Squash Drills

Whether practicing alone or with someone else, some people love doing skills. Some people hate them.

But it’s hard to focus your technique if you are focusing on winning a game.

Practicing drills gives you the opportunity to both experiment and concentrate on a particular area, whether it’s how you hold your racquet, when and where to strike the ball, where your feet are placed, and so on.

Drills help you “overlearn” behaviors. Overlearning is more than just knowing it. A common struggle beginning and intermediate players have is “staying out of the back corners”. This means that we find ourselves too close to either of the walls cramping our swing, and yet most players that have ever had any experience “know” they are not supposed to do this.

Overlearning means developing a behavior until it’s a habit that occurs without you having to consciously think about it. Sort of like tying your shoe or driving a car. This means when you are under pressure during a game, these learned behaviors occur without you having to consciously think about it.

This allow you as a player to free your mind up to focus specifically on elements of your match. Perhaps you’ve noticed your opponent is a hard hitter, or is winning points by volleying. Now you can make a decision on how you want to play against this and focus on executing a game plan. We can only focus on so many things at a time. If we are focusing on our technique, we are going to find it difficult to attend to the specifics of our opponents play.

So even if you hate drills, perhaps think about what behavior you’d like to be automatic when under any pressure or stress. Don’t practice mindlessly. We sometimes believe that practice is about quantity. But to get the most out of your practice, it’s really about quality of focus. So set a goal for the practice session on what you want to achieve and practice that.

If you are looking for some drills to try, check out this comprehensive list by Squash Central.

https://www.centralsquash.co.nz/media/attachments/2018/01/30/squash-drills.pdf