4 tools I used to gain 3,000 points on SquashLevels in 12 months (and how you can too!)

Hi, I’m Stephen Thompson. I learned this game as an adult, and now I teach juniors and other adults how to play it too.

That’s me on the left, pretending to help Jamie with his grip (I’m terrible at posing for pics)

As a coach, I’d like to think I have a solid understanding of what it takes to improve your technique, expand your knowledge and strategy in the game and to increase your physical performance to sustain longer rallies while under pressure. What I started to realise however, was that it’s one thing to see improvement and be part of the change in one of my players, but quite another to bring that about for myself…

Coaching

The vast majority of coaches in this sport learned how to play squash as a child (junior), spent hundreds or thousands of hours playing it developing their technique and their craft and became really good. They excelled to a level (some professional, some county standard and others club level) and then at some point on their journey decided to take up coaching and teach others how to do the same.

Now, why am I talking about these coaches with thousands of hours developing their own ability as a child and then into adult life? Why do I mention these gifted individuals who can chop in a cross-court nick as easily as saying Ramy Ashour? Why, I refer to these talented players and regard them with such admiration because, they are not me…

The beginning…

I started learning this gladiatorial sport as a young adult. At 17 I experienced my first taste of sweat and frustration at the peculiar angles and the dizzying chasing of the ball as it bounced off what seemed like wall after wall after wall before I gathered myself together, took aim and completely missed the ball.

Despite being thrashed by my equally baffled, but eminently more skilful badminton player school friend, I couldn’t help feeling enthralled by the experience and was left eager for more. What struck me most were two things; the amount of sweat pouring from me after just 45 minutes (incredible workout I thought) and second, why can’t I hit this blasted ball where I want it to go?!

I was far from a physical specimen, but I’d recently completed my Personal Training qualifications, and had been working out regularly for a few years, so my body could hack it. Squash technique, movement efficiency and knowledge of the strategy of the game were what I needed to learn. And learn it I did, the hard way. Through battle, through frustration, through losing, through reflecting and through learning how to overcome each obstacle. I worked my way through the internal leagues at Coolhurst squash club and played every type of player you could imagine. The lob/ dropper, the cheater, the ‘everything’s a no-let’er, the old codger, the young whippersnapper, the 110% power drive every timer and the unorthodox trickster who hits the ball in the most unexpected places even unbeknownst to them (oh wait, that was me!).

Time to learn

I spent hours and hours at Loughborough University trying to get better at this sport, and to some degree it worked. Sneaking into the bottom of the third team in my first year, then into the second team in my second year, and finding a place in the first team in my final year. I like to think that the fact I was President of the squash club in my final year had nothing to do with my placement in the first team, and that I had 100% earned it, but recollections vary…

Leaving university at the end of 2012, my squash ability remained pretty stagnant for the next 4 years, until I met Paul Carter (Carts). I had started coaching at Coolhurst, where squash had begun for me, and Carts was joining the club as Head Coach. Not only is Carts a highly renowned and gifted player and squash coach, he is also an uncommonly kind man. He took me under his wing as a coach, and also took my personal game a few steps further enabling me to win the Coolhurst Club Championships for the first time in 2017 (later to be regained once more in 2022 and again in 2025*).

*Oh wait, that’s next year..

Fast forward to October 2023…

My SquashLevel was 9,424. I felt ‘better’ than this, but I just didn’t seem able to increase my level. I decided that I needed to make some changes.

4 tools to improve your ability and increase your SquashLevel

The changes I made allowed me to increase my SquashLevel by over 3,000 SquashLevels from 9,424 to 12,508. I put this increase down to 4 things:

A weekly squash lesson - time just for me, to focus on my game and improve my ability. Taking the time to work on those biggest areas in my game that would lead to improvement (quality hitting at the back, movement efficiency, and confidence attacking the ball).
A complete physical programme for squash - finding the right balance between strength training, match play, on-court squash training and additional cardio.
Weekly solo practice, minimum 20 mins without fail - working on the areas that are most important for the next match (most often, a quality length, confidence on the volley, and some drop practice).
An intense focus on the matches that count - this includes proper nutritional, physical and mental preparation before matches, tactical preparation and knowing what I need to achieve on the scoreboard to increase my SquashLevel, and reflecting honestly about what went well and what I need to improve for the next match.

Let’s break these down a little and allow me to explain why these 4 areas contributed to an increase of 33% of my SquashLevel, and how you can utilise these tools as well to great effect.

A weekly squash lesson

Why one every week? This was mainly down to my personal preference, and my determination to improve. It could have been a lesson every two weeks, but this needs to fit into your overall training environment.

Necessary components of your ‘squash week’ or ‘squash fortnight’ are:

Tough matchplay
Conditioned games (with a coach or in a small group)
Coaching input (something specific for you to develop)
Easier matchplay

Often, if you cannot fill all those elements yourself, a coach can help you fill in the gaps.

For me, without this weekly focus on me, thinking deeply and training hard on what I need to achieve to take my game to the next level, I don’t think I would have improved much. This was my time to entirely focus on improving my own game.

A complete physical programme for squash

For myself, I have tended to switch between training in the gym a bit more seriously, and training for squash a bit more seriously. For this year, I knew I had to reduce my strength training workouts and increase my on-court squash specific training and cardio. This meant a reduction down from 4 x gym sessions a week, with splitting the training days for muscle groups, to 2 x whole body strength sessions in the gym each week - with a much more functional twist to them.

Strength training is an area I believe in squash that is massively overlooked, and in my experience is only really taken seriously when it’s too late - when a player gets injured. This could be equally argued for undertaking a proper wam up, and developing a healthy regular stretching and mobility programme. If you’re reading this, chances are this is the one area you need to look into a little more seriously.

Sport-specific squash movements on court have no better off-court alternative I’m afraid. There is no avoiding ‘ghosting’, short sprints, or patterned squash movements if you want to improve your endurance and your power and explosiveness in your squash. In addition to this though, having a great cardiovascular base is extremely important. I include one longer run each week, up to 10 or 12km, as a recovery run. Sometimes a faster and shorter 5km effort as well, depending on how much matchplay I have in a week. You should consider making sure you get enough recovery in-between your squash matches and runs if you’re looking to include running as part of your regular training.

Weekly solo practice

This will not be the first time you have heard me talk about the benefits of solo practice, and it won’t be the last. I find that ‘solo practice’ is like the ‘eat less, move more’ slogan in the weight loss and fitness industry. Everyone knows exactly what they need to do, it’s just the doing part that we can’t quite get over the line.

Including 20 mins or even 10 minutes of solo practice into your training week will help your shot consistency, accuracy and comfort on the ball in a way that little else will.

It’s very common for someone I am coaching to hit the ball very smoothly after 10 minutes of moving around in a controlled environment, and to smash some fantastic drives connecting with the ball beautifully. Only for them to have a match two days later and the feedback to be ‘oh Steve, it all went to pot, it’s so different when under so much pressure’. Now as well as training at a higher intensity, including conditioned games with some pressure and still focussing on the technical aspects of hitting cleanly, solo practice is what is going to help you keep hitting the ball smoothly for your matches!

An intense focus on the matches that count

I will break this section into 3 parts:

What are matches that count?
How can I prepare myself best for my match and learn most from how I play?
SquashLevels - what is it, how does it work, and how do I increase my level?

What are the matches that count?

Depending on what level of squash you play at, an important match for you could be playing Jerry every Wednesday - where there is no audience, and no chance of improving your SquashLevel as the result won’t be submitted, but this makes it no less important as Jerry has beaten you for the last 3 Wednesdays! For me, as my objective was to increase my SquashLevel, matches that count were the team matches that I would play each Thursday night for Newport Squash Club.

How can I prepare myself best for my match and learn most from how I play?

I had experimented with the best time to eat, how much to eat and what too eat and had settled on a portion of wholewheat spaghetti with a light dusting of grated cheese approximately 2.5hrs before my match start time. Staying hydrated throughout the day was also incredibly important. Ensuring that I had lighter day of exercise the day before so that my Oura ring and Whoop strap were happy with me and gave me good recovery scores for the day of the match. A massive contributor to this was the quality of sleep I achieved the night before. I found that managing my stress levels and the conversations I had in the run up to the match was an important factor in allowing me to play my best.

I would take notes on my phone as to what I was aiming to achieve in my match, and answer feedback questions in my notes section on my phone which would instruct my next training session and help feed into the bigger picture for my improvement. I later developed a Squash Match Analysis sheet which I now use, which forms a big part of my new Squash Performance Blueprint course.

SquashLevels - what is it, how does it work, and how do I increase my level?

SquashLevels is a website that attributes each player with a certain number of points based on their performance against other players. It is an internationally recognised standard for comparing ability across all levels of squash play, from the complete beginner starting squash with a level of 50 points or so, all the way up to the current world number 1 (at the time of writing, 31st December 2024) Diego Elias with a point score of 100,006.

As you play more games of squash, and the results get inout into SquashLevels, your level increases or decreases based on your performance, and gets more accurate the more games you play. The basic premise of the system is that if you play better than ‘expected’ your level with go up, and if you play worse than ‘expected’ your level will go down. More on this shortly.

Some basic examples from my matches:

Example 1 - I was expected to lose to Tayne 3-2, with the point score in games being 11-9. I managed to lose 3-1, and didn’t quite get that close in each game that I lost, so my level decreased by 1.1% as below.

Example 2 - I was expected to beat Joel 3-0, with an expected point score of 11-7 or so per game. As I managed to prevent Joel from winning that many points, my level increased by +3.8%.

A note on expected outcome

If you pay the £2.99 for the premium access to SquashLevels, as I do, then you can research your opponent ahead of time and see what the algorithm predicts your expected outcome to be by clicking on ‘compare with me’ when selecting your opponent.

Made up example:

Stephen Thompson is due to play Diego Elias (the current World Champion), that’s roughly 12,000 points vs 100,000.

SquashLevels puts the expected outcome as 3-0 to Diego, with the point score expected to be 3-11 per game. This is incredibly generous to Stephen, as there is no way he would achieve 3 points per game against the world number one. But the algorithm predicts that Diego will have some fun and play down a little when the gap in ability is so large.

If Stephen gets an average of 6 points per game, and loses 3-0 then his level would increase by a bit. If he manages to get a whole game or more then his level will shoot up a lot!

Diego manages to beat Stephen 11-3, 11-2, 11-1, then Stephen’s level will go down, and Diego’s level would go up, as he performed better than expected.

Whether Stephen’s level increases by 0.5% or as much as 5% depends on how much better than expected he plays. The same is true for a -0.5% or a -5% movement in his level.

How I use SquashLevels before a match

I login to SquashLevels, search for my opponents name, click ‘compare with me’ below:

Then, helpfully, SquashLevels gives me this ‘Expected Results’ box for my opponent Yoav Caspi here.

Expected score for Stephen Thompson vs Yoav Caspi

For some people, they may find this approach unhelpful. I however find it useful to aim for a specific number of points to either allow, or prevent my opponent from achieving each game. SquashLevels also has the added bonus of inputting results to see how your level will change once you put the results in. It looks like this below. I use this to give myself something to aim for. My expected result against Yoav here as above is that I would win 3-0 and Yoav will achieve an average of 4.3 points per game. I would input a result of 3-0 with a game score of say, 11-3, 11-3, 11-2 and see if I can get to that, or even better to improve my level.

SquashLevels ‘what if?’ functionality can be quite useful

Conclusion & next steps

I used the power of a weekly squash lesson, a well thought out physical conditioning plan, weekly solo practice and keen attention to detail with looking at my squash game and what was required to improve my level in order to accelerate my SquashLevel by 3,000 in 12 months. I intend to use the very same tools to boost me up by an additional 3,000 points into the 15,000’s in 2025. I am excited to see what all of you can achieve this coming year too! :)

Stephen