Intro

The speaker introduces himself as Andrew Kelly, a student at Lehigh University, and discusses the sport of squash. He explains that squash is a racket sport played on a four-walled court, similar to tennis against a wall instead of a net. The rules involve hitting the ball against the front wall and inside the inbound line, with the goal of making the ball bounce twice before the opponent can reach it or hitting the ball out of bounds. Squash is a low-cost sport that only requires a racket, ball, shoes, and a court. However, finding a place to play may require a membership at a squash or racquetball facility. The speaker also highlights the health benefits of squash, such as cardiovascular exercise and hand-eye coordination. He interviews Jeremy Budd, a squash coach, who explains that squash is a convenient sport as it only requires one other person to play and can be completed in about an hour. The speaker concludes by mentioning the social benefits of playing squash and encourages li Hello everybody and welcome. My name is Andrew Kelly and I'm currently a student at Lehigh University. Do you ever walk into your local gym and see this big square course labeled squash course and wonder, what is squash? Are we talking about the vegetable? Well if that's the case, you're not alone. Most people have never heard squash, while others have heard of the sport, but don't exactly know the rules. So in this episode, we'll take a look at the sport and discover some of the benefits of playing squash. Let's talk about some of the rules. The best way I'll describe the sport is basically tennis against a wall instead of a net. Just like tennis, squash is a racket sport that requires two players and instead of a tennis ball, squash uses a hollow rubber ball, which sounds like this when you hit it. Also, squash is played on a four-walled court instead of a traditional tennis court, which I'm sure you're all aware of. During a match, the two players alternate hitting the ball against the front wall and inside the inbound line. Each game is played to 11 points and 1 by 2 in a tiebreaker. To win a point, a player has to hit a shot that bounces twice before the opponent can get to it or force the other player to hit the ball out of bounds. To win a point, a player has to hit a shot that bounces twice before the opponent can get to it or force the other player to hit the ball out of bounds. A player can ricochet the ball off multiple walls, but it has to hit the front wall to stay alive. The winner of each point gets to serve the next time around. These rules are as basic as the squash rules get, and if I were to explain each and every rule, this would be an hour-long episode, so you're welcome. One of the best things about squash is that there isn't much equipment required to play. The only things that are required are a racket, a squash ball, shoes, and a court. Also, squash is relatively cheap compared to most sports. The average price of a squash racket is around $50, and the average cost of the ball is about $3. The only tricky part about playing squash is finding somewhere to play. Rarely will any community squash center be open for public use, so you will most likely need to get a membership somewhere. However, many places have courts, such as gym franchises like LA Fitness and other local squash and racquetball facilities. These aspects of squash make for low price and high physical activity, which is a great combination for most people trying to get in shape. Now, I know I just threw all this information at you, and you may be asking yourself, there are so many sports out there, why play squash? Since I think someone else would do a better job explaining why people should play squash, I wanted to bring on a special guest who may not be as special to you, but is very special to me. His name is Jeremy Budd, my high school squash and strength and conditioning coach. Aside from knowing a lot about squash, he also knows a lot about the human body. Mr. Budd, as I like to call him, is one of the best in his position in the country, and has worked on many physiological studies that have been published in publications such as the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and the Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology. On top of this, he was Assistant Director of Strength and Conditioning at Michigan State University and Yale University. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce Mr. Budd. Hey, thanks Andrew. How you doing? I hope all's well, and thanks for having me on. Yeah, of course. So how'd you get into squash? So, I did not grow up playing squash. I picked up squash in probably 2006, because what I've read about it, it was just a phenomenal cardiovascular sport, and I grew up playing hockey. And, you know, I'm an athlete, and I figured that, you know, if you're an athlete, go with hand-to-eye coordination skills of being a hockey player and having an implement in your hand could, you know, transfer over to the game of squash. And I picked it up, you know, being an athlete, and then, you know, just kind of slowly progressed from, you know, bottom of the barrel, you know, eventually up to, you know, one of the top players in Philadelphia for my age group. What would you say some of the health benefits are of playing squash? Without a shadow of a doubt, it's probably the most, you know, cardiovascular-intensive sport that you, you know, you can play. It's what's called an aerobic sport, which, you know, is great for all these benefits of heart health, bone health, you know, every possible cardiovascular benefit you get out of, you know, playing, you know, an hour of squash. Would you recommend learning squash? One of the greatest things, I think, about squash is, you know, most guys play team sports, so whether it's basketball, lacrosse, football, and, you know, once they're done playing those sports, it's really hard to get a pickup game of lacrosse or a pickup game of football because you need so many other people to play and organize it, and it just doesn't happen. The thing about squash is you just need one other person. So if you can find somebody that's around your same, you know, skill set and level, you know, you can have competitive games, you know, two, three, four times a week without having to organize, you know, a lot of people to play. So it's a convenient sport in that, and the other part of it is it doesn't take two, three hours to play. If you play good, good, hard squash, you can be on the court for, you know, no more than an hour, and you reap all these wonderful cardiovascular health benefits, and it's a lot less boring than getting on a treadmill for an hour, trust me. Aside from just the health benefits, there are also many social benefits to playing squash. Squash is one of those sports that requires another person to play against, and because of this, squash is an easy way to meet people or strengthen relationships by playing against some of your buddies. When I was a senior in high school, I, along with a few of my friends, would get up at 5.30 in the morning almost every day and play squash at 6 to get a quick workout in before school. Even though it sucked to wake up that early, we all had so much fun playing squash that we did not even care. Not only did it make our relationships with each other that much stronger, but we also got in very good shape playing it. Well, that's all I have for you today. I'd like to thank all of you for listening to this episode, and I hope that some of you may even give squash a try, given that you just listened to me talk about it for this long. I also want to give a huge shout out to Mr. Buck for taking the time out of his day to give you all some really important information about squash. I hope you all have a great rest of your week.