Top-10 Fitness Tips

By SquashSkills &
SquashLevels
 The Complete Guide To Improving
Your Squash-Specific Fitness.

1. Devote some time to fitness

Fitness is a huge part of the game of squash,
and it gets increasingly difficult to see
continued improvement in your play beyond
a certain point if you don’t factor in some
dedicated conditioning time. Playing
matches, working with a coach, and doing
routines on court is of course the most
significant thrust behind your development
as a squash player, but your improvement
will occur at a much faster rate if you devote
some additional focused physical training
time into your programme as well.

2. Plan your sessions

Don’t just turn up at the court with a vague
idea of ‘doing some ghosting’, or ‘running
some sprints’ – discipline yourself to set out
and plan your workout ahead of time. The
5mins or so it takes to map out what you’re
going to do on a sheet of paper beforehand,
you’ll easily make back by being that much
more slick and organised in what you’re
actually doing within your session when you
get to the club. Don’t cut corners either - it’s
easy sometimes to get part way into a fitness
session and feel the fatigue kicking in, and
maybe switch in an easier exercise, or drop
down a couple of sets so as to finish a little
quicker. Barring illness or injury however,
get into winning habits and fully complete the
session that you had originally planned!
3. Train all elements
For a lot of people when they think about
‘fitness’ as regards their squash, they think
mainly of just endurance – the ability to go
longer and push further. There are a lot of
other attributes of fitness to consider
though, that you’ll need to focus on to
develop your complete squash physical
foundation – elements such as strength,
speed, power, stability, agility. Don’t neglect
your all-round athleticism by focusing on
just a single narrow avenue of trying to get
‘fitter’.

4. Bring a buddy
Driving yourself to get on court and go
through a gruelling court sprint session, or
heading to the gym to lift weights on an already
tired and aching body can be pretty tough,
whatever level you play at. A great tool to
increase your motivation, is to find an
enthusiastic training partner. Studies have
shown that exercise adherence is stronger
when you have a partner to whom you make
yourself accountable, and just by sharing the
whole fitness journey with someone else with
similar goals and mindset to your own can give
you a whole new lease of life and sense of
purpose with your training.

5. Warm-Up properly
A properly constructed warm-up will
prepare you for the challenges ahead, both
mentally and physically. Aside from the
potential injury prevention benefits, studies
show that it will also improve your actual
physical performance – a thorough warm-
up can get you in the right state of
readiness to be able to push harder, move
better, and work for longer in your on-
court endeavours. It really is worth the
extra 10mins of investment at the beginning
of your session.
 6. Balance the body
Most squash players tend to be heavily
dominant on one side, and will have a leg they
generally feel more comfortable lunging onto
the ball with. It’s important though to try and
balance your body out as much as possible, to
allow yourself to be more able to adapt and
cover ground better through being able to use
both feet that much more confidently.
Balancing out the body also helps mitigate some
injury risk, as there are less weak points
through the chain of the joints. Try integrating
more unilateral training exercises such as
step-ups, single leg deadlifts, and rear foot
elevated split squats into your training.

7. Eat healthily
You can’t out train a bad diet. If you want to
improve your physical performance, you’ll
need to also improve the fuel that you’re
putting into your body. Ignore fad diets that
restrict one macro-nutrient or another – the
active sportsperson needs a blend of
complex carbohydrates, protein, and healthy
fats. Look to take in quality calories from
good whole food sources, and increase your
fruit and vegetable intake to include as many
different variants as you can.

8. Get stronger
Strength is the foundation of all other physical
attributes. A stronger athlete is a better athlete
– strength provides an increased resistance to
injury, more stability and balance within your
shot, and a base to build your all-round
athleticism from. The best option is to get in
the gym and incorporate some resistance
training, but there are also some very good
bodyweight routines you can do – we have a
fantastic library of these for you to try at
SquashSkills.com.
9. Test yourself
It’s useful to put your fitness to the test
periodically, to ascertain first where your
physical weaknesses lie, and then later to
assess if your programme is adequately
addressing them. We have a range of great
tests on SquashSkills.com you can try, but
even something as simple as recording your
court sprint times, measuring how your
weights are increasing in the gym, or timing
how long it takes you to cycle a typical 5k
route, can be great informal ways to assess
your progress.

10. Remember to recover

‘Train hard, rest harder’ is a popular old
adage in athletic performance circles, and
it’s something very pertinent to a lot of
squash players. All too often you’ll see
recreational players go on a fitness kick, and
suddenly add in a ton of extra training to
their programme without any consideration
for their body’s rest and recovery. You don’t
grow fitter and stronger during the session
itself, that process takes place post-session
while you’re back at rest – without allowing
yourself that adequate recovery time
however, you risk blunting your gains and
triggering injury/illness.

Start Improving Today!

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