Thanks Tim Cowell
Nailing Tournament Preparation
With plenty of major events on the horizon, getting your preparation right is key. Speaking from personal experience here as well!
The main event for me is the Australian Masters and Trans-Tasman events coming up in early September. As much as I wish I were still in my 20s, I’m not, and with a history of a few major injuries, picking which tournaments to play and not to play is a tricky choice sometimes.
The short version is; to try and get on top of a foot problem flaring up, we booked a cortisone injection which was about a week out from the WA Open. A late call up into the PSA event fast tracked this. The result wasn’t amazing, the lungs suffered, and the shot selection was a bit iffy.
Next up was the National Teams championships shortly after. What I wasn’t counting on was a flare up of a different issue, resulting in a de-loaded week. I found myself moving okay but suffering late in games. Competitive to hang in there, but not strong enough to get the last few points in the match. The other part that suffered was the match hardened mindset that players need to compete. I wasn’t as prepared to dig in for long enough as I normally would. A sign of lack of confidence in my conditioning played a big part in that.
Squash is a fascinating sport in that we can do lots of different activities for cross training, but nothing can replace the conditioning of body and mind that playing matches offers. During COVID I thought I was keeping fairly fit running 3-4 times per week, until I found myself having to retrain muscles on the squash court because the movements were completely different!
We saw glimpses of it with some of the juniors at the AJCs last year, you could tell those who lacked match play leading up as their decision making suffered under pressure, letting slip winnable matches as a result. This year we will try to get as many matches under their belts during September as possible to be match ready.
In my recent situation, I had undertrained. Another player at the event had overtrained. There are a number of phases in training and one key phase is the pre comp phase. This includes your heaviest workload phase – lactate tolerance and your taper phase. The lactate tolerance is maximum effort, 1:1 ratio. If you run for a minute, you get one minute rest, and if you ran hard enough, you certainly need it!
The taper phase is an opportunity for your body to recover and freshen up. From there you can then start to focus on your speed and feeling light and nimble on court. This should be taking place about 2-3 weeks out from major competition. Spend too long in a lactate phase and your body will feel fit, but you will probably feel like your feet are stuck in concrete.
For anyone preparing for the Masters in September or the Juniors in Early October, there are a few options on the calendar worth playing to make sure you get some tournament match play under your belt. Pennants is good, but you only play one match, and you get a week until your next one. Tournaments mean a match later that day or the next day. Can you get the job done or are you holding back to keep something in reserve for the next match?
So, my key take aways for this month are:
- Start thinking about your preparation for the tournament now. Can you squeeze an extra session in here or there to improve some fitness.
- Can you play a few tournaments leading up to get into a tournament frame of mind?
- Can you get some practice matches at worst case to keep the mind sharp?
- It’s okay to lighten the training fitness load as you get closer to a main event. Still play your matches at high intensity, just cut back the times of your ghosting so that you get maximum rest in between each working set.
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