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Practice playing in different environments

Playing on cold courts and with skiddy balls

It’s important you practice under varying conditions and in different court environments if you want to play competitively at a high level. Courts can vary massively from club to club. If you’re playing in a County League or tournaments you’ll play on all sorts of courts at different clubs. Therefore, if you want to be successful it’s important you practice on different courts and in different circumstances so that you are prepared for abnormal situations. 

The court

The most common variation is temperature. Often clubs will have courts that are warmer than others, and so players will be familiar with the fact that the ball bounces a bit higher on warmer courts. It’s important you develop your ability to play on warmer and colder courts, as you’ll play on all sorts of courts temperature wise, and you want to have the experience to be able to make little changes to your game and not be thrown mentally by a different court temperature. 

How weird are your home club’s courts?

It’s not just temperature that can make playing on a particular court unique. Most of us won’t play on full glass courts very often – which really is a different experience – but playing on even just a glass-back court is slightly different. The bounce off the back wall is slightly different and the added distraction of people behind the court and/or being able to see through at what’s going on behind can be off-putting if you haven’t played on a glass-back court very often. 

You might also occasionally play on courts where the front walls are not covered in the typical plaster and are actually covered in boards which make a really loud bang when they are hit by the ball. They can be very distracting at first; the ball doesn’t rebound off them anywhere near as much as you would expect, or as much as the sound it makes would suggest. Sometimes the ball won’t rebound off standard walls as much as you would expect, as it’s not uncommon for the front wall to be colder than the rest of the court because it is an outside wall.

Sometimes even on a warm court the ball may not bounce very high because the floor is older and ‘dead’. This may even cause the ball to ‘skid’ and have a quicker, longer and lower bounce. It’s therefore important you practice on courts which have different floors. If the ball is skidding, play lots of boasts and kills! 



The ball 

The best way to familiarise yourself with different bounces of the ball is to play with different balls. Use single yellow or red dot balls to simulate a really bouncy ball or summer climate. This is also a great ball control exercise. Be sure to also use balls of different ages. Brand new balls tend to bounce a bit more, and so again might be good for simulating hot weather or bouncy courts, but it’s also a good exercise to use really old balls that will skid more and bounce differently, as you never know when you might get a funny ball or end up on a strange court where the ball behaves as if it were old.

Preparing yourself for anything 

The idea is to be ready for anything. There’s a general belief that both players have to cope with any situation such as a dodgy ball, cold court or whatever else, but the truth is that more often than not the conditions favour one player. On the outside courts in Egypt there were complaints about the wind, and while both players had to put up with the wind, there’s no doubt if your game involved a lot of high shots it was going to be affected more than someone who played a very low, attacking game. The same is true of colder or warmer courts. It is likely to naturally suit one player more than the other, and maybe even disadvantage one player. 

So, the message is to be the player who has the advantage on as many courts and in as many situations as possible. Start by varying the court you play on at your local club. If you are able, try to player at other nearby clubs where the conditions are likely to be different still. Use different balls of varying ages and bounce so that you are prepared for all sorts of bounces. 

If you are familiar with playing on difficult courts and lots of different balls, you are likely to have more confidence and a composure that you can’t teach or fake, because you know that you have been in this situation many times before, and that is half of the battle. With your self-assuredness, you can adapt your game to cope with whatever the different conditions are for the match. We won’t go into detail about what you changes you can make in colder or warmer weather, as we do that in our guides to adapting your game in warmer weather and colder weather. 



Adapting the advice you receive to your needs and life

The problem with advice is that lots of people who give it to you only see you in a single match, or a particular situation or environment. Therefore, they don’t have a true picture of you in squash; only you have that. So you need to work out what you can take – if anything – from the advice and thoughts offered to you, and how you can make it work for your style and life.

Sometimes the advice itself is wrong, but the point underneath it is right

Someone once said to me that I rush to intercept too many shots before the back wall, but the problem is for me, I am not particularly quick and I am also tall, which means I need to use the volley a lot in order to control the game and attack. They were right in saying that I made a lot of mistakes doing that in this game, but it wasn’t wise medium or long term advice – I need to volley a lot, and so leaving lots of shots to bounce off the back wall isn’t really an option for me. 

This isn’t to say there was nothing for me to take from their thoughts. They had correctly spotted I had struggled to intercept the ball with any control or accuracy on a consistent basis. The reason I had been inconsistent was that I was playing someone who was in my opinion a better player, and they played at a higher speed than I was used to, and so my shots and decisions weren’t of the same quality as his. I needed to get experience of playing players who played at a higher tempo so I could acclimatise to volleying in high-speed games. No matter how good you are, if you play someone who is a level or two above you, they can make you look incredibly stupid with their tempo and the time they take away from you. 

I also tried to improve my watching and anticipation of the ball, so that I could see volley opportunities earlier and therefore be prepared earlier, which is always helpful when the game is fast. There was also room for improvement in my turning to intercept cross-court shots on the volley, as well as my tracking of the ball. By turning front-on and using my ‘radar eye’, I was able to track the ball better and therefore volley more. All of this helped me to take the ball earlier and thereby be more comfortable at a higher tempo.



Practicalities: doing what you can 

Sometimes the advice might be good in theory, but it’s just not practically possible for you. At a higher level, you need more fitness than just playing squash two to three times a week will provide you with. It might be difficult to find the time to start a gym regime, but there are still things you can do to help tip the balance. Stay for an extra 5-10 minutes after you play a match, and try to do lung bursting sets of court sprints – say 20 laps in 55 seconds (or less if you are capable!) or 12 laps in less than 30 seconds. You can aim for more laps or lower time, or give yourself less rest time as you get better. You’d be amazed at how quickly you improve by doing three to five sets once or twice a week. If you really want to test yourself, do the sprints before you play and see how you cope with the match whilst physically struggling.

Tailoring things to individuals is perhaps more widely accepted in the nutritional and physical industries, and in the pursuit of excellence in squash, you’ll need to see what works for you in both of these areas. There’s no one size fits all solution in squash, or any of these industries, so make sure that you don’t blindly accept all the advice and lessons given to you, but weigh them up and see:  

  •  If the person has a valid point – although it may not be exactly what they said, like the volley example given earlier. 
  •  How the theory behind it can be best applied to your lifestyle, personality and game.

Reflect on people’s thoughts in this way and you can squeeze the best out of the knowledge of others to help you develop your ability on the court and understanding of the game. 



The dangers of being over-motivated – Part I

How to deal with over-motivation before a match

Like too much of anything in life, too much motivation can be bad for you. Being under-motivated is rarely good for you but being over-motivated can be worse. People in an over-motivated state are often more easily swayed by their emotions and their temper, which only makes the situation harder to turn around.

Motivation is different for everyone and is relative to each individual. For some people, they play their best squash when they psych themselves up before a match, whilst others perform better when they relax. These players will have different thresholds at which they become ‘over-motivated’. What might make the player who prefers a more relaxed pre-match atmosphere over-motivated might barely register with the player who works themselves into a frenzy pre-match. However you prefer to prepare pre-match, being over-motivated is still a danger.

Before the match is the best time for keeping an eye on your motivation levels, as you have time to make a difference.

Key signs to watch out for include: 

  • Being more energetic or excitable than normal
  • Mind and thoughts are racing
  • More intense feelings or thoughts about results or performance – particularly expectations
  • More intense feelings of nervousness than normal



If you are prone to being over-motivated and have some of the symptoms above, you might want to design a pre-match routine for yourself. Even if you aren’t particularly prone to over-motivation, it might be worth building pre-emptive habits into your preparation.

To handle over-motivation before a match, try to:

  • Relax in the build-up to a match by doing something completely non-squash related, and ideally not in the club or centre.
  • Avoid thinking about the result or potential outcomes.
  • Not start preparing for a match too early. If you start listening to music to psych yourself up hours before your match, you may find you mis-time your mental peak and arrive on court off-kilter.
  • Develop mental cues in your pre-match routine – we talk about this in a lot more detail in ‘Getting in the zone’ – in the way you get dressed or pack your bag, your warm-up routine, or getting on court early to hit the ball a bit to help your rhythm.

Everyone is different and something that may work for me, or another person, may not work for you. All you can do is realise the situation you are in and acknowledge it, and then experiment with different things to see what has the best effect for you.

Look out soon for Part II: How to deal with over-motivation during a match.

You can see all posts on our site about the mental side of the game by clicking on the ‘Mental’ tag below next to the ‘Filed Under’ heading. Other related posts you may want to look at include:

Knocking-up with purpose – Part 2: The Mind
‘Win’ the warm-up in squash
Fear of failure
Getting in the ‘zone’
Belief 



Knocking-up with purpose – Part 4: Hitting and shots



Finding your range.

Welcome to Part Four of a special series of blog posts on warming-up or knocking-up before a squash match.  A thorough warm-up should not only touch upon your hitting but it should also get you warming-up mentally, get your movement up to scratch, sharpen your racket speed and skills and help you find you find your hitting targets.

This time we will  be focusing on what makes up the entirety of most people’s warm-ups – hitting the ball. Never underestimate how important the knock-up can be in squash for your hitting. You want to start the match hitting your targets and playing good, accurate shots.

You can re-visit Part 1: The Body, Part 2: The mind & Part 3: The Racket. 

Range of shots

It’s important when you go on the court to knock-up that you don’t just hammer the ball or play the same shot. Most players will either knock-up by alternately smashing the ball down the line or by hitting first-time cross-courts back to each other. Neither of these is conducive to starting the game with a wide range of accurate shots, as neither helps you to practice a range of shots hit in different ways. Yes you need to warm the ball up but you also need to warm-up your hitting skills. Make sure that you play a variety of shots; you might play a lob, a drive and a kill and then cross-court to your opponent and then come forward and play a couple of long volleys to yourself before a short volley and cross-courting lobbing to your opponent. Rather than cross-courting every time, have a go at boasting to your opponent’s side and then playing a straight drive to them. Pack as many different shots into your knock-up as you can and you will start the game with a lot more verve.

If you are friendly with your opponent, you can get them to do a little drill rather than just solo hitting. A good one for this is Drive, Boast & Drop, Drive. In this drill, a player at the back plays a drive to themselves and then boasts to a player at the front who drops and then drives their own drop back to the player at the back. You can then swap ends and get to play several different shots from a variety of different positions.

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Targets

As discussed in our other posts in this series, you don’t just want to whack the ball about aimlessly in the warm-up. Have a target in mind as you hit your shots. Perhaps you’ll aim for the serve line with your drives or be aiming for it to bounce twice right on the back wall or maybe you’ll be aiming to drop the ball into the nick. Whatever it is, have a goal in mind for each of your shots.

You can read more about tips for ways to hit the ball in the knock-up in ‘Getting in the Zone’. 



Knocking up with purpose – Part 3: The Racket



Welcome to Part Three of a special series of blog posts on warming-up or knocking-up before a squash match.  A thorough warm-up should not only touch upon your hitting but it should also get you warming-up mentally, get your movement up to scratch and also sharpen your racket speed and skills. Today we will be focusing on warming-up mentally.

You can re-visit Part 1: The Body here and Part 2: The mind here. 

Getting your racket doing the talking 

In this post, we will be considering how to warm-up your racket skills and dexterity so that you’re able to adapt, improvise and use your racket to deal with all the challenges you will face in a squash match. Never underestimate how important the knock-up can be in squash. Those first few hits of the ball can be a very useful tool for helping you focus and get in the zone, as we talk about in ‘Getting in the Zone’.

What we are going to discuss today though is how you can use the knock-up and warm-up to set the tone for your play with regards to tempo and your racket head speed.

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Warming-up the way you want to play

It’s not uncommon to go into the first game feeling a bit slow with the racket. Perhaps you let a few volley opportunities go to waste or maybe you can’t quite get your racket where you want it to deal with a tight shot in the front or back corner. This is not a position you want to be in and you can prepare yourself for this in the knock-up.

Rather than just whacking the ball up and down the line to yourself without thinking, have more purpose to what you do. It’s not really getting you ready to play at the tempo or speed required. Instead, look to stretch and challenge yourself. Step forward and volley the ball to yourself for three or four shots before cross-courting to your opponent. Better still, get on the court before your opponent and really go freestyle on the volleys, throwing in the figure of eight drill and aiming for some volley nicks.

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Another one I like is to step forward to the mid-line and play kills against myself. I say against myself because part of me is really trying to kill the ball and get it past myself, whilst another part of me is trying to prevent the ball getting past me and keep the solo rally going. It’s really good for getting your racket head speed up to scratch and also for getting you into an attacking mentality, as you are now in a rhythm of hitting the ball early.

You can read more about tips for ways to hit the ball in the knock-up in ‘Getting in the Zone’. 

Look out for the final instalment of our special series of posts on the warm-up in squash, in which we will look at warming up our shot making and accuracy.