Dom Pannell's Blog

Whack and waddle

that's how I described my style of squash-playing to a colleague yesterday. I think it's pretty accurate.

I took squash lessons when I was about ten and attended the first four or five classes until I realised that if I didn't turn up, nobody would notice that I was spending the time (and my pocket money) on the Space Invader machine in the local sports centre.

So began a video-gaming career that lasted until I was old enough to get served beer in pubs (about 14 years old) and I found I had a different need for cash. My drinking career is highly successful and ongoing, hence my renewed interest in squash.

The few lessons I had in squash taught me enough technique to be marginally better than utterly crap, but I lack the fitness to be any good.

Squash is now featuring prominently in my current campaign to lose weight and get fit.

The plan is to play three times a week and I have a personal goal of being able to run round the court in two months' time. Right now it really is whack and waddle - last night's game against Paul proving this to be the case.

In the end I won last night, but it was a totally different game to what I've been used to playing Sven. Sven is a better squash player than I am and he wins because we both play with a similar style - in short we both know that a half-decent shot to an open space will be enough to win the point because neither of us is quick enough round the court to reach the ball. Consequently, the rallies tend to be rather short affairs.

Playing Paul is very different, because he's considerably fitter than Sven or me. As a result, he attempts to play every shot and more often than not, he reaches it. Consequently, I have to run more to win points. I'm aching today as a result of longer rallies.

I reckon that by forcing me to get off my fat ass, Paul is going to help me improve my fitness (although I will still need to use the dreaded CV machines if I'm seriously going to lift my stamina level). Hopefully this will have an effect when I play against Sven and I'll start beating him (I got very close on Wednesday - leading 2 : 0 and 4 : 2 before finally losing 5 : 4) and force him to raise his game.

Posted by dompannell at August 11, 2007 11:38 AM