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Davide Bianchetti Training Notes
by Hesham El Attar © 2004 H El Attar and SquashTalk

Hello Dear Readers,

My name is Hesham El Attar. Most of you will remember me as Barada’s coach during the last few years before his retirement. I am now coaching Davide Bianchetti and below, are a few reports on the work he has been through. I post these on my website, but as it is not heavily visited, I have posted them here on Squash Talk. Many people would like to know more about Davide after seeing his results, from outsider moving all the way to the quarters of the 2003 World Open, and many of you would like to know the process of developing a professional player’s game. I hope you enjoy the following.

First report- October 2002

I had finished working with Barada about five months after his injury. He had recovered well and only twelve weeks after his stabbing, he had shown very respectable form at the Super Series Finals in London. Sadly, it was time for me to change my lifestyle. I had been away from my family (my Italian wife with two babies) for too long. It was time for me to settle down in Italy again.

Now I’m very happy to have another squash professional working with me. Davide Bianchetti from Brescia-Italy, around 250 km from Turin. Davide had been around the 40s spot in the world rankings for a long time before deciding to quit. He made that decision after the first few months of 2002. I’m happy to say that now he is back and feeling hungry. We have been working together since mid September.

We started off by working on his leg muscle mass, strength, stamina, and court movement. Davide has always lacked muscle mass. This is mostly due to his genetic makeup, but a fair share is due to his training and nutrition. Building the legs is most important for a squash player especially if he has to play matches for several days in a row. Leg muscle development is a long difficult process particularly when an athlete has to do a lot of court work and match play.

At the same time, from a technical and tactical side, I am trying to modify the way he strikes the ball and introduce new shots to his game. This is not only to take advantage of certain situations on court, but also to make his game more difficult to read by his opponents. This too, is a delicate process. Davide has always had a very regular game and with it has already reached the world’s top 40s spot. It is most important to introduce these changes gradually and in such a way that they mould into his personal technical and tactical style. Forcing too many changes too soon may only leave a player confused and lacking confidence.

One of Davide’s greatest weaknesses has been his mental approach. His inability to accept a “wrong” decision by a referee. This has very often taken his mind off a match. He also used to have a problem with his own self. Whenever he played below his expectations, his self-esteem went down the drain. He has already improved a great deal on these two points.

In a few weeks we will be working on power and deception. The road is long, but we are determined. It will take time, but I’m sure this player has some great qualities.

Second report- June 2003
Several months have now gone by since my first report about Davide. He has made good progress in all sectors of his game. We have continued to work on his technique, tactics, mental approach, and physical fitness.

His backcourt game has become more aggressive, but at the same time, improvements in technique and movement have helped him achieve this without putting in excessive effort. With the same energy input he can now hit the ball harder and take it slightly earlier. This gives his opponent less time during basic backcourt rallying. Davide has also trained on disguising his shots from the back corners on some occasions, and going short with drop shots, kills, and boasts. He is now constantly trying to keep his game less predictable and his counterpart on the defensive.

At the same time, we have worked on his cross-court shots from the back corners. He is now able to achieve very good depth and to produce a very effective bounce into the opposite back corner. Most of all, he has been learning to individuate the correct moment to play his cross-courts in order to sway his opponent from side to side, create the gaps, and get the ball past the other player. Delaying the moment of impact and sensing the others guy’s body movement is most import. This catches his rival off balance and forces him to use more energy and employ greater strength when covering the backcourt.

Building onto a situation like this, a positive, attacking player has to take full advantage of subsequent loose play by the opponent. This is where volleying comes in. Not necessarily playing it short. In fact, it is very important to keep the opponent guessing until the very last moment. We have practised this situation extensively to make it difficult for an opponent to understand whether the next shot will be to the front, or backend. This is done through change of sequence and deception. The advantages are that the other guy has to exert more effort to get to the ball, and he finds himself a little late onto it.

Again, from the mid-court area, Davide has successfully been able to modify his technique for most shots to the front corners, be it on the volley or after the bounce. He is now able to produce a faster and longer swing. This is combined with a fine slice on the ball. The goal is to a take less time to execute a shot while sending the ball even more softly into the front corners. The idea is to give the opponent less time to react and at the same time produce drop shots, which remain deep, dragging the opponent very close to the front wall.

Hesham (l) with Davide Bianchetti

Rapid, smooth, side-to-side movement is very important to cut-off the ball especially on the volley and keeping the opponent behind. Mental awareness, quick racket preparation and swift footwork are the ingredients necessary to achieve this. This is another area where Davide has improved, but more work needs to be done. He is a tall player with very good reach and must learn to take full advantage of this.

When it comes to the frontcourt, Davide’s improved leg strength has helped. He is getting into the habit of moving in low and controlling his upper body movement better while moving in and out of the front corners. Controlling the trunk means better shots and less strain on the muscles and joints. It also produces smoother movement and no waste of energy.

Improved speed to the frontcourt has also allowed him to move early onto the ball on some occasions and use deception. Unfortunately, he is often hesitant to use this weapon. Whenever he is in a match situation where he fears losing an important point or set of point, he goes back to playing too safe and even into negative mode. It is true that he has played very few tournaments since we’ve been working together, and it is not at all easy for him to have good practise matches here in Italy. To solve this, we have been doing even more sessions based on attacking play, and also fine-tuning his mental approach. These weaknesses were somewhat evident in his match against Golan in last month’s Mega Italian Open.

Davide felt the pressure. He badly wanted to win and prove that he has progressed since he lost the final to the same player last year. This is not to say that Golan did not play a fantastic match. In fact, it was a 4 games match, which lasted around 100 minutes. Long exciting rallies with lots of movement to the front and back of the court and incredible retrieving by the Spaniard. However, when it really mattered, Davide was too safe in his margins and choice of shot. He also failed to fully explore some playing situations, which would have given him an advantage. His greatest disappointment was his inability to produce the squash he had developed in practise games. At the same time, it gave him hope. He is now convinced that when he manages to produce his best, a great result will be at hand.

However, in the last few months he has had some good results and has often beaten players 20 or more ranking positions above him, but I’m convinced he is not yet playing at his full potential. He now has an important tournament coming up at the end of June. Despite that, I’m not resting him too much for the occasion because in July he has to be ready for a few hard weeks of fitness training. Hopefully, this build-up will get him into really good shape for the last 4 months of the year.

Stay tuned for further updates and you may also be interested in tracking his results. In the meantime, enjoy your squash.

Third report- Dec 2003
In August I took Davide to Egypt for more than a week to have some badly needed practise matches with the players of the Egyptian National Team. We received excellent hospitality from the President of the Egyptian S.R.A and the Men’s head coach and I thank them very much for this.

Davide started the week quite well and was on the rise during the first 3 days as he got into the rhythm and habit of playing quality opponents, sometimes twice a day. He had encounters with players like Darwish, Shabana, El Borolosy, Mo Abbas, and El Hindy and Ashur. Unfortunately, he was unable to sustain his rise and had a very tough time towards the end. I had expected something similar and would have preferred a different timescale, but that was not possible for many reasons. Generally though, the experience was positive and helped him focus on the work to be done in the following months.

After the summer, and with the start of the new season, Davide was able to get quite a bit of match-play in tournaments and in various leagues. He also managed to produce the occasional brilliant play and result.

We adopted a training program that would allow the hard work done during the hot months, to surface, as the weather got cooler. It was a program of maintenance and fine-tuning. He continued to work on his technical and tactical play to make it more and more part of his natural game and style.

In tournaments he has continued to produce up and down performances but was playing much better, on the whole. When it came the World Open, he got his well-deserved break, and as many of you will have read his results, he had a fantastic run all the way to the quarters. I really hope this gives him the required confidence and will, to face the new upcoming phase of training.

Stay tuned for further updates and keep squashing!

Hesham El Attar