Bo Henriksens’s Weblog

Being a sportsnut, I enjoy trying sports that I haven’t tried before, so a week ago I tried Squash for the first time. Squash is very similar to Racquetball. After an hour of playing, with a friend who like me had not tried it before, we came to the conclusion that it was a fun, physical form of exercise. In that first hour we worked up a good sweat, and burned a lot of calories, and that was just with a beginners ball, more on the difference between balltypes later. So after this initial adventure into the world of Squash, my friend and I decided we would play more, so we went out and bought racquets and balls, balls for experienced players.

So this morning we were going to play squash for the second time, this time with our own racquets and balls. During the warmup we quickly found out that these new balls bounced less than the beginners ball we first played. This means that you have to hit the ball harder, to get it to bounce back from the walls. And as we soon found out, when the ball doesn’t bounce far back, you will have to run more. During this second our of play, we both got the grasp of the game and the new ball more and more, and our rallies became longer, sometimes up to almost 20 strokes. This drastically increased the amount of physacal exercise of the game, but at the same time also increased the fun of the game. So more fun and better exercise, its a win-win situation.

So to anyone considering trying a new sport, I can higly recommend squash. I know I will be playing it a lot more. I will even give you two pieces of advice for beginners. First, use a pair og tennis, badminton or handball shoes, do not use a pair of running shoes, you risk ruining the shoes and tearing your feet apart. Second, do not try making fancy strokes against the back wall, unless you got the skills, you risk hitting yourself in the eye, which is really unpleasent. Believe me, I’ve tried