Changes do not happen easily!!

One of the things that I have learnt (the hard way) over the last few months is that it is very difficult to make changes and changes do not happen overnight!! It takes hours and hours of practice for the players to reach the level they do!!

One of the simplest examples is my movement to the back corners of the court from the centre of the court. My coach has been telling me to shorten my grip while moving to handle the tight balls in the forehand and the backhand corner. I try and do that during the practice - but the moment I get down to playing games, all that seems to vanish!!

Another example is watching the ball till the end. Now while receiving the serves - especially in the backhand corner - if the serve is dipping and falling near me, the moment it goes below my knees, I lose sight of the ball and end up hitting the return either short on the front court or in the tin. During practice, I have reminded myself tens of times about bending the knees properly to ensure that I do get below the ball and watch the ball till last moment and the wrist is cocked properly to send the return high, close to the side wall and in the direction that i want!! All that seems to be getting lost the moment I get into playing games.

However, a lot of things are going well too!! I am moving a lot better and can retrieve a lot more balls of the front court than I could do earlier!! I have become a lot better also at running across the court and controlling the rallies. I now try moving the players across the court and up and down the court - with mixed degrees of success.

Things getting better - gradually!!

It has been a time of slow but steady progress. My practice session now primarily consists of a jog for about 2 kms. at a slow and variable pace. The idea is to get myself warmed up for the squash session afterwards and not be dead tired by the end of the jogging session. It is followed by skipping for about 3-4 minutes. I manage to skip 500 times - two sessions of 250 with a minute of rest in between. This is followed by a 10 min. rest and then the session at the squash court.

In the court, I do ghosting to get the movement in sync and primarily work on my recovery - where I am very weak. I typically do 5 complete court ghosts in 1 min. take a break for hitting the rails on the back hand side ( I try and hit 25 consecutive rails on the backhand side of varying lengths and pace), do a second session of complete court ghosting and then hit rails on the forehand side.

There definitely has been an improvement in my performance due to improvement in the overall stamina and footwork and this is definitely reflected in the games I play with some of the better players. People have commented upon the improvement that they see in my ability in being able to chase the balls down.

The other key area that has contributed to the overall improvement in my game is the willingness to take the ball off the back wall. What this means is that I have now started allowing certain balls to pass me and hit them when they rebound off the back wall. It certainly gives me more time to get into a better position and takes a bit of pace off the rally.

The core improvement areas that I need to work upon include my return of low serves on the backhand side and making a faster recovery after hitting the shot!! Am working on the same - footwork, footwork and footwork!!

What not to do when playing a game!!

Two days back, I played 5 games with a new guy and discovered new things about myself and my game!! Now this new guy waa a lot younger guy and though I figured out that technically I am a much better player than he is, he could run longer and could retrieve many more balls - both at the front and back of the court. His weak areas were predictable - back court backhand corner and not so accurate shots - especially on the long, mid-power shots in the backhand back court. So I thought I will have it easy till we started playing.

This guy was running for most of the balls and he could reach most of the drops in front court by virtue of having a faster pair of legs. He was also managing to somehow return the balls from the back court, primarily by hitting boasts. Now a couple of these boasts hit the nick and got me really irritated - here I was controlling the entire rally - making that guy run all over the court, scampering to retrieve the ball - and then from a losing position he hits a boast that takes the nick and gives him the point!! And this happened 2-3 times in the first 2 games!! So here I was doing everything right - but not being able to close the points!! Worse I was losing them to someone - who I felt was a worse player than I am!!

So this was getting me really irritated - and that is when I started making mistakes!! Instead of hitting more long, high balls to the backhand backcourt, that obviously was his weakness, I started slamming the ball harder and lower on the front wall trying to kill it - as if forcibly!! This resulted in the ball falling in mid court and provided easy fodder for him. Soon this became a pattern and the match started slipping out of my hands!! This now became a self-perpetuating cycle - me making mistakes, getting irritated, losing the point, making further mistakes, getting more irritated...... and the scoreline reflected this!! I lost the 5 games with the scoreline 9-6, 9-5, 8-10, 1-9, 3-9!!! It took a lot of restraint not to smash my racket at the end of the fourth and the fifth game!!

My takeaways from this experience:
1. Keep your cool during the game - more so when you are losing!! Losing your cool can only make things worse for you!!
2. In the game, if you are getting worked up, try and slow things down - hit slower and deeper shots.
3. Brute force will not work - most of the time. Brute force only makes the ball come back harder!!
4. Play to exploit opponents weaknesses - obvious isn't it? Not so obvious when you are fuming and fretting!!
5. Do not get irritated if things do not go to plan - refer point 2!!

Erratic training schedules

Last month was characterized by erratic training schedules that were primarily aimless and did not improve my skills to the extent they could have. These schedules were primarily spent in working lazily on my footwork with ghosting on the court along with jogging off the court.

Thanks to my consistent jogging schedule off the court, I have realized that I am able to last much longer on the court without feeling as if my lungs are going to burst!! What it is not adding to is my movement and balance on the court!! Hold on...before you all start pulling out the knives and start saying that this contradicts what I had written in my earlier post - I am a lot better than what I was earlier!!

But now I am playing players who are a lot better and faster than I am and playing with them made me realize that my balance and anticipation need a lot of improvement - apart from a lot of other things!!

Some good things now - I have played some of the players that I have been playing with would have normally thrashed me blue!! Now, that is last week, when I played them, I was able o stretch them and make them sweat!!Infact, I made all of them huff and puff - an no I did not win - not those lat gasp victories!! This is not a hollywood movie - this is life!! Those guys play much more regularly than I do, they have been playing longer and are technically much better than I am. For me, to change their attitudes when it came to playing me was a big victory. over the past 2-3 weeks, while now playing me, they do not have the condescending attitude. They now know that I can last the length and give them a run for their money!! Heck - I took all the games to at least 7 to 8 points on all the games that I played with them!!

My next post tomorrow is going to about where I last the points when I played these players much better than me!!

More of the same!!

4-days a week - my schedule for the squash training:
1. Jogging - running at moderate pace for 2 Kms
2. Lunges - 15 X 3 sets - alternating between left and right leg - supersets 15 Left and the 15 right - then rest for 30-45 seconds. Repeat for 2 more sets.
3. Skipping - 150 X 3 sets - on alternate days


Am waiting patiently for this physical fitness schedule to show rewards in the squash court. After this workout, I take a break for 15 min. to cool down a bit and then head towards the squash court for playing with my coach. The squash session lasts for about 30-35 min. and includes various types of drills and ghosting after playing. Typically, we end the coaching schedule with sprints on the court - I target 20 in 1 min.

Invaluable words of advice to a beginner (me) from an experienced coach

My squash coach is in his fifties - but his fitness puts a 38-year old guy like me to shame!! Normally, our coaching follows a particular regimen and right now he is trying to make sure that I get moving properly around the court. We do various drills to improve my movement from the front of the court to the back and then back to the front again - all the while trying to hit the shots that he mentions.

Once in a while, we play - what he calls "rallies". In "rallies", there are no points but everything else is like a normal game. So, today morning as we were playing "rallies", I was trying to slam the life out of the ball - it has been an old malaise - trying to slam the ball too hard. After a few rallies, that had left me completely breathless, coach gave me a piece of advice that was distilled from his years of experience in playing and coaching squash to novices like me.

He said " This game is not about hitting the ball hard and running harder. So, do not try to smash every ball. Imagine that this court has three parts - front, middle and back court. Now, think where you want to THROW the ball (notice - not hit the ball!!) - front court, middle court or back court. This will decide how high you will hit the ball on the front wall and with how much power."

I found this to be a very different perspective and a correct one at that. That squash is about positional play was something that I had not been thinking at all during my training and playing sessions with other players. Now this is something I have to cultivate - "Send the forehand passing shot to the back court - so hit the ball high and not so hard" - will need to put this into practice over the next few days and see the effect on my game.

The weakest link in my game - that is killing me!!

Well, though I knew it all along - the time has come for me to finally admit it!! The weakest link in my game - one that results in my giving my opponents 4-5 easy points along with control of some important rallies is really not letting me make any progress inspite of this practise of movement around the court and other drills!! It is not the backhand corner, the volley or the drop - (though I must admit that these aspects also need a lot of work)!! The weakest aspect of my game is RETURN OF SERVICE from the backhand court!!

In know in theory that the return of the serve from the backhand court has to be deep - either down the line of cross-court depending upon the type of service received. But in practice, during the actual games, it seems to be easier said than done!! My attempts at hitting down the line on lob serves often result in weak shots that are either too low on the front wall or if they are high enough, then they hit the front wall and then the side wall on the front and the ball moves towards the centre of the court for the opponent to make a mess of my attempts. My attempts at returning the low serves on the backhand that hit the side wall and are ankle high before they drop on the court lead to equally disasterous returns!! In a game, I end up handing out at least 2-3 points on erroneous service returns only and another 2-3 points on weak service returns. I have to figure out a way to work on this!!

Some of the things that I am thinking of to handle this is to hold the racket higher - near the top of the handle so that I have more control on the shots. The problem is that if the serves are too deep or too low - I do not get enough swing on the racket and the resultant return is a weak high return - that either moves towards the centre or makes me a sitting duck. Also, I am not sure if I am taking the serves well on the volley - so the cross court returns that are supposed to land deep in the forehand corner, hit the opponents forehand side wall and makes for easy killing. The funny thing is that I am so concious of this weakness, that whenever I get a serve on the backhand that I can return easily - I get so excited that I try and slam a down-the-line backhand retrun into the tin!! The opponents look at me amazed - they are like "How did you *#$% that up? You could have hit it anywhere in the court and you hit it in the tin?!!!"

Hope to do better on this front soon - with a lot of practise - like everything else!!