What are the Intro to Squash classes like?

Squash is not a well-known sport (not yet anyway!). So of course what everyone wants to know is: what are the classes like? We’ll answer this at two levels: high-altitude, and then the specifics.

First, the basics

With both the once-weekly option or the twice-weekly schedule, in a about a month you'll:

• understand the sport: the rules, how it's played, the pro game, and the local amatuer community and its recreational leagues and tournaments
• be able to play successfully at a beginner level, and have the knowledge and understanding to continue to play and improve on your own without instruction
• be either more fit (minimum) or much more fit, at a functional level, balancing all the major athletic components (cardio, strength, balance, speed, agility, etc.)

High altitude view: our purpose is to use squash as a catalyst for individual potential

Yes, we love squash for nature of the game. But the mission of FunctionFlow is to use your time investment in squash as a vehicle for all the life benefits that squash opens up: health, energy, focus, calm, and community. So it’s great for your life. Even better, when making this investment in yourself, the return on this investment goes to everyone around you, whether it's family, friends, neighbors, or work.

So to keep laser-focused on our mission, we connect the actual class activities to this big picture, and we do this in various ways:

+ Some ways are pretty obvious. You're going to be running around and quickly changing direction and constantly lunging and turning and swinging a racquet. Clearly these are all part of an amazing full-body functional workout with positive health benefits, which organically improves energy levels.

+ The mental benefits of calm and focus come from the “flow state” that is characteristic of squash, and we do some explicit sports-based mental training around that.

+ And for community, we emphasize team training with a range of coaches and work with “cohort-based” groups where players support each other (i.e. it’s the same players in every class).

The great thing is that integrating these elements is actually the fastest, most effective ways to get better at a sport. So, win-win.

High altitude view, part 2: we're the serious side of FUN

A squash “rally” is the sequence of two players hitting a ball off the wall to each other until one player wins the point. Most people find that playing a squash rally produces focus, full engagement, and exhilaration (as you'll see!). There are various ways to emphasise this in class, and we use them all (task design, ball selection, etc.).

Now here’s one reason why fun is a serious thing: having fun keeps people in their fitness program. How many of us have resolved to start a new program, full of optimism, and then ended up quitting? (I’m raising my hand now.) Squash transforms exercise from A Chore into basically the most fun you’ve had all week.  So people stick with it, the results start happening, and then accumulating, and then pretty soon you can’t believe it when you look in the mirror, and it’s still the most fun you’ve had all week.  

The specifics: balance and integration of fitness and skill objectives

Your 60 minutes of Intro class is divided into various parts. Sometimes we do the parts on the same court, and sometimes the courts are different “stations” with a theme; each court has 2-3 players and we rotate courts. For example, one court will be used for movement, balance, and agility (get ready for tired glutes), another court for the traditional technical skills of your forehand and backhand, and a third court on game tactics and strategy. Of course all of these overlap tremendously, and indeed they are all integrated into gameplay at the end of each class (and indeed this integration is actually the entire session in the MatchPlay classes). And whatever the skill being taught, the overall focus is always on the functional fitness of body and mind moving through space to create geometry for a small black ball.

So that’s a little about what a class is like. See you on court!

‍