another training method that iv found that works very good is very basic drills

if you have a squash partner then you can do these instead of a full game once a week to improve the standard of both your fitness and ball control

the ones i use a lot for my own training and when im coaching someone are

boast and drive one player boasts the ball and moves to the T the other player moves from the Tinto the front of the court and drives the ball to a length the first player then moves from the T into the corner and plays the opposite side boast (sorry if my spelling is off)

the other drill i like to do is forehand and backhand drives useing the forehand side first both players are looking to take control of the T by playing the best drive they can however you can only play a forehand drive once the drive has been played you move to the T if your drive is not good enough the player on the T can step across and play a volley drive and keep you off the T

then do this on the backhand side

both of these drills i do for 10 mins at a time

for the first drill alternate who plays forward from the T and who plays back from the T

hope this reads ok and that it helps you let me know if you use it

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Well it sounds like from all of those ideas a good solid plan has been devised, giving:

• leg power and stamina with the step workout
• court sprints for the speed and aerobic/anaerobic base
• pushing off the walls for the arms and chest (even some pushing off on the finger tips would add a bit more too)
• ghosting for the specific on court movements

All of the above should make a lot of difference after a few weeks.

Good luck, but do not overdo it, and build up slowly. Keep a Diary if you really get serious.

All of these would be better put together as a periodised plan I feel (see the link above).

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what iv found that helps alot is ghosting instead of playing 3 times a week try a session on your own and just run some ghosting drills

and another thing that i find very helpful is if you have a set of steps near yoour home try sprinting up them firstly a step at a time and 2 at a time then 3 and so on till your taking as many steps as you can in your stride

i found these work for me if you try them and they work for you let me know

inthenik

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Try court sprints which are awesome.

Run from one side of the court to the other then push off the wall and back again.  Count each length of the court as 1 sprint.

Try doing 20 as fast as you can but then rest for 30 seconds then do 18 reset for 30 seconds and so on down to 16, 14, 12 etc.

In 5 minutes you will be completeley exhausted but do this often and soon squash will seem easy by comparison!

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Read a bit about periodisation and that will give you a good overview how to plan your fitness training.

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cheers adz,all helpfull stuff

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I read a real interesting article about Cardio earlier this week.

It looked at Lance Armstrong who recently ran a Marathon. At the end he said that it was the hardest Cardio event he'd ever done! So how can it be possible that a man who has one the most perfect cardio systems on the planet struggles with such a cardio dependent event? It simply comes down to the type of training that you expose yourself to when developing for your sport.

If you were the worlds best 10,000 meter runner, you won't necessarily be the worlds best marathon runner or lond distance rower or long distance cyclist. The muscle system being used in each sporting category  is very different, and thus the cardio system develops differently to cope with this demand.

Squash is a very special sport to train for as the demands on the body are endurance, recovery and also explosive. To play this sport you need to have excellent recovery, flexibility and endurance. Simply going out and jogging 20miles a day won't get you anywhere when it comes to developing explosive power or flexibility, and I highly doubt that it will give you anything much towards your muscular endurance when it comes specifically to squash. Yes your cardio endurance will be high, but your leg muscles will give up the ghost before your lungs do!

So some training types that might be helpful for squash specifically.......

Many squash players opt against doing any long distance running, as after 2-4 miles there really isn't much point is helping towards the squash specific needs. Weights are always useful, but small weight and repetative actions also have their limited usefulness. Instead this should be balanced with explosive training, especially squats and lunges (be careful of injury during lunges!).

A strange as it sounds, one of the best ways to get fit for squash is to either replicate the squash movements or to play more squash!! Replicating actions would include the afore-mentioned lunges, short distance sprinting (no more than 2 miles), shuttle runs ending in lunges at the turning points, ghosting routines, star-sprints (detailed in another post) etc

All of these exercises replicate specifics of squash and can be done at the required pace to push yourself harder than a squash match can.

If your legs can't take the impact of ghosting then you might be at your current limits. Don't push your joints past their limits or you could be in serious problems with long term injuries. Maybe just adapt your current pace levels further to push your current levels higher without as much long-term impact on your joints.

Apologies for the disjointed and non-flowing post, but I'm currently sat in a tele-conference training program in work and not getting any  of it! Thought I'd right some of this between the incoherrant babbling!!

Cheers

Adz

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