A balance between speed, accuracy and recovery.

Body positioning in squash is ever evolving with the pace of the professional game with many of the traditional techniques and ideas being revised to cope with the new tempo. Positioning when hitting the ball has really changed at professional level, as players now need to be in position faster to get the ball back and this has been trickling down to all levels of the game over the past few years. Traditionally, players were almost universally coached to be ‘side-on’ when hitting the ball – having their chest and body facing the side wall – but now shots are played a lot more from a ‘front-on’ position with the body facing the front wall.

Speed vs. accuracy vs. balance

Facing the front wall can have great advantages in a game as it is a quicker position to get into than being side-on. It is also typically more deceptive, as when a player is hitting the ball in this position it is harder to tell what shot they will play.

The downside though is that your shot accuracy can suffer and in some cases players lose balance or are unable to recover to the T-Position quickly.

Avoiding loss of accuracy through improvisation  

When you hit the ball from a front-on position, your arm and racket naturally want to hit the ball across the court to the other side, which is why players often hit the ball down the middle or a looser shot when they get front-on. In order to avoid this (assuming you want to hit straight), you need to really control your follow through and your hand and ensure that they are exaggerated and go outwards – away from the body – and towards the front corner of the side you are on. If you don’t really control your hand and follow through, the width of your shot will suffer.

If you do want to play cross-court from a front-on position, still make sure you really control your follow through, especially the direction your hand goes in, as the width and direction of your shot can still be disrupted by being completely front-on.

Balance – bending the knees

 It has been traditionally recommended that players play shots from a side-on position, as well as leading with their left leg on the right hand side of the court and their right leg on the left hand side of the court, because this is the most stable position from which to play shots. When you go for a front-on position, it can be easy to lose some of this balance unless you take steps to counteract it. Try to ensure that even though you are front-on, you still bend your knees. Some players stand very upright and or lean back slightly when front-on and this reduces the weight in their legs, which disrupts their stability and therefore ball control. As long as you are aware and in control of where your body weight is and transferring it to your legs and thereby grounding yourself, you can play accurate shots from a front-on position reliably with practice.

Try to weigh up if it is worth being front-on for the shot you are playing. If your shot is accurate and you are able to get into and out of the shot quickly, you probably made the right decision. If you lose one of these three things, you may need to try something different.