Cadence.

Major snaps to Ya-Ting for the last post :)

Practice went great tonight! We did a drill involving rail shots and deep back-court drives. Jane and I tripped over each other a little but everyone's definitely improving. My abs are a little sore though from ab work we did :(

I think the real beauty of Squash and what makes it so challenging is that you can fix one thing about what you're doing and then simultaneously forget to do another thing. For instance, you'll remember "Hey, I gotta get back to the T" or "Hey, I gotta keep my racquet up so I don't double-pump [having to re-lift your racquet to prepare for the shot -- basically a waste]" and then you'll forget to:

a) move out of the way of your opponent

b) watch the ball

c) anything else basically

And that's the beauty of it! It's a game where you're forced to multitask. As a Track and Field runner in high school, all I had to remember was:

1- lace my shoes so I don't trip

2- get on the rack

3- run run run

4- finish (and fall over)

Pretty basic stuff. Squash is an entirely different species. Squash asks that you get on the court, move the ball away from your opponent, keep the ball for yourself, keep your racquet up, move to the T, use proper footwork, etc. etc. Squash is a demanding species. But it's also one of the most amazing sports ever created. I played at ClubSport this weekend with some of the avid Squash players down there. I talked to one of the players (Ajay) about Squash and he commented on how Squash can be difficult to learn at first. "But once you do learn it," he added, "it's addictive!"

There's something about that moment in Squash when the ball falls into perfect cadence with your racquet and you time your shots so perfectly that you know the exact sound the ball will make when it hits the wall. There's that time when you fall into total rhythm with your game and your whole body mechanism works towards pushing that ball away and -- whaddaya know -- you end up winning the point. That's perfection.

And that's what makes Squash so worth it.