Tournament Results

I played my first tournament since working with Aisling.  The result, I finished runner up in the 4.0 division.  I can't find the right words to say how happy I am.  I can only say the result was all due to the coaching I received.  I improved in every category - movement, racquet skills, targets, alertness,  focus, and most importantly nerves.  Even my cardio has improved.  I played long rallies and winning most of them.  The difference between winning and losing the finals came down to endurance.  With a fantastic start and staying tough against a much younger opponent I pushed the match to 4 games winning the first firmly.  The lost came down to a lack of energy and endurance for to me what would be a grueling 3 days of matches.  The two biggest takeaway are the much more rigorous warmup I undertook to keep my muscles warm, feet agile, mind alert, and nerves managed, and to win the tournament I need to manage my nutrition during the multiple days of matches in order to have the strength to win the final.

Where I stand today

It's hard to see progress and especially hard to report on it, but I truly feel a significant improvement in my overall athletic and playing ability.  I have been coached since April by a new coach in town.  Coming off the tour as a successful player my new coach is the most insightful and helpful coach I've had.  Aisling started on my grip, the flow in my swing, and moved on to how to drop and go with my split step.  Along the way she has given me many plyometric, visual and mental focus drills to do off court.  She's given me an interval sprint training program to try also.

Flow. Aisling has taught me that flow in my overall movement unlocks my technique.  Early on in my lessons with Aisling I worked on the flow in my swing.  As my development progressed the concept of flow transferred to how I move from the split step towards the final step of setting up the shot.  I can see now how I must develop Flow to further bring my upper body racquet movement together with my foot movement in order to synchronize them to the pace of the ball.  Since working with Aisling, I have experienced for the first time how my flow is graceful and well timed.

Target.  Aisling has began working on my ability to hit targets.  I had coaches tell me to hit targets before, but I couldn't do it because my technique was wrong and inconsistent.  After correcting so many of my techniques in movements, I'm finally able to address this part of the game.  Again I  attribute my progress to Aisling's coaching.  To hit the target several aspects of my game have to be in place.  Above and beyond the flow, Aisling teaches me to sink into my setup position as I hit the ball.  The follow through of the swing should guide the ball to where it must go.  I have also been shown that the right pace in order to place the ball on target is often lower than I've been anxious to hit.

To make it into the core 4.5 and to the cusp of 5.0, I know the two areas I have to get consistent at is flow and target.  And to enable the flow to hit targets consistently, I must work at my cardio and agility. I see clearly now what I have to do to win.   The trinity: conditioning, flow, and target!

New Coach, New Form

Although I have not written for many months, I have been making some big and hard changes to my training.  I have a new coach, Erick.  He's been helping me improve my cardio and my power.  

I have a new stationary bike routine.  It's 15 minutes long with 3 segments.  1st segment is a 5 minute warm-up at 1 bar resistance and 100+ rpm.  2nd segment is 4 minutes at 2 bar resistance and 130+ rpm.  1 minute rest at 100+ rpm.  3rd segment is 4 minutes at 3 bars resistance adn 130+ rpm.  Finishing the 15 minute routine with 1 minute rest at 1 bar and 100+ rpm.

Erick taught me to widen my wingspan to cover more court.  That means I have to straighten my arm by extending my elbow out further.  With an open racket face I can hit with more power.  But, I have to take bigger steps and lunges to reach the ball.  All this takes more work and taxes my cardio much more.  The final tweak is a faster swing.   I've taken four lessons with Erick so far.  I acquire the skill pretty quickly each time, but I also forget it the next day.  So I return to using videos to check myself and reacquire the technique when I'm doing solo drills.

Along with these pretty big changes, Erick made other corrections to my form.  I learned that I have to bend my elbow to get leverage to give height to my lobs.  I certainly didn't realize that I needed a different swing to hit the lob effectively.  He also changed my target for the lob from the side wall to the deep corners.  Another lesson is alternating between soft and hard shots.  The last lesson I took focused on drops that are low above the tin and bounce in the nick, and deep cross volleys that were above the red lines.

So far I would say I'm still struggling to consolidate everything I've been taught.  Old habits die hard, but that makes me eager to take more lessons and train more frequently.

Checkin

This is my check-in since February.  I have made some tweeks to my forehand to shorten the backswing.  I improved my racquet position.  I hold my racquet up like Ramy.  It's easy to forget to raise it after hitting a ball.  Some other areas I've improved is in my weight.  I weight in at a pretty steady 157lbs.  This weight lets me work my legs without serious pounding on my knees.  I started to use the ladder for drills and I've started to do some sprints in the fencing salle.  I know the stationary bike is still a good interval cardio training, but I am starting a new routine.  I'll keep doing the 1 hour 2 minutes high, 1 minute low interval, but I am adding a 30 sec full speed and 30 sec rest routine to my weekly training.

Over the winter, I discovered that I had blown out my ACL long time ago and that I have been playing without it.  The only effect comes after long hard pounding in some swelling.  I've started to use ice and ibuprofen to keep that in check.

Another revelation is about my cardio pattern.  I noticed that my breathing is very rapid during the first 5-8 minutes of hard play.  During this period, my legs are fresh and I move very fast, to the point of frenzy.  The next 20 minutes the leg muscles start to really activate and gets the strongest for the hour.  At this stage, my speed drops, my heartrate rises.  When my conditioning is steady, I recover to a steady stage.  When my conditioning is poor, my concentration falls apart.  Focus is pretty much gone and the legs don't want to go, especially moving back to the T after hitting the ball on a lunge.  This pattern of highs and lows is what I will attack for this season.

Video Analysis Revealing

Since using PlaySight, I've identified a couple of problems that I didn't understand until now.  One has been the long standing problem with my swing, particularly the backswing.  I watched myself on the videos on more than 5 occasions and with Frank's feedback I watched the pro's videos on SquashTV.  I watched Mohammad Alshorbagy and Nick Matthews.  They both have compact swings along with all the other contemporary pros.  What I used to believe was compact with my swing is actually not.  I believed wrongly that bending my elbow past 90 degrees made my swing compact, but instead, I compensated by throwing my elbow behind my shoulders.  I saw the pros extend their elbows slightly greater than 90 degrees, but kept their elbow in front of their shoulder.  The power comes from turning the torso and throwing the shoulder forward.  This swing lets me get behind the ball when it is very close to the back wall.  It also helps transfer my weight forward after I strike the ball.

The second problem the video identified is my lunge. I have been over lunging.  It's how I lunge for fencing, but it's all wrong for squash.  I can see in the video that a lunge of 90 degrees in my knee bend causes me to lose balance when I lean forward.  The pros can be seen clearly to take a long stride in their lunge and bend their knees only 45 degrees.  This requires stronger hamstrings, but in practice I can already feel improved balance.

All I need now is to integrate these into games and matches.  Back to the ghosting and solo drills...

Mid-season pulse check

It is mid February.  The season for me began September in earnest.  Since the start of the season I have played three tournaments, and three league matches and one box league match.  This has been by far the most matches I have ever played within a season.  The first two tournaments were played back to back two weeks apart.  My body has not played so many matches in consecutive days.  This past weekend, I played 5 matches in 5 days with two of them played in one day.  I am very pleased with the way my body held together this weekend to play these matches without breaking down and without injury.  It did not fair so well in October when I played my first two tournaments within two weeks of each other.  That time, my knees developed fluids and caused complications.  That took realistically a couple of months to heal.  After the knees healed, my back began to feel too much pounding and has since slowly recovered.  So it is with great relief that I was able to slowly ramp up to playing this last tournament.

During this season I began taking regular lessons from Frank.  In the past month I have begun to take a lesson each week with the assistance of the new analysis tool PlaySight.  Playsight records your session and provides instant replay.  Frank's been showing me how to correct my foot position, space to the ball, and other timings with  the instant replay. I have been reviewing each one of my lessons at home too.  What I see have been enlightening and a bit disheartening as well.

I see problems with alertness which I knew more or less.  But I also see a lack of power and acceleration in my movements.  I see a lack of spring in my steps.  I see someone who tires quickly and never peaks in his performance.  I still see something is not quite right with my forehand take-back.  While I have taken lessons, I have not played against anyone above a 3.5 in practice.  As I look at myself and compare my performance with 4.0 and above players, I come to the realization that I don't stack up athletically. I have placed greater emphasis on inproving my cardio condition, I see now I must also develop more power and acceleration in my movements both footwork and upper body and arms.  For now, I shall begin with ghosting that emphasize speed drills and solo racquet drills that also emphasize power and speed.

One Simple Strategy

A wonderful timely news came this morning that Roger Federer beat Novak Djokavic in a stunning 64 64 straight set win.  The talk of the town is how Roger won it.  He did so by deploying for the first time a concerted attacking net game.  This report breaks down the numbers really clearly.  The simple truth is that the strategy is an old one, but a good one.  You get to the net and cut off your opponent's time and options.  This is the same strategy squash players learn.  You cut off the ball to take time away from your opponent.  You do that by getting to the T and controlling the rallies from there.  With my new found power relieving me from the pressure of execution, I can now focus of playing out this strategy.  For me, it's simple.  Get to the front of the court often and put the balls deep into the back corners.