Training & Tips
My training varies from week to week depending on whether I have a tournament coming up. Below I've tried to outline the main aspects of my weeks training and how it works for me.
My week is built up from a structure at the English Institute of Sport (EIS) in Manchester. The backbone of my week is 2 Strength and conditioning (S&C) sessions and an off court circuit training session. This is all set and monitored by the EIS coaches. They design my strength and conditioning programme around the areas I want to improve in my squash and this changes depending on what stage of the year we are in. I find the S&C has given me a massive improvement within my squash. Since starting my S&C programme my squash has improved, I am quicker and stronger than I was and also a lot more stable on the ball especially when I start to get fatigued.
The rest of my week is based around gym and court sessions. How many of each depends on the time of year but I find the gym sessions really help. They provide fitness for the court, off the court without the impact on the joints. These types of sessions are mainly based on the bike, rower and cross trainer and give a great opportunity for me to work hard and not really think about hitting the ball. Court based sessions are match practice, pressure sessions or technical. All are very important and have there own individual benefits.
One of the major advantages I have is the fitness testing from the EIS. It's very important to work your week around different training zones. For example if all sessions are hard I'm going to be very tired and possibly break down in injury eventually. On the other hand if all sessions were easy I wouldn't really improve or be fit enough to play hard back to back matches in tournaments. The fitness testing we receive from the EIS measures our fitness amongst other things and even though the process is horrible the results give me the heart rate training zone that I work from in my training. Therefore I'm always getting the right balance between low, medium and hard sessions and so reducing the risk of injury and long term fatigue. These heart rate zones work by me wearing a heart rate monitor while training and so I know that if I am supposed to be doing a hard training session I can look at my watch and see if my heart rate is high enough to be in my hard training zone and if not adjust it accordingly.
Training Tips that I have learnt from my time being a professional are -
- Work hard, my motto is 'you get out of life what you put in'.
- Make sure you always take 1 day rest per week. Not only for your body but for your mind as well.
- Don't train when ill or injured even if you feel guilty. It will nearly always make you worse.
- Do plenty of practice, it's the only way to learn new things.
- Finally, make sure you ENJOY yourself.