Squash Company

Squash coaching with passion

Squash Blog

Using the ‘wrong’ leg when the ball gets behind you



Cheating the back corners

I’m a bit of stickler when it comes to movement and I’m incredibly fussy when it comes to ghosting and movement training. Whilst you’ll end up in all sorts of unplanned positions in a game, I like to always strive for perfection. However, when you are in a bad position you still have to be able to play a good quality shot or you won’t last a single rally.

When you are in a bad position, one of the best things you can do is to use the ‘wrong’ leg. By the term ‘wrong’ leg, I mean the leg which you won’t see used in the text book on how to play squash. On the right hand side of the court, the ‘wrong’ leg would be the right leg and on the left hand side, the ‘wrong leg’ would be the left leg.

Anyone who has had coaching will be familiar with the idea of using the left leg on the right hand side and the right leg on the left hand side to maintain a position facing the side wall and stay balanced.

This shouldn’t be treated as dogma though. If you watch any high level squash you’ll see all sorts of leg positions being used for different shots and this should be encouraged and practiced. It can be a quicker option and even a necessity in the heat of a match.

It’s in the back corner though that I find the ‘wrong’ leg is most useful. Inevitably, you’ll find the ball getting past you on occasion and you’ll have to hit it when it’s behind you to stay in the rally. It’s not ideal but you have to make the best of this bad situation. The best thing you can do at this point is to lead with the wrong leg. By doing this, you can shift your weight so that it is behind the ball again, which will give you a decent amount of energy to transfer through the ball when you strike it and you’ll consequently have more options and won’t have to resort to flicking the ball back with your wrist. If you try to lead with the ‘correct’ leg, the right leg on the left hand side and left leg on the right hand side, you’ll find yourself having to really flick the ball with your wrist, which is rarely consistently reliable or accurate.

When you are in a bad position, one of the best things you can do is to use the ‘wrong’ leg. By the term ‘wrong’ leg, I mean the leg which you won’t see used in the text book on how to play squash. On the right hand side of the court, the ‘wrong’ leg would be the right leg and on the left hand side, the ‘wrong leg’ would be the left leg.”

It will feel very weird at first if you’re not used to doing it but you should practice it regularly as part of ghosting and hitting drills or match play. One easy game you can do to practice this is to play all to length on one side of the court with a partner and just practice using the wrong leg so it starts to feel a bit more normal. Equally, when you do ghosting or movement practice, practice leading with both feet and also with the feet together.

Dealing with shots in the back corner is always a mountain for any improving player, so get out there and take the first step by using the wrong foot! You can also find more tips about dealing with shots in the back corner using your racket face and spin in the post ‘How to deal with back corner shots in squash’.



Building Pressure and not relying on ‘winning’ shot



Attacking the ball and playing offensively is not something that happens with one shot – it must permeate every shot you play. You can’t expect or act like any shot will be the winning one – or the losing one.

I was working with the Sussex County Squad and we were doing a session on taking the ball early. During a drill that saw a repeating pattern of shots – boast, cross-court length, straight length (aiming to volley the cross-court) – I debated with the players which shot was the most important one of the drill. Of course, all of the shots are important but not one of them initially agreed with me when I argued that the boast was the key shot in the drill. The idea of the drill was to step in and attack the cross-court as high up the court as possible on the volley, meaning that not surprisingly many of them opted for that volley attempt as being the focal point of the exercise. A few of them chose the cross-court length as this would determine whether a volley was possible or not.

The reason I argued for the boast was that if a player played a weak boast, a strong cross-court would follow making it very hard to volley. When a stronger boast was played, the cross-court was almost always rushed or weaker and therefore much easier to intercept on the volley. We watched a few rallies and sure enough a good boast often resulted in a weaker cross-court and the boaster taking charge of the rally. When a bad boast was played, we watched again and again as that player then went on to struggle for several shots, if they stayed in the rally at all, as a result of that one boast.

The boast was in truth no more important than the others but due to the fact the boast is often undervalued, it was treated as just a filler shot by participants as if it was just there to make up the numbers – a subordinate shot to the more glamorous volley. Serves and serve returns are often treated in this manner and it is a mindset we are all guilty of at times. We often look to attack our opponent with just one or two shots out of nowhere, in this case with a fantastic volley no matter the strength of the cross-court, thinking that this will be enough to win the rally or at least make it difficult for the opponent. More often than not when we do this we make errors after trying to force a shot from an impossible position or get disheartened if our opponent retrieves very good shots and we wonder what we have to do to get a point. We very rarely gear all of our shots towards taking the ball early or indeed any other tactic we are aiming to execute. We often just expect to be able to focus on hitting a couple of good shots and up the pressure. In this case, the players weren’t treating the boasts as shots that could contribute towards creating openings but instead trying to force moments of genius on the volley.

I call these inspirational shots or shots from nothing ‘moments’. Being able to produce these ‘moments’ to win points is fantastic to watch and all players should aspire to hit winning shots but this strategy is seldom successful over any period of time if it is not backed up by building good pressure. Winning at squash comes through consistently hitting the ball into open spaces, as England Squash’s ‘Pillars of Squash’ testify.

What we really need is to create sustained or relentless pressure, which was the point I tried to get across to the squad. The boast was part of a sequence or combination of shots and if the pressure was applied by one player through every shot they played, they would eventually tire their opponent, force an error or produce one of these ‘moments’ from a good position.

“Attacking the ball shouldn’t be something that happens with one shot. In order to attack the ball or take the ball early, we must gear all of our shots towards it. The attacking intent must permeate and inspire all of the shots we play. It is no good trying to step up and play one volley. You need to build pressure gradually and work the openings for you to take the ball early if you are to attack it successfully and you do this by making even the most common drives and boasts intense.”

Those who saw the importance of the boast made sure they hit it with the upmost quality or even hit a volley boast and quite quickly they began to create pressure as their opponent was forced to lunge down low very quickly, resulting in a weaker cross-court return. The weaker return was easier to volley and allowed for another attacking shot, which again could heap further pressure on a beleaguered opponent. There were times it took five or six attacking shots to finally break the opponent but it always came eventually. Even when the aggressor made an error or their opponent managed to turn the rally around, they’d been on the end of a prolonged attack and were tired from retrieving during the attack and so made more errors and poor play as time went on.

What I wanted to drive home to the players and to you now is that you can’t rely on just producing that magical shot or winning a rally with one shot. You have to string together sequences of shots and sometimes it might take several really good aggressive shots before you get the winner or force an error. If you focus on making every shot one that will increase the pressure that bit more, you will get the opportunity to hit more attacking shots and you will find yourself capable of hitting more winners as gaps begin to show as your opponent tires. You have to be prepared to up the intensity and the pressure through a number of shots in order to create a relentless cycle of pressure that eventually forces your opponent into submission.

When you play, don’t focus on one shot as being crucial. You might have one very strong shot that your game is geared to but this shot needs other shots to flourish and you must remember that. If you have a superb volley drop, you need to create pressure to force a weak shot for your drop volley. If you just focus on looking for drop volley opportunities, you will often attempt to volley very tight balls or rush the shot. If you focus instead on building the pressure and make every shot a testing one, you will find you won’t need to force the ‘moments’ but that they will flow naturally. If you make sure all your ordinary shots from your serve to your boast have intent, you will quickly be inundated with opportunities.

Make sure even your most mundane drive is testing and dripping with aggression – perhaps you hit it earlier or maybe you hit it downwards so it fades quickly in the corner. If you do that, you’ll find opportunities will open up for you to play any attacking shot you desire.



Five ways to improve your squash game now



Our Coaching Philosophy

Every player is different. Styles, techniques and strengths vary but we like to give the players we work with a basic framework for their play based on some of our playing principles and philosophies.

The philosophies below are, in our view, the five most fundamental lessons to learn if you want to become an excellent squash player. They are: ‘taking the ball before the back wall’, ‘going in short straight regularly’, ‘hitting the ball where the opponent is not’, ‘using deception’ and ‘hitting winning shots’.

Taking the ball before the back wall

Those of you that have read Matthew Syed’s book ‘Bounce’ will be familiar with the story of the England Table Tennis team’s reaction experiment at Brighton University. Desmond Douglas was English Table Tennis champion on eleven occasions and also made it to No. 7 in the world and was renowned the speed at which he played.
However, when he participated in a reactions test staged by Brighton University, he performed the worst of any member of the England Table Tennis set-up, including the youngsters. The test was laughed off; how could a player who played at such lightning pace have slow reactions? It was dismissed initially as a failed experiment. Only the experiment wasn’t a failure, it was right; Desmond Douglas had poor reactions.

How then did he become one of the greatest players in the world, let alone one so famed for his reactions? Delving into his background helped to answer some of the questions. Douglas grew up playing table tennis in a cramped room where there was so little room behind the table, he had to stand and play with his stomach pressed up against the edge of the table. This lead to him being forced to react quickly and hit the ball early or he simply would not be able to play a rally. What might have been seen as a disadvantage in terms of facilities actually became a formidable advantage for him. After years of playing this way, he was so used to playing in that style that when he played others on a normal table, he seemed to have supernatural reactions and take the ball incredibly early as he was so used to playing that way from his club. It wasn’t his physical attributes that contributed towards his ability to take the ball so early but rather his nurturing and the circumstances in which he learned the game.

We are trying to promote the squash equivalent. We play a lot of no back wall games to encourage all of our players to take the ball before the back wall in order to decrease the amount of time their opponents have between shots. This doesn’t necessarily mean volleying the ball; we do a lot of work encouraging our opponents to launch counter-attacking drops, boasts and drives from just behind the service box. Players that get used to playing without a back wall will experience a similar journey to Desmond Douglas and begin to take every ball before the back wall as a matter of course. They will apply phenomenal pressure to their opponent by constantly depriving them of valuable recovery seconds with every shot they play. They begin to seem like they have incredible movement and speed to the back corners, when in actual fact, some of them are quite slow in basic terms.

Going in short

It is never too early to go short. Be it a drop, drop volley or a kill shot, you should never turn down an opportunity to go short when it is on, even if it is your first shot of the rally. Too often players continue to play to length when their opponent is already behind them, which when you think about it is nonsensical. The point of a drive shot is to get in front of your opponent and look for weaker return which you can attack.

We always like to encourage our players to look out for opportunities to go in short whenever they get the chance to do so. Constantly recovering balls from the front corners is tiring for anyone and when played well, the shots all stay tight and so remain very tough to retrieve or hit the nick. It does take a bit of practice playing lots of drops and drop volleys, particularly from further back in the court but we believe it is a worthwhile pursuit. It is a tactic that pays dividends when it comes to winning rallies with outright winners and when the opponent becomes fatigued from lots of retrieving at the front of the court.

Hitting the ball where the opponent is not

Squash is a simple game. We as coaches, like everyone, are often guilty of overcomplicating things. So we try to have a simply philosophy and that is that the number one rule of squash is to ‘hit the ball where the opponent is not’. It’s not always as simple as it sounds as in the heat of the game it is easy to be unsure of our opponent’s location and we can often resort to hitting the ball without much thought or consideration. However, with some practice it becomes second nature. You can watch for and listen out for your opponent and if you are unsure of their exactly location, we look for our players to have default reactions. If they are in front, they should look to go short, as even if the opponent reads it and recovers the ball, they will have used more energy than if recovering a length shot.

It takes a bit of practice to stay composed enough to make that split-second evaluation but the difference it makes is incredible. Always hit the ball away from your opponent.

Deception

We always try to teach our players how to disguise their shots and deceive their opponents as they are learning how to play the shot. That way they can learn early on to incorporate deception into their shots, which means they are able to make mundane shots winning ones and find ways to finish off rallies from early in their development. This means they are not only able to play shots capable of winning rallies on a regular basis but they are also thinking a lot about the workings of shots. We try to put deception and creativity in as early as possible as it is much harder to learn to be deceptive at a later stage having already become settled with a particular stroke.

Hitting winning shots

With much of the game moving over to PAR (Point a rally) scoring, it is more important than ever for players to be able to hit winning shots to score points. As such, we think it is important players are taught how to end rallies through deception, strategy and hitting the nick. As part of this, we believe all players should attempt to develop proficiency in every stroke imaginable, including those that might usually be regarded as trick shots or luxury shots, as learning all sides of the game is the best way to promote true understanding, as well as creativity. We have also seen in recent years how players such as Mohamed El Shorbagy, Ramy Ashour and James Willstrop have regularly played outrageous and adventurous shots to such great success they are almost now considered a standard shot, whereas before a volley nick might have been consigned to showboating and exhibition matches.



Using the racket face for back corner shots in squash



Opening your racket face for back corner shots

Nobody really likes playing in the back corners, especially when first learning to play squash. There’s barely space to move and you find yourself with your racket jammed in the corners and your face plastered against the back wall.

Taking the ball before the back wall

No matter how good you get, you will still struggle to do much with a shot that’s been hit well and is dying (bouncing twice) in the back corner. If you can see the ball isn’t going to come back off the back wall, you’ll need to intercept it reaches the back.

There’s not much room near the back corners so you won’t be able to use your normal swing, which means you need to get the ball out of the corner and to the back of the court using a different method. One thing to try is opening your racket face a lot more than you usually would. Of course, providing your grip is correct your racket face should already be open to some degree.

Now though have a go at rotating your forearm in an anti-clockwise direction so that more of your palm is facing the floor if you’re on the backhand side and rotate clockwise so more of the back of your hand faces the floor on the forehand side.”

This opens up your racket face further and allows you to apply more spin to the ball, which in this case is called ‘bite’. If you use more ‘bite’, you’ll find you can get very good length and often at decent power without the need for much backswing, which is particularly important when hitting a ball in the back corner.

In general, if you’re struggling to return a ball from the back, you should aim to play a straight lob shot. 
back corner shots squash

Have a go during the warm-up or if you can for a few minutes on your own just rotating that forearm and opening your grip more before playing your straight drives and see how it affects the shot. That extra ‘bite’ has quite an effect and is well worth mastering for those occasions when you’re forced deep without a lot of space.

You can also find out more about how to position yourself in the back corners in the post ‘Using the ‘wrong’ leg when the ball gets behind you’.



Lewes Junior Open 2015

On Sunday 26th April, 41 hopefuls from across the South and beyond competed across six categories to be named champion of the maiden Lewes Junior Open Champion 2015, which was sponsored by and organised by The Squash Company.

It was a fantastic event which saw an array of great squash and great sportsmanship from players and parents throughout. Lewes Open Squash Scene

Special mentions must go to the following Lewes Squash Club & The Squash Company coached players; Will Rowe, who came 2nd in the Boys U17 event, Bibi Cox who came 4th in the Girls U17 event and Emily Kimber who came 4th in Girls U15.

Other entrants involved with The Squash Company and Lewes Squash Club included Jacob Prosser came 9th in the Boys U17, Kian Sobhanpanah came 6th in the Boys U17, Jacob Stammers who came 5th in the Boys U13 & Taisa Cox who came 6th in the Girls U17 after pulling out of her second match through injury.

A big thank you to our sponsors HEAD & Willie Boone – HEAD representative, for supplying the prizes.