QUARANTINE SQUASH - FITNESS 7

On to part II of our agility fitness theme. Today we will take you through a ladder session. The ladder is a tremendous fitness tool and is one of the best ways to increase your foot speed and direction change - two things that are critically important when it comes to your footwork on the squash court.

One misconception regarding the squash movement is that a player needs to be able to get from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’ and back again (i.e. from the ’t’ to the ball and back) as fast as they possibly can. There are times when that is indeed the case although in reality it shouldn’t be that often. More importantly is the timing behind your movement: stepping into your shot and swinging with the correct momentum, balance, weight transference, and - don’t forget - spacing. Continuously sprinting in at blinding speed in order to hit the ball as soon as physically possible will only make you rush, be less accurate, be off balance, waste precious energy and time, be more susceptible to injuries, and probably cause more interference than necessary since your recovery is compromised and you need extra time to get out of the way.

Ladder exercise will help you get quick on your feet. Smaller steps - or as I often refer to them in a lesson - adjustment steps - is an imperative asset when addressing any shot. Unless you have zero time and simply need to get there, taking an extra hop, skip or stutter step into your shot can help enormously with your timing and spacing and actually give you more time to think about what shot you wish to play as well - which in turn can make you more deceptive. 

This pretty much comes down to coordination. The connection between your brain and your feet. Building up the ladder exercises with more complex patterns and increasing your speed will help you understand exactly where to plant your feet, with the force required, for how long and in what direction you need to move next. As you improve the smoothness and efficiency, you will improve your court speed. 

The video below demonstrates some simple ladder movement exercises as performed by our newest young athlete to the video series - Maya! As many of you know, Maya plays tennis, but the ladder translates perfectly to other sports as well.