Your Game Plan Is Going to Go Wrong. Good.

We talk a lot about having a game plan in squash.

Keep the ball deep. Attack the backhand. Volley when you can. Don't open the court too early.

All good advice.

Then the match starts.

Your opponent's backhand is much better than you thought. They're volleying your length. They're quicker than they looked in the warm-up. The shot that worked brilliantly last week isn't working today.

You're 6–2 down.

Now what?

This was something that struck us reading a recent piece by Sahil Bloom. He uses an old military idea that is often paraphrased as:

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

His point wasn't about squash, obviously. It was about life, business and success. But the line could have been written about sport.

You don't necessarily get better by making more and more detailed plans.

You get better at adapting when the plan inevitably goes wrong.

You still need a plan

None of this means tactics don't matter.

Before a match, we absolutely want our players thinking about what they're going to do.

What does this opponent like?

Where might we be able to put them under pressure?

What do we want the first few rallies to look like?

Having a plan gives you somewhere to start.

The problem comes when a young player becomes so attached to that plan that they stop paying attention to what's actually happening.

We've all seen it.

A player comes off court and says, “But you told me to play to their backhand.”

Yes.

We did.

But they've just hit six winners off their backhand.

We might need another idea.

The match is giving you information

Every rally tells you something.

Maybe your opponent isn't moving particularly well into one corner.

Maybe they're starting to read your boast.

Maybe they attack brilliantly when the ball is loose but struggle when they're forced to generate their own pace.

Maybe they're getting tired.

Maybe you're getting tired.

The better player starts noticing these things and making adjustments.

And they don't need to completely reinvent their squash every three rallies.

Sometimes the adjustment is tiny.

A little more height. A little less pace. Hold the ball slightly longer. Stop forcing the drop. Volley more. Make the rallies longer.

Try something. See what happens.

That's playing the game rather than simply executing a plan.

How quickly can you reset?

There was another line in Bloom's piece that we really liked:

“Shrink the window between failure and recovery.”

That's a pretty useful skill for a squash player.

You played a terrible rally.

Fine.

How long does it affect you?

One second? The next rally? The next five rallies? The rest of the game?

We sometimes see juniors lose a rally at 3–3 and still be annoyed about it when they're 3–7 down.

The mistake wasn't losing the original rally.

The expensive bit was losing the next four with it.

Being adaptable isn't only tactical. It's being able to reset, take in new information and get back to solving the problem in front of you.

This changes coaching too

As coaches, there's a temptation to have all the answers.

Between games we can easily give a player seven different instructions because we've been standing outside the court watching everything.

But the player has to play.

So perhaps one of the most useful things we can sometimes ask is:

“What are you seeing?”

What is working?

What isn't?

What has changed?

What do you think we should try?

There will absolutely be times when the coach needs to step in with an answer. That's part of coaching.

But we also want young players gradually getting better at finding those answers themselves.

Because eventually there won't be a coach standing outside the court.

Plan. Play. Adapt.

So yes, have a game plan.

Prepare properly. Know what you're trying to do and walk onto court with some ideas.

Then be prepared for some of those ideas to be completely wrong.

That's not bad preparation.

That's sport.

The skill is recognising it quickly enough to do something about it.

The best players aren't necessarily the ones whose Plan A always works.

They're often the ones who notice fastest when it doesn't.

This post was inspired by Sahil Bloom's “9 Harsh Truths Nobody Told You About Success,” particularly his thoughts on planning, adaptability and getting better at recovering when things don't go as expected.