Since I first started trying to make an actual effort to improve my squash game (I started this motion about a year ago), I've noticed various changes in my game, along with ups and downs of improvement. This entry is mostly for anyone that wants to improve their game further, and see what changes I've noticed have made big differences in my progress. So, without further ado, below is the list of things that I've noticed have helped me along the way. These are presented in chronological order from earliest changes, up to most recent.
- Start watching the ball, rather than the front wall, and play drives down the side wall
- Learning how to boast out of the back corners.
- Learning to hit drives when the ball is close off the back wall.
- Getting a drill partner, and doing drills
- Starting to hit a good length
- Join an actual squash club
- Play a bit with a pro, and get him to comment on what you're doing wrong and right
- Correcting my grip on the racquet
- Take lessons regularly
- Force yourself to play games that are less fun
- Force yourself to play people that are better than you are.
Until I started reading through squash websites for a better understanding of strategy, I was oblivious to what the best shot was. I know I really liked the offensive boast (Hit the ball hard off the side wall, and have it die in the front corner opposite that wall), but other than that, I had no notion of what worked best. Learning that the drive down the length of the wall presented a big change in my game, and if nothing else, made it harder for my opponents to return shots, as they now had less room within which to maneuver.
Turning and watching my opponents make their shot made a huge difference too, as I was now giving myself almost twice as much time to figure out exactly where the ball was going. Interestingly enough, this change can partially be attributed to my purchase and use of a set of protective eye goggles. Until I started doing this, I was too scared to turn around, for fear of getting a ball in my face. Once I had goggles, it was a lot easier to turn and watch.
Okay, so, I've said it at least twice in my journals: the defensive boast shot is not a good play. It leaves the ball and your opponent up at the front of the court, and you way at the back, in the opposite corner. That being said, until I learned this defensive shot, I was doomed everytime the ball landed deep in the back corners of the court. Learning to boast was essentially the first step in me learning to play shots that were anywhere on the court. I'm not saying I was playing those shots well, but this basically pushed my game to the level where at least my opponent was never guaranteed a free point simply by putting the ball in the back corners - I could now play any shot on the court, as long as I could get to it.
There was a period of about three weeks where I'd go up to the courts at UVic, and spend at least three days a week hitting the ball off the front wall, let it bounce off the back wall, and then swing free trying to hit the ball. I didn't care if my racquet bounced off the wall, nor if the people outside of the court thought I was a maniac for smashing my racquet against the glass wall over and over. Eventually though, this taught me how much room I required to make a good shit, and techniques to reduce the amount of room required. Doing this, I learned tricks like the proper way to position myself for a shot that is close to the backwall, how much space I needed before a boast was the only answer, and when choking up on the grip of my racquet would be a good move.
At this point, I still had no notion of many of the more effective types of shots in scenarios such as this one, like a high soft shot. Nevertheless, learning this added a shot to my arsenal from the back corners of the court, and my opponents could no longer sit waiting at the front of the court for my defensive boast to come straight to them.
At this point in my game, I was still playing at UVic, and I was still horrible. Beyond horrible even. I would win some of my games, and lose a lot more, but realistically, I was playing garbage squash. Nevertheless, I met up with an old friend I used to know from raving named Jesse, and we both agreed that we wanted to improve our squash game, and doing drills would be the best way to do that.
Doing drills with Jesse gave me a chance to focus on specific aspects of my game that needed improvement, and made it a lot easier not only to practice the same shot over and over again, but also to actually make the effort to go out and do the drills. It's probably common knowledge, but when you have a partner counting on you to come out and do drills with them, there's a lot of additional motivation there to keep the routine going.
This particular item will appear at least one more time, because I had to learn this in stages. At this point in my game, I had been reading lots of squash strategy articles, and watching lots of videos online (as an aside, to anyone that is looking for a great squash resource, I highly recommend www.guide-to-squash.org. They offer training videos, tips, and videos of matches from tournaments). I realized that a lot of my shots were coming off the back wall on the full, meaning that they would come off the front wall, and bounce straight off the back wall, rather than hitting it after bouncing on the floor once first. This is a bad shot, because, as I've mentioned before, it bounces back into the center of the court, giving the opponent lots of time to cover it, and less distance to run to get to it.
Jesse and I put a lot of hours into doing drive drills, over, and over, and over. Sometimes I would get so frustrated I wanted to smash my racquet into the wall. It is really hard learning to make this shot work properly when first trying out, or at least was for me, as I have a fair amount of strength behind my shot, and have a racquet that also provides a lot of power when hitting the ball. Training myself to hit the ball with the right amount of force was tedious. Gradually though, my shots were getting better. At first I wouldn't get a single shot that didn't come off the back wall on the full. But then the next time I would get three shots that were correct, then ten, and so on. I couldn't hit this drive consistently, and especially not when under pressure, but I was definitely improving.
So, at this point, I had developed my game somewhat. There was (and still is) tons to be desired to my game, but at least I was aware of what I needed to be improving (or thought I was at least), and I had started putting in the time to improve some of my shots. At this point, I had been working on improving for about a year, and was regularly playing my friends Mark and Jeff to try and improve. I graduated, and went to Hawaii for two weeks, then came back, and started my new job.
This threw a bit of turmoil into the mix, and I found it tough to get back into squash. I had moved downtown, and was trying to avoid driving. A game of squash demanded an impressive amount of effort on my part, as getting to UVic from downtown was either a long bus-ride, or a tiring bike-ride both ways. I hated it, but I was having trouble finding the time to play squash. Meanwhile, Jeff had joined Victoria Squash Club, and Mark had bought a punch card to play there. My pool of players to play at UVic was diminishing.
This leads into the next set of steps that have led to improvements, and these below are where things really started to pick up. I can say with quite a bit of confidence that I have improved more in the past two months than I have in the year that led up to this point. However, the time I spent leading up to now was not a waste, and helped me build up a foundation for the mental strategy involved in the game, as well as the discipline required to practice what I was about to learn. Onwards, to the rest of the list..
Okay, this is a bit of an umbrella for the rest of the items to follow, but this step made a huge difference. Suddenly, I was surrounded by people that loved playing squash as much as I did, rather than just treating it as something to do before they went and worked out at the gym, or between mid-terms in their classes. This attitude alone made me want to improve even more. Everytime I came into the club, I was watching really good players playing really good squash. The staff are cool and friendly, and loved squash. There was now a club pro who could help me with my game and point out what I was doing wrong.
My motivation to improve increased in leaps and bounds, solely from the atmosphere provided by Victoria Squash Club. It really made a humongous difference. In addition to what I mentioned above, when I signed up for my membership, I was given a free hour long assessment of my playing ability by Stuart Dixon, the club pro.. The results of that lead into my next point..
Whoa, biggest difference ever. I guess we're really lucky at our club, because we've got a really awesome pro: Stuart Dixon. Stuart broke down the parts of my game that were really lacking (all aspects essentially), pointed out the things I was doing wrong, showed me some drills to work on, helped me correct my grip, and let me know about the process for taking lessons.
Well, Stuart turned my game upside-down. I was doing a lot of things wrong, and unfortunately, it seemed that although my year of drills and practice hadn't been all for naught, they had definitely helped ingrain a lot of bad habits into my game. Some of the things I'd picked up included: Using the wrong grip on my racquet (twice actually, since I was using a different grip for backhand and forehand, and they were both incorrect), still hitting the ball with too much power, ignoring the importance of high soft shots, and a host of other things
Doing the hour of assessment with Stuart was essential to me being able to move past the plateau my progress had levelled out on. Without being shown what I was doing wrong (and how to correct it), I would have continued trying to perfect an imperfect playing style. If there is any one thing that I recommend someone do when trying to progress their game, it is this item right here. You can't go wrong talking to a pro. They'll show you what you're doing wrong, and give you some tips to correct it, and some drills to practice.
Even though I didn't know exactly what the correct grip was, I knew I was doing it incorrectly when I was playing at UVic, because I was using two different grips for my forehand and backhand. This couldn't possibly be right, as I was wasting time switching back and forth as the shot I was making demanded.
I had made a concerted effort to switch my backhand grip, beceause I could tell even then that it was incorrect - surely I shouldn't be using a grip on the racquet that caused every single one of my backhand shots to fly directly out of the court and into the Adam's apple of an innocent bystander (it turns out that my assumption was correct, even though it was a lot of fun watching people turn purple after a really good apple-shot).
Fixing my grip was excruciating, because it was like learning everything all over again. I had to teach myself how to drive again, based on my new grip, and I had to learn to aim my shots different onto the front wall again, since my new grip caused my racquet face to actually be slightly less closed than previous, meaning that the technique I'd been using to aim before was now causing my shots to fly too far upwards.
Interestingly (or so boring that you now hate my soul) enough, my backhand was now a lot better than my forehand. Because of the grip that I had correct when playing at UVic, the correct grip was very close to what I had been playing with on my backhand. This was good and bad - I didn't have to work as hard on my backhand as much as my forehand, because it was in a lot better shape, and I was already moving my body in the correct manner to generate enough power for a backhand shot (a lot of the power in squash is generated from rotating your torso around your hips through with the shot).
Guess what? This makes a huge difference. Unbelievable difference. If you're tempted to just stick with your current grip on the racquet, even though you know it's incorrect, just because you don't want to go through the effort of changing it, stop immediately and come to my house so I can hit you in the throat with a squash ball. Seriously, even if all your shots stay exactly the same after you've changed (which is highly unlikely), you'll be amazed at how much better you can hit the ball under extreme pressure. Prior to changing my grip, a fast shot off the front wall heading directly towards me was a guaranteed loose, slow shot to the center of the court for my opponent to return. Now that I've changed my grip, I have twice as many options in a situation like this. I'm no longer restricted to either forehand or backhand, based on whatever grip I'm currently holding the racquet in, and can make whichever shot is best given the situation.
Okay, here's the second biggest thing I can suggest to people that want to improve. This tip goes hand in hand with practicing what you've been taught. A lesson will provide you with things you need to work on, drills to help work on them, and the pro will show you what you're doing right and wrong. However, unless you take time afterwards to actually practice those things, you're not going to see a lot of improvement.
In any case, regular lessons make a huge difference, not only because it provides motivation to keep doing drills, and continually forces you to look at aspects of your game and see where you need to improve, but also because it gives the pro a chance to look at what you're doing and see things that you don't. I can break this down best with an example: Stuart had shown me the correct grip, and I was trying to put it into use. I'd played a couple of games, and forced myself to use the new grip (more on that later), but I was noticing pains in my wrist after every game. I mentioned this to Stuart, and by the next lesson, he could tell me what I was doing wrong. He essentially told me the same things that he'd told me when I first learned to correctly grip the racquet, but therein lies one of the benefits of taking lessons regularly - your memory isn't perfect, and mine is especially unperfect (leave a comment about my invention of the word unperfect and I ban you forever). Given that, I had listened and watched Stuart show me the correct grip and how to swing the racquet, but when trying to replicate that, I was remembering only select parts of that lesson, and had started using some mutant grip that was a cross between my old grip and the new.
Without the regular lessons, I would have gone on to continue using this grip, hurting my wrist, and playing bad squash.
Okay, weird item name, I know. But, it goes like this: I have some friends that, for whatever reason, I find myself beating most of the games against them that I play. In cases like this, I take it as an opportunity to really work on the shots that I need to practice. The last couple of times I've played my friend Lee (who has me beaten hands down for raw athleticism, but has less technique than me), I've tried to focus on making high soft shots, because this is what I need the most practice with right now.
Doing this has several benefits. First of all, every time you make one of these shots, you're improving a little. Secondly, forcing yourself to make shots like this in a game forces you to learn how to make them while under pressure. Sitting in the corner doing the same drill over and over again is good, but it's also important to learn to be able to consistently make the same shot when you're under pressure.
I find this technique works best when I restrict myself to two different types of shots at most (lately I've been doing only drop shots and high soft shots) - If I cheat and let myself make drives now and then, I find myself getting more and more tempted every shot to make a drive (generally the better shot when your opponent is under pressure and out of position) to win the rally, which isn't really the goal in this excercise. This point is really good, because it forces me to constantly keep in mind the main factor in winning good squash - it's not about making a kill shot that instantly ends the rally. It's about consistently putting the ball where it is hardest for your opponent to get to. It's amazing how much you can move an opponent around the court using only drops and high soft shots.
The only tricky part about this excercise is that it requires great patience. At first, every second shot I make is frustrating, because I know I could cheat and just nail a nice drive to the back corner, rather than inevitably hitting the ball out of the court when I go high and soft. However, for every shot that you make that goes too high and out of the court, you're saving yourself from making that shot further down the road. Try not to think of the game in terms of winning based on points, but in terms of putting the ball where you want it to go.
When you play someone that is better than you, you really don't get the opportunity to screw up. This is essentially the opposite of the above point. For the previous point, you're practicing the shots you can't do well, and it forces you to really dig for the ball if you screw it up. With this point, you're being put in a position where you have to use every shot at your disposal to make sure your opponent doesn't get the chance to clean you out. When I play people that are weaker than I am, I can get lazy, and not worry so much about moving them off the T. But, once you start playing someone with more skill, every loose shot you make, and every drive that you make that they can cut off has you running full out to avoid losing the rally. Playing better players forces you to play better squash (or lose) (or die of a heart-attack).
Well, that about covers everything I can think of that has so far led up to this point in my progress. If anyone has noticed specific things they've done that had dramatically helped their progress, please leave a comment, I'd love to hear about them.
Adam I'm loving your squash bog. I'm loving it swo much I'm going to print it an post it at my squash club for all the new squash players I deal with. Everyone who learns to play squash well goes through these same learning steps. Having them written is both encouraging and a good guide to squash development.
To improve technique in squash use the same methods you use for pointing. You used a mirror! Stand in front of a mirror and practice your swing (make sure you have lots of room, I've broke racquet at the Victoria Squash Club practicing in the weight room and hitting my racquet on the spin cycles).
good luck!