“The SquashMind podcast interviewing the greatest minds and thinkers about the psychology of competing to the maximum in high performance sport”

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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.

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I'm absolutely delighted to have on the show today, Daryl Selby. I feel lucky enough to call him one of my friends. We toured the world a lot together. He obviously reached a lot higher ranking than me, but we shared some cool tournaments and some cool times together. So, it's really cool to be able to have a chat with someone of Daryl’s caliber, but also just an excuse to have a chat with a friend that I've not caught up with for a while. And hopefully this comes across on the conversation. It's nice and free flowing, it takes lots of different directions and we just have a good time having a good chat about his career, looking back at a few things, looking back at some really key moments in his career and a very different way to look at the mental side of the game, not your traditional style. He goes into a very honest open chat about his structure, his routine or lack thereof, and how this actually helped contribute to his mindset of his game. He talks a bit about how to play to your style and know yourself and that's a really powerful message. He comes at it from a different angle. It's not your traditional model of mental toughness, but boy, he was known as one of the most dogged players out there. If you watch him, he appears on “shot of the month” a lot of the time and also “rally of the decade”. He’s got an amazing catalogue of entertaining skills. So naturally talented the way he hits the ball, smooth, great around the court, but the underlying fact is that he was dogged, he was determined, he never gave up. He had that real grit, that real determination and this comes across in the conversation. I hope you're able to extract a few things from the talk. Just a few little stats about Daryl. He's reached the world ranking high position of world number 9 in 2010. In 2011, in one of his biggest titles, he won the British Nationals, beating Nick Matthew, who at the time, Nick Matthew was world champion and world number 1. He goes into a lot of detail and a really great story of how he thought he won this event because of a poem from his sister, which is really sweet and really enlightening when you listen to it. Another couple of notable events; he reached the semi-finals of the Tournament of Champions in 2012. In 2019 he captained England at the World Team Championships. A very proud Englishman, he wears his heart on his sleeve when he's playing for his country, and he scored some really big wins in the England shirt. You can tell that he loves playing for England, and it's obviously a very different dynamic. I hope you enjoy this really wide ranging varied in depth friendly conversation with myself and Daryl Selby.

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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

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Welcome to the next instalment in the SquashMind Podcast series. Today I'm being joined by Jenny Duncalf. Jenny is one of the greatest players that England has ever produced. She reached world number two in December 2019. She's won ten professional tour titles. She's got 112 caps for England, which is phenomenal. She's also managed to get three silver medals at the Commonwealth Games, only being stopped on most occasions by Nicol David. She was in a generation where Nicol David was playing and arguably Nicol David was one of the greatest players to play the game. So for Jenny to become world number two and be slightly behind Nicol David, is nothing to be sniffed at. As a junior, she was the European Junior champion and she won two individual European titled as a senior as well. She managed to get two British National titles and was also part of the winning England Ladies team at the World Team Championships in 2016. She had a real good period and we talk about it in the podcast a little bit more. In 2009, she won three big titles back to back, which ultimately got her to world number two, the Soho Square Open in Egypt, the US Open and the Qatar Classic. She lost in in the World Open final in 2011 to her nemesis Nicol David. We go into quite a cool discussion about her trying to compete with Nicol and how this was. The conversation is really broad, really wide ranging and one that I think you'll find super insightful. It's so great to hear how she opens up. She is very honest about the mental side of the game, and we go into a lot of discussion around what it was like and her environment, growing up, and being coached by her father in law David Pearson, who was also the national coach in England and was the coach who produced Nick Matthew, Laura Masara, Peter Nicol also. So, you know, having someone like David as your father in law is going to put you in a good place to start a career. It's just such a cool conversation we got on really well and lots of little tips to take from what she has done in her career. She is currently the master of ceremonies for the PSA and she comes across brilliantly. She has been really well received in that. And she's also the junior Australian coach. She lives in Australia, in Brisbane, in particular with her partner, Rachel Grinham, who herself was a world number one. And we have a little discussion around how that was competing with someone you are in a relationship with and her philosophy around the junior squash in regard to Australia is insightful, really opening the mind and really got me to think a little bit about my philosophies and how things are going with the way I coach as well. She has such a wealth of knowledge being world number two, being playing for 17 years on the pro tour, winning loads of junior titles, number one in her age group, all the way through her junior ranks. And it's just a fun conversation. You can tell the passion and enthusiasm in her voice. She enjoys what she does massively and I hope you'll find a lot of takeaways and a lot of nuggets from this really insightful chat between myself and Jenny Duncalf. One small caveat, the sound recording is not great on this in the first 15 minutes of the podcast. There was quite a long delay. She was in Brisbane and I'm not sure if the distance had anything to do with it, but it gets a little bit easier as the podcast progresses, so hopefully you can stick with it because it's really insightful of what we talk about.

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