How to coach myself

It is really hard to excel at my game when I have to coach myself. It's commonly accepted at my age that there are no coaches for amateur athletes. You have to coach yourself and improve on your own. When you have a coach, you essentially have a second pair of eyes watching what you do and pointing out what you can't see yourself. When you have to go it alone, this is the one thing that you miss out on. It is possible to critique yourself, but it is difficult when you are focusing on what you should be doing to notice what you are doing or not doing. It definitely takes much more time to take notice of your own patterns of behavior. This is where knowing your own body and its responses to being worked and stressed is important. When I used to train for fencing in college, we had a mirror that ran the length of the room. It helped immensely to watch your own footwork in the mirror. The best substitute for a mirror is a video camera. Recording a squash lesson or even a drilling and ghosting session is really useful. You can look back and compare videos of different sessions to see any improvements. Finally, it's really important to train yourself to recognize what you're doing in a match so you can make adjustments while you play. Recognizing you're hitting the ball too short or hitting the same shorts too often are really important observations to make of yourself so you can analyze and respond to how your opponent is reacting to your game. You can't have a coach with you on the court so you'll just have to coach yourself through your matches.