My ESS110 Introduction to Sport Coaching that I teach at Smith College is built around the ASEP (since I am in the U.S. – in Canada it would be built around the NCCP) Coaching Principles Course. The target audience for the ASEP course is the high school coach. In a sophisticated sporting country the course would be linked to LTADs – perhaps the “Train to Train” phase – but we are in the U.S. where the focus is on short term results versus long term development – except for the rare exception.
One of the strengths of Coaching Principles course materials are very well and simply written. The other major strength, especially useful for squash coaches, is that the course introduces the pedagogical approach know as the Games Approach. I have blogged on this before, usually using the term ‘Tactics First”.
Unfortunately, most of the squash world, meaning players and coaches are entrenched in an overly technical approach to the game, with a focus on teaching strokes, often stereotypical strokes (e.g., the forehand drive) unrelated to any tactical situation. For example most squash pros introduce new players with a “forehand” lesson where they feed players a very easy ball and ask the student to hit it straight back to them – progressively moving the player on to “mindless” straight length or boast-drive drills, focusing on the technique of “hitting better length”, in situations where we ingrain the instinct to hit the ball back to our opponents. My hypothesis is that most squash players do not peak until the age of 27 or 28 since it takes that long to become a smart squash player and undo the effects of stupid drilling!
The problem of course is that squash is a decision-making game, where the choice of shot is of key importance, as a well hit shot directed back to the opponent is of little use. The Games Approach advocated by ASEP is basically the equivalent of the squash “conditioned game” (e.g. a game where is the opponent drops you must redrop or hit a cross-court) , the big difference being that the Games Approach coaching sessions starts with the conditioned game, and all coaching and drilling for the rest of the session targets student improvement at that particular game tactic.
This preference for simplistic, not thinking drills is somewhat comically reflected in the statistics on my Squash Science YouTube Channel. My video with the most views is “Basic Squash technical Drills” with 7,865 drills?!? The only reason I posted this video is that I was coming back from my total hip replacement and needed to do some easy moving drills that involved no uncertainty or decision-making.
Two of my better tactical training videos have only got 2,500 and 1,800 views???
In the first video we start the session with a conditioned game that forces player A to make a choice in the front-court. This was the third video session that looked at tactics in the front court, the first being drop or cross-court, and the second being drop or lob. This is classic Games Approach
A key part of winning a point is not only playing a good attacking shot, but also playing the correct follow-up or second shot, a notion that I thought we captured very well with our ball machine video – often difficult to do repetitively in a one-on-one coaching session.
Ball Machine:
- “Why did you keep playing that shot instead of ______”,
- “You had to do a better job adjusting”,
- “Why did you go for that winner then? ,
- “You needed to attack more instead of just hitting it top the back”.These are all comments that squash coaches make to players who have been trained with an over emphasis on traditional technical drills. We cannot expect our players to become smart players if we don’t give them a chance to make decisions in our coaching sessions.
I will be offering some squash-specific ASEP Coaching Principles courses in the Northeast U.S. later this spring – stay tuned if you are in the area!
