Class is Permanent!

I’m always on the lookout for inspiration from in and outside the world of squash.  A recent insta post from one of the preeminent martial arts coaches in the world, John Danaher, caught my attention.  He wrote:

Whatever skill level you are today will be 70% a reflection of your training behavior over the previous five years and 30% a reflection of the previous three months.  Failure to apply yourself well in either category can have serious ramifications for your performance here and now.

The man’s a genius.  Expanding his thought just a little, the longer you’ve played and trained hard, the more the 70% might be 80% or even more.  The less experienced you are, the more the 30% could be as high as 50%.  The take home is to be aware of your preparation, and maybe even take some confidence in the training you have done in previous months and years.  No-one who has put in the hard yards over a period of years just becomes lousy at squash, even after a disruption… form is temporary, class is (mostly) permanent.

See you on the courts.

Weekly training intensity - what should players look for...?

Take home message: each week consists of 2 hard, 2 medium, 2 light and one day off training!

Now, this is drastically simplistic, but there's a grain of truth in it and, if I may say so myself... a rather useful notion. One of the great pitfalls players fall into is the notion of training hard, hard, hard, hard, exhausted. Not the best way forward by any means as it reduces quality, opens us up to all sorts of overuse injuries and generally "ain't that much fun".

The challenge each week is to plan... to make sure that we lighten a load so that our bodies can adapt. Also we need to embrace the idea that a quality session doesn't need to be gut wrenching. A skill session, a stretching session, even a core session can contribute to our long term success. We don't need to flog ourselves every day to be winners... trust me.

See you on court.

Inspiration - Practical Thoughts...

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, each morning a somewhat younger Coach Frank would drive via a “corner shop” in Ballarat, Australia and buy the daily newspapers.  There was no internet, (shock, horror), so one watched the news on television or one read the print newspapers to find out the comings and goings in the world.  I used to buy two, sometimes three newspapers a day.  One local paper, one tabloid newspaper that had sports results, and one somewhat more “high brow”, which would have a little more political discussion, and a discussion of events of the day, rather than merely reporting them.  I recall, when something came as being interesting, or inspirational, I would cut it out.  As both a High School teacher and a coach at that time, I did quite a bit of cutting out, not just of things that appealed to my own sensibilities, but for my high school language arts class and coaching pupils.

A hundred years later, or something like that, I do the same thing, but differently.  I have my set series of websites that I check in on, perhaps not every day, but every now and again, to get news, information, research, inspiration and amusement.  In the squash world, I don’t look at much anymore.  I do look at the results of major events, but that mostly comes from social media, so I mostly look outside the sport for my inspiration.

Take home message

Cultivate a list of constructive influences on the web or on social media.  What makes you want to train, what makes you think more deeply about your daily decisions or makes you just simply happy?  In as much as we have a daily food diet, we also have a daily diet of information.  We are what we eat, we are also mentally what we expose ourselves to… so it’s worth searching for inspiration to make us better versions of ourselves.

p.s. and if you'd like suggestions - come chat to me at training and I'll give you some ideas!