So, last night, Jarryd gave a lesson to Bevan and I. And now my ass is sore.
Maybe I'll elaborate on that. Here's the deal Jarryd put forth - He gives me a free lesson, and I write about it on here. Pretty sweet deal for me - Jarryd's a great player and I'm not. And I write entries on the ol' website pretty frequently these days anyhow, so it's no big deal on my part.
We started off doing some warm up drills - Bevan and I both stand on the tee and take turns hitting whatever Jarryd feeds us with. I think I remember hitting one shot that Jarryd told me was "good", and that was about it. In all fairness, I was hitting pretty weak.
Jarryd asked us what we wanted to work on, and my first inclination was immediately drop shots. This is basically a constant thorn in my side - I think it's because drop shots are a much more precise shot than the rest of the shots in squash, and so it seems that much more obvious when I mess them up. If you're smashing a drive to the back wall, as long as it doesn't come off the back wall on the full, you can feel reasonably alright with it. Drop shots just seem to have so much more room for error.
I talked to Dan ther other night and he noticed that I lack a lot of confidence in my drop shots too, which is another problem. This also stems from trying to hit drop shots that are too low. Every single article you'll find out there says "Don't aim for the most perfect drop shot a millimeter above the tin - Aim for a drop shot that you know you can hit". This is so true - you're much better off hitting a drop shot that will put your opponent under pressure and definitely stay in than to risk hitting th tin and giving your opponent the rally immediately.
Thinking like this, I'm reminded that squash, once you're playing high level, is really a game that you need to think of in both the short-term and the long-term. Short term you need to get yourself to the ball and return it, tight. Long-term, you need to sometimes take the time to think that you're not trying to hit winners - you're just trying to continually apply pressure to your opponent until they can no longer make it to the ball. I try to remind myself of this everytime I make an attacking shot when I'm out of position, but it's really difficult!
Anyhow, I'm not a big fan of answering the question "What do you want to work on?" - Stu, Dan, and Jarryd are a lot better than I am, and are probably much more aware of the major weaknesses in my game. If they have an idea that they think would help my game, then that's what I want to work on. Some people prefer to work with the shots that they're good with, which makes sense, because it's a lot more fun. This is true, but the best thing to practice is usually the thing that you like the least. Jarryd suggested that we work on court movement - that's good, because I've done a bunch of this with Dan, and am well aware that it's a major weak point in my game.
We started out doing drills that we'd done before during pain and torture with Stu. Jarryd stands at the front of the court and points to one of six spots on the court - the four corners, and the two spots directly to the left and right of the tee against the wall (where you would volley a weak drive). Like I said, we'd done this drill a bunch during pain and torture, so why did I suck so much at it? The answer is pretty obvious I guess: I haven't really spent any time independantly training court movement since last summer.
Dan works with me on this kind of thing a lot - he boasts the ball to one of the two front corners, and I work on approaching the ball by moving forward first, then out to the side wall, giving myself lots of space to make my shot, which in turn gives me the best number of options for which shot to make. This is really tricky - I have this really bad habit of running head first straight towards the corner. I swear, I'm like a dog chasing a scent - I put my head down and charge straight for the ball. This would be good if I was a mountain goat, but there's a definite dearth of mountain goats playing squash.
So, we kept at it for a while, and Jarryd suggested that we come in ten minutes or so earlier than our games, and just work on doing these movement drills slowly. So...
- Spend some time working on movement
I know that this is important, but I have a hard time getting into it. It's really difficult to motivate yourself to come down to the club by yourself and run back and forth on the court for 45 minutes. But, coming down ten minutes before your game and getting some movement drills in is a really good idea, and requires much less motivation. It's a little difficult to get on court before game-time right now, just because there are still a lot of people playing squash, but pretty soon it will be summer, and I'll have the courts all to myself.
Next up we took turns moving past each other on the tee, ghosting to various corners in the court and moving past each other. I felt a little better moving to the back of the court than I did the front, but it's all good practice - this is definitely the aspect of my game that is the most neglected.
- Don't watch the other player
- Don't commit to a shot early
Okay, so, if they're about to hit the ball, then you should obviously be watching them. However, if you've dropped the ball to the front corner, and you're moving back to the tee as your opponent moves in to get the ball, your eyes should be on the ball. There's no doubt a bit of leighway here, but the main goal of this drill is to focus on the ball and keep your shoulders positioned so that its easy to get to any shot that your opponent makes. That leads to a tangent I need to work on, which is:
Sometimes you can get away with making a small assumption about where your opponent is going to hit the ball - if you make a really tight drive deep to the back-corner, odds are that you're going to see a weak boast. Even making this assumption can be dangerous, because a good player will always have multiple shots at their disposal. I have a nasty habit of turning my shoulders and waiting to cut off a crosscourt everytime I see Bevan with the ball deep on his backhand. He's gotten wise to this, and just hits a straight drive, leaving me under a lot of pressure to turn my shoulders back around and make it to the back deep.
The solution to this is really just mental discipline. Everytime I don't make it to a shot, I need to take time to ask myself why I missed that shot. Is it because my opponent just kept up the pressure and I wasn't able to get back in the rally? That's one thing, but what about if I was standing on the tee? They say that a good squash player should be able to make it to any shot on the court if they're ready waiting on the tee. I'm not a great squash player, but I aspire to be, so that's definitely something for me to keep in mind.
So all in all, a good lesson. Getting lessons from Stu, Dan and Jarryd is really great, because I have three different perspectives on everything that I'm doing wrong. The chance to work on court movement exclusive of hitting the ball really made it apparent how I need to work on this aspect of my game.
If you have something that you can use as leverage against Jarryd, I'd strongly recommend doing it and forcing him into giving you a lesson.
Oh yah, one last thing I'm currently working towards - better back-hand lobs.
I really like high soft shots, and changing the pace is fun, and really effective when done at the right time. However, my backhand lob from the back of the court is always too low. If I'm under pressure, I need to be able to hit a soft high shot that will return deep and give me time to return to the tee. Dan and I worked on this shot for a while, and he mentioned that my technique was right, I just need to spend more time practicing the shot itself and getting it up on the wall higher.
- Backhand lobs
Last item to work on then is getting this shot up higher. This means getting down low and underneath the ball, choking up high on the racquet, and getting my back foot deep into the back of the court. The farther back in the court you are, the more flick you're going to need to get the ball up on the front wall.
I feel a lot more confident with this shot on my forehand, and I think part of what I'm doing wrong is approaching the shot like a normal drive - putting very little wrist into it, and a lot of lateral motion (swinging through with the racquet generating momentum with my hips and shoulders). EVerytime I make this shot and it gets volleyed into the front corner, I need to stop and ask myself if I used the right motion - did I choke up on the racquet? How was the wrist action? Positioning correct?
Okay, that's it for now. Haven't had much time lately, as work has been very busy, and I'm preparing for a trip out to Prince George to meet with some clients for the project that I am working on. I hope to get a chance to do some dance practice when I'm there, as I can't imagine there will be too much else to do - I'll bring the camera, batteries, and cords to hook it up to the TV, and hopefully have some new footage of further practice on the two techniques I'm currently working on.
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