The Best 3 Conditioned Games for Squash
Everyone will have their favourite conditioned games, if you’ve spent time trying to improve your game. As a coach, along with solo practice, I can’t recommend conditioned games with another player more highly!
They are such an important part of your progress, but they are so often overlooked.
In this brief article, I’m going to outline the 3 Best Conditioned Games you can play with another person, or two people. I’ll justify why I think they are the best, what coaching elements you can look at in each one, and how you can add 1 or 2 options to each condition to make them EVEN MORE interesting - or to focus on a particular aspect of your game that you’re trying to improve.
In 3rd Place … we have the ‘Alley or Channel Game’
How to get started:
As you can see from the diagram, you are only allowed to play in that alley or channel of the court. You can start by serving normally, or just chucking the ball in from the T.
Coaching benefits:
Great condition to work on your straight line hitting
You can adapt the routine to encourage a good length before attacking short
Length hitting is your brad and butter in squash, without it, you will come unstuck very quickly in a match
Options to add:
You can only play above the service line + if you’re in front of your opponent (closer to the front wall), you can play the ball short. This works on the quality of your length, and your ability to hunt the volley to take the ball in short.
Pressure feed - only one player can play to the front of the court, the other player can play both at the front and the back.
You start with only at the back court, behind the short line, within the alley, and you can both only have 1 shot in front of the short line per rally.
In 2nd Place… we have ‘Boast & Drive’
How to get started:
The player at the back, player B in the diagram, starts with a boast. A 2-wall or a 3-wall boast is fine. Then player A, starting from the T (this is very important!), moves in to the front and plays a straight drive. Player B, who has recovered nicely to the T, then moves to the other back corner to return another boast.
Coaching benefits:
This is a great practice for training your movement both at the front and at the back of the court, if you discipline yourself to not ‘cheat’ the routine, by shuffling over to where you know the ball is going to be too early.
At the back - practicing different types of boast, the defensive 3-wall, the attacking 2-wall, or even the nick boast are all good options to try out.
At the front - working on your timing and rotation when getting to the ball and trying to achieve an attacking length.
Options to add:
Give player B at the back the option to straight drive as well as boast. This really puts player A under pressure, as they now need to cover both diagonals, for the boast and the drive. When player B drives, both players swap places, and now player A is at the back with those 2 options.
Give the player at the front the option to straight drop. See how this switches the advantage back to the player at the front, making it a harder decision for the player at the back to boast, knowing they will have to cover the drop shot too.
An advanced option to add would be a straight drop for the player at the back. This would be a fantastic opportunity to focus on those three shots from the back corners, the boast, the drive and the straight drop.
In 1st Place… we have (**drum roll please**) the ‘Back Court Game’
How to get started:
Start with a normal serve from player B, player A has to hit the ball behind the short line (the black line in the diagram). All shots need to bounce behind the short line for this conditioned game.
Coaching benefits:
The return or serve can be practiced in this routine, working on a quality length, or using the high cross-court lob to great effect.
Winning the length battle is crucial to your success as a squash player. This routine isolates the back court, and gives you a great opportunity to achieve height on the front wall to get your opponent behind you and recover to the T.
As you add options, this is where this conditioned game comes into it’s own and is the closest practice to a normal squash match that you can get. Giving the player who has achieved a great length an option to take the ball short is exactly what we want to see in a real game.
Options to add:
Give the player who manages to get in front of their opponent (closer to the front wall) the option to volley straight short.
Add a counter drop in response to the volley straight short shot.
For both players, the first bounce is now allowed in front of the short line, but the second bounce has to be behind the short line. **This is a personal favourite** This condition allows a more attacking style of playing for attacking drives straight & cross-court, and tends to increase the pace of play getting closer to a normal game.
There are also an abundance of additional options you may want to add depending on which area of your game you may want to improve (the cross-court nick, the drop from the back, the attacking boast etc).
To conclude
I hope you enjoy taking these away and giving them a go. I’d be interested to hear of other conditioned games that you think belong in my top 3?
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