SportMind

Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

Grab Your Copy Of The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

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He’s a four-time World Champion.

He’s spent more than 230 weeks as the World Number One.

And yet, behind the trophies and rankings lies something rarer — a depth of character, calm, and perspective that defines Ali Farag far more than his dominance ever could.

Squash is unlike any other racket sport — two players sharing the same space, battling inside a glass box under bright lights in iconic locations. It’s fast, physical, and fiercely personal.

And yet, within that intensity, Ali brought something rare — a mindful precision, a calm within the chaos.

An ability to play with freedom and humility, even while carrying the weight of expectation.

In this conversation, we go beyond the numbers.

We explore the mind behind the mastery.

Ali opens up about the invisible side of high performance —

how he relates to nerves rather than resists them,

how he carries the burden of expectation without being crushed by it,

and how he stays grounded through both triumph and adversity.

He takes us back to his early days in Cairo, to his formative years at Harvard with mentor Mike Way,

and into the unseen process that built one of the most complete athletes our sport has ever known.

We talk identity, composure, ego, acceptance, and the art of performing when things don’t go to plan.

And in the end, we touch on legacy — what it truly means to measure success not by trophies or rankings,

but by who you become through the pursuit itself.

This is a conversation about mastery, humility, and the quiet courage it takes to remain yourself in a world of expectation.

This is Ali Farag.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aliamrfarag/

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Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

Welcome to the next instalment of the SquashMind Podcast. Today, I’m joined by Jenny Duncalf — one of England’s all-time greats. Jenny reached World No. 2 in 2009, won 10 PSA titles, earned 112 caps for England, and claimed multiple European, national, and Commonwealth medals during an incredible 17-year career. Competing in the Nicol David era, she was one of the few who consistently pushed the game’s greatest to her limits.

In this episode, we dive into Jenny’s mindset, her experiences competing at the top, and her reflections on the mental side of elite sport. We talk about being coached by her father-in-law, David Pearson — one of the most successful coaches in the game — and her current roles as PSA’s Master of Ceremonies and Junior National Coach for Australia.

It’s an honest, wide-ranging chat about pressure, purpose, and perspective — packed with lessons for players and coaches alike. (Note: the audio has a slight delay early on, but it clears up quickly — and it’s well worth sticking with!)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

Grab Your Copy Of The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

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Well, I hope you enjoyed that first part of my conversation with Sarah-Jane Perry. I'm not sure how you felt but I felt really inspired going through those matches with her, really getting into that detail about her mindset and her mental state I was taking a lot of notes and a lot of inspiration from what she spoken about. So, I hope you enjoy part two. We get into more of the detailed analysis about her mind, some of the practical things she does to foster and cultivate this strong mental toughness. She admits she is not necessarily the most physical play on the tour, so she must make up for it in other ways. Yes, we know how good her racket work is, how great she strikes the ball, how well she can put the ball away, but a massive contributing part to her success must be the mental side of the game, and she talks about this. So, I hope you enjoy this second part of my chat with Sarah-Jane Perry

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

Grab Your Copy Of The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

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I'm welcoming Sarah-Jane Perry to the SquashMind Podcast series. In this episode we have had to split the episode into two parts where we got into such a great conversation, got into some real depth about her mindset and really analysed almost match by match her success in the Black Ball Open in Egypt, where it was a first win in a world title Gold event. She just played a phenomenal tournament. Everything came right. You’re in for a real treat in this one, I believe, and just really getting into the deep mindset about how she felt she won the title and all her training up until this point.

Sarah Jane is currently the English number one lady on the PSA tour. She hails from Birmingham in the UK and she turned pro in 2011. As a junior she ended up winning the European under 19 title as well as the British under 19 title in 2009, and she currently has two senior British National titles. If we fast forward a little bit, in 2013 she was part of the successful England Ladies team that won the European Championships, but later in 2013, she had to miss the remainder of the season due to back injury. She was also part of the successful England Ladies team, winning the world Championships in 2014 in Niagara, which was phenomenal considering the Egyptian opposition and one of the highlights of a career. She got selected for Team England and debuted at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, where she won a silver medal in the individual event, reaching the final and eventually just losing out to Joelle King in that final. As I've just mentioned, she won the Black Ball title and it's just so great to understand what she went through and the emotions all around it. She’s also reached a career high number five in the world and so far recorded eleven tour titles.

As I said, this chat gets split into two parts because we go into so much detail in the first part around the Black Ball event and then in the second part of the interview in the chat, we get a lot more into some of the practical things that she did for her mind, for her mental state, how she's cultivated this and how she looks like she's setting herself up for some real big wins in the near future. We also discuss why she went the University route before turning pro and at one point it sounded like she wasn't going to pursue a squash career and look at her now, number five in the world, so I'm sure they're going to be a lot of things for you to extract out of this conversation. A lot of key bits that might resonate with you as players, and I really hope you enjoyed it because I certainly did in this two-part conversation with Sarah-Jane Perry.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

Grab Your Copy Of The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

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I am delighted to welcome today, Marwan ElShorbagy. He's reached number three in the world, and he’s won many titles and many matches. He is such an interesting player to watch, and this chat just takes so many cool directions and divergences. We go down a few interesting rabbit holes. We do touch on his older brother, Mohamed and how it has been competing with him, how it was playing the World Open final against your brother and the processes behind that. There's a couple of mutual friends we have, and I think you're really if for a treat in this episode. We obviously get serious as well, and we go deep with certain parts of the mind and his mindset and how it's evolved over different parts of his career. How coming to England at a young age really formed him and created arguably his mental toughness because of his environment and being under the tutelage of Jonah Barrington and having his brother Mohamed there. I think Mohamed was top ten in the world at 19 years old and Marwan is a few years younger than that. Having that as a training partner really lent itself to the mental side of the game. We talk about his relationship with Danny Massaro, who I've had the pleasure to have on the SquashMind podcast series before, and we had a great chat about the mind, and Danny was kind enough to put us together. We go on to talk about his visualisation process and what this entails. And as you're aware, SquashMind is really big on visualisation and understanding how to incorporate this into players games. He gives some really cool insights in regard to how he does some ghosting, and he really brings visualisation into that process, how he was visualising when he was at a bit of a low point in his career, how he was able to put things in place for himself to be mentally tougher, be mentally stronger at those moments. We also investigate his style of play. I put across what I thought and that he plays like that smart tactician, putting the ball in the right places. But he gives us the real insight into what his game is based on how he goes about his business, what he's really trying to prioritise and his role models as he was growing up and developing his game and the players he liked to emulate and look up to. There are so many nuggets that people can take away from this and so many little gems, getting inside the mind of a current pro, someone who's competing at the highest level of the game at the moment, really trying to push on to win some titles and get himself right at the top of the world rankings, which he is. But to get him arguably to number one in the world, to win a World Championship and the way he speaks, the way he talks, the way he looks at the game, he's a very wise thinker. You can tell he thinks about things a lot, and it's going to be fascinating to see what's going to happen over the next few years or so, how he's going to develop and how he's going to hopefully reach those top parts of the world. As you can probably tell from the chat coming up, it was fun with lots of laughter and I hope you enjoy this deep dive into the mindset of Marwan ElShorbagy.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

Grab Your Copy Of The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

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Amanda Sobhy is a trailblazer in American squash — a former World No. 3 and U.S. No. 1 known for her explosive athleticism, charisma, and fearless style of play. As one of the sport’s most inspiring figures, Amanda has paved the way for the next generation, bringing energy, authenticity, and joy to every match she plays.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

Grab Your Copy Of The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

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Amanda Sobhy is a trailblazer in American squash — a former World No. 3 and U.S. No. 1 known for her explosive athleticism, charisma, and fearless style of play. As one of the sport’s most inspiring figures, Amanda has paved the way for the next generation, bringing energy, authenticity, and joy to every match she plays.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

Grab Your Copy Of The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

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Laura Massaro is a former World Champion and World No. 1 squash player, widely regarded as one of England’s greatest competitors. Known for her grit, discipline, and tactical brilliance, Laura’s journey reflects the mindset of a true champion — combining resilience, self-belief, and an unshakable commitment to excellence.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

Grab Your Copy Of The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

---------------------------

Laura Massaro is a former World Champion and World No. 1 squash player, widely regarded as one of England’s greatest competitors. Known for her grit, discipline, and tactical brilliance, Laura’s journey reflects the mindset of a true champion — combining resilience, self-belief, and an unshakable commitment to excellence.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

Grab Your Copy Of The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

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Stuart Armstrong is a Scottish professional footballer known for his composure, creativity, and consistency in midfield. Having represented both club and country at the highest level, he brings a thoughtful perspective on performance, mindset, and what it takes to stay sharp in elite sport — on and off the pitch.

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