Squash
Move · High-Intensity · Movement, Typed Supps
The ball comes back off the front wall whether you are ready or not, which is what removes the rest.
Stage by stage
- Warm-up (Ball and tissue warmed): A cold ball barely rebounds and cold tendons tolerate deep lunging badly, so warming both is part of the game rather than optional.
- During a rally (Accelerate, brake, recover): Short two to three metre bursts with hard eccentric braking through the front leg place the cost in the accelerations, not the distance.
- As the rally continues (Work-to-rest ratio collapses): The walls keep the ball in play, so heart rate has no window to fall and effort sits near a sustained high fraction of maximum.
- Months later (Aerobic capacity improves): Tolerance for long high-intensity rallies builds over months, while the same near-continuous demand is what warrants a conditioning base first.
Muscles trained
- Primary: shoulders, forearms, calves
- Secondary: quads, heart, lungs
Intensity
12 METs (Squash (Taylor Code 530)).
Time to effect
- Weeks: Court movement economy and the ability to lunge deep for the ball without over-loading the front knee improve within the first few weeks.
- Months: Aerobic capacity and forearm and grip endurance for long, high-intensity rallies build over months, along with better tolerance of a near-continuous work-to-rest ratio.
Related supplements
Common myth
Squash burns more calories per hour than almost anything else, so it must be the healthiest cardio option. In reality: Squash is genuinely one of the highest calorie-burn sports per hour, but the flip side is very high relative cardiac strain from near-continuous high-intensity work with minimal recovery between points, which is why case reports of cardiac events cluster in unconditioned or older players taking it up without a fitness base.
More in High-Intensity
In the glossary
Sources