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Room > Use Your Head: Mental Squash 2 |
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| Mental Squash: 2. Focus on the Game | |
| Have you found yourself thinking of everything in the world besides squash in the middle of a squash match? |
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| By Ron Beck © 2004 , Acton MA USA. March 2004: In the first installment, I introduced you to the mental side of squash with a few different types of examples. This column will talk about getting your mind focused inside the court, on the game. Let's walk around a squash tournament and instead of watching the matches going on inside the court, let's observe the players who have matches coming up later in the evening. What are they doing to get their "head into the game" - to get themselves totally focused on the match? Talk to any squash player - in fact any athlete - and they will tell you that this is one of the most critical, and one of the most elusive aspects of being successful in competition. No player can tell you for sure how they will play the next day, or an hour from now, or five minutes from now. The most successful athletes have worked out a routine and approach that works most successfully for them. And its a surprisingly individual exercise. To succeed you need to intellectualize a few key elements:
Now let's go back to that walk around the squash tournament. First let's go to a pro tournament. Jonathon Power is up next. What's he doing? First of all, he's alone. That's an important ingredient for success for many (BUT NOT ALL) players. Jonathon want it all internal. Second of all, he's under the grandstand. That's Power's favorite place - under the stands. I think it accomplishes a few things for him. First, noone will think to look for him under the stands. So he gets the solitude he wants to concentrate. Second, he can't see the court from under the stands. So he won't get distracted by what's happening on court. Third he's stretching. Most top players go through an extensive set of warmups, from stretching to jogging to sprinting, to make sure they're ready for peak performance at the opening bell. Now here's Peter Nicol. He's got a different approach — Peter is up in the stands. He's already done all his stretching and warmups in the locker room. So its invisible to his opponents and the fans. Now he's in the stands talking to well wishers and watching the previous match. Evidently, he's looking for a different preparation experience — by chatting with fans he relaxes from the pressure and tension to come. By watching the court, he gets mentally in tune with the flight of the ball, the tempo on court. He takes in the audience, the environment. Lets go to a junior tournament. There are a lot of different strategies going on here. The most popular one is the headphones and the CD player. Many players find that the music can psych them up and tune out distractions. The junior players coaches are anxious to speak to their charges before they play. Is that the right thing? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on the player. OK now we have a few observations to work from. You need to develop your own personal approach. It might be taking a shower before your match. It might be a walk outside. It might be a very repetitive routine. It might be arriving a specific amount of time before your match. It might be warming up on the court an hour in advance. It might be talking to your opponent. It might be staying away from your opponent. It might be putting your clothes on in a particular order. Try different approaches until you discover how to empty your mind of everything except the match upcoming. Beyond such a routine, lets go through a few essential elements in YOU developing your PERSONAL methodology for focusing on squash.
[Read on, to explore the next installment of the mental aspects of the game of squash: Developing your game plan] [or return to Mental Game - Overview] |
