Squash Tips - BREATHING: RESPIRATION AND FOCUS

Being oxygenated it's amazing! why? because you have the power to think , Analise and act but yet you don't have so much mental energy that you find yourself having monologues while in a squash match. (this is the worst thing you can do because triggering some bad emotional response will decrease your performance)


Letting your stream of consciousness become full of delusional and sad things will only make you derail from the path of glory that you should be taking in order to win a squash match.


Quality Breathing implemented in a squash match will give you an enormous edge on your opponents.
A way to improve your breathing in general consist of breathing 20 minutes a day while making the conscious effort of  inhaling into your stomach using your diaphragm.
This way you get to have more oxygen , you use more lungs and your respiration rhythm can be slowed.

The next step is training while practising this kind respiration.

The best way is to make a shot every time you exhale.

It should be your shot to match your breathing and not the opposite but that's hard so you can start by consciously exhaling by the mouth when taking a shot and consciously inhaling  while on the T.
Another good thing is to always make 2/3 heavy breaths before serving so that you have more oxygen for the rally. The point is that you keep breathing during the match, never play without breathing.

The paradox of focus 

Now a good paradox for you, breathing hardly down the diaphragm when playing squash will make you feel your head blurry.  Yet, it's the most efficient way to keep a good heart rate and a good oxygenation to the brain so that you can keep your focus (and most importantly  it will avoid you to blowout,like a red mask of blood).

In other words:
          it's better to be high and dazed that low with no energy.

The reason for this is that we have many analysis making structure in our nervous system many of which don't need our conscious effort to be used while planning complicated motorial action-plan.
This means that instead of worrying about what can you do wrong during the game you should simply trust in your faculties and that all the training you put into this game will surely pay.