We’re delighted to have SquashSkills regular Lee Drew back week with us again this week, bringing us his diverse experience as a coach, referee consultant, and PSA TV co-commentator. He’s put together a great new series for us, taking a look at ‘playing with threat’.
Lee comes from an elite playing background, establishing himself within the top 40 of the PSA world rankings as a professional player at the peak of his career. This playing experience, along with the insight and expertise he brings with him from all of the other areas of the game he’s involved with, means his technical breakdown videos are always an excellent resource.
Lee’s latest playlist explores the concept of playing with threat and the benefits that this can have on your play. The key principles are broken down in depth, to help give you a better understanding of the importance of this element of technique in respect to your drives, drops, and kill shots.
The videos go into greater depth looking at the benefits of getting your racket up above the ball, and how you can create doubt in your opponent’s mind as to what shot is coming next. Developing the ability to optimally execute your attacking shots while playing with purpose and intent, can really add another dimension to your game.
We’ve included some clips from top PSA matches throughout the playlist, to help give you a working demonstration of some of the concepts that Lee discusses. Seeing how elite professional players use threat in their shots, helps give you the perfect model to envision when you’re practising the techniques described in the videos.
The aim of this blog is to give you some ideas of sessions you can use to start exploring the fundamentals of playing with threat and help you effectively develop your abilities to be able to bring this skill into your matches. We’ve put together a selection of both solo and pairs sessions for you to incorporate into your training, built around the critical technical points that Lee introduces.
Watch through the videos from the playlist and then click through the links to the sessions below to check them out, and discover how a deeper understanding of playing with threat can really add a whole new facet to your game.
Put it into practice
This session consists of a variety of solo drills that you can practise on-court by yourself.
This pairs session contains a mixture of pairs drills and routines to practise, to help you develop your ability to play with threat within a realistic rally-based situation.
Being stronger and more stable when approaching the ball can really help you better play with threat in your game. Check out this strength/stability challenging session, to help you build those solid physical foundations.
Related content
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Controlling the pace with Nick Matthew
In this series, 3-time world champion Nick Matthew gives his analysis of how to control the pace of a game.
Racket head speed with Lee Drew
In this series, Lee drew defines what racket head speed it, and how to implement it on each specific shot in the game.
Let us know how you get on with the sessions, we’d love to hear your feedback!
Haven't seen the full series yet?
In this brand new series, Lee Drew explains what it means to create ‘threat’ in your shot and outlines a number of subtle ideas that allow you to add new dimensions to your game.
Watch now