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.