safe shot also gains you the time to regain the T.
When hitting a good high floating shot from the back corner remember to get underneath the ball, keep an open raquet face, and use more wrist than on a normal shot.
Also, don't forget to improvise when you have to. If the ball is really dying in the corner, slide your hand up the handle and flick the ball out with your wrist. If you are really under pressure, you may have to lead into the corner with the wrong foot.
How Can I Improve My Game?
As a coach, the most common question I'm asked by collegiate players is, "What can I do to improve my game?"
It's a simple question, and there is a simple answer. But the asker never wants a simple answer, they want analysis. So I always think about it for a while, and go over the player's game with them and try to point out areas of weakness, or areas where they could improve.
I might tell them they need to improve their concentration when they get ahead a few points, or they might need to work on better retrieval skills, or a better volley or whatever. But really I know that what they need is just more squash. What I really want to tell them is, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE. It doesn't matter too much how you practice, just practice. Practice by yourself, practice with a top player, practice with a weak player. It all counts, as long as when you are practicing, your mind is focused on improvement.
I guarantee you that the best players in the world, or in your region, or even at your club have all practiced more than you have. This is not a coincidence. If you want to improve, all you have to do is get on the court and hit the ball on a daily basis. If you really want to be a star, you have to come down even more often. There is no other way.
The Secret to Power is Timing
If you've ever asked a pro, 'What's the secret to hitting the ball so hard?', you know the answer, 'Timing!'
Well, what does that mean? It means two things: 1) The timing of when to hit the ball (relative to your body), and 2) The timimg of the many body motions that it takes to swing a racquet. I believe it is the second of the two that really generates power.
There are five distinct motions in a basic squash stroke:
- The forward motion of the BODY as a whole,
- The swiveling of the upper body at the HIPS,
- The rotation of the SHOULDER,
- The straightening and turning of the ELBOW,
- The turning of the WRIST.
The secret to getting awesome power is to identify the 'maximum power point' for each of these motions, and then time your stroke so that each 'maximum power point' occurs at exactly the same moment - the moment you strike the ball.
Another way to understand this is by comparison to wave dynamics. When two waves intersect they have either constructive or destructive interference. If they are in sync, the amplitude of the resulting wave is the sum of the two waves, if they are out of sync, the waves cancel each other out. Now imagine each motion of your swing is a wave.
Perfect timing in squash means that each of the five motions of your your stroke adds, not subtracts, to the speed of the racquet head at the moment of impact with the ball. It's that simple.
Fake a Shot Off the Back Wall, then Drive It Deep
The situation: You are chasing a ball to the back wall that looks as if it won't come off the back wall very far.
Set up to play the desperation shot off the back wall, and swing as if you were going to drive it hard into the back wall. Your opponent, looking over his shoulder, sees the desperate attempt and moves forward to the front wall waiting for your lob off the back wall. Meanwhile, you intentionally miss the ball with your swing, let it come off the back wall, and then drive it straight to the front wall and past your helpless opponent, who has taken his eyes off you, and is standing a few feet from the front wall.
Perfecting the 'double swing' is difficult, but if you work on a good fake, the shot can be very effective and is usually an outright winner. This deception may only be good for one point per match, but you only need 27 points to win, so each point is worth a lot.
Within Any Rally, Gradually Increase the Pressure
It is very tempting to go for outright winners from unlikely positions in squash. Because of the built in errors associated with off balance shots, and shots aimed too close to the tin, this tactic will win fewer points than it will lose. In any given rally, your aim should be to gradually put your opponent further out of position, until he simply can't get back to the T in time to reach your next shot. The winning shot in such a rally will often be a very ordinary, low risk drive.
Powering Up Your Backhand Straight Drive
Although the backhand is a more natural stroke than the forehand, many players run into problems when they strive for greater power on this side. Remember power comes from good rotation of the upper body during preparation and accurate timing, not from muscle. On the backhand stroke you should hit the ball about 12 inches ahead of your lead foot, not level with your foot, as you would on the forehand side!
Drop Shots: Play the Percentages
Many players will lose more points than they make by going for the perfect drop shot. Until you can place the ball within an inch of your intended spot on the front wall, you should give yourself plenty of room for error and play the drop shot 6 inches above the tin. Use the drop to put your opponent under pressure, not to win the point outright.
This site is designed and maintained by Ashley Kayler, coach of the Cal Squash Team. Any questions or comments about this page should be directed to him at: squash@cal.berkeley.edu.
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