Quick Answer: Two players in the same rally can cover very different distances depending on how efficiently they return to the T and how early they read the shot. Extra steps, extra direction changes, and stopping and restarting rather than flowing all add up. The fix is not more fitness - it is a shorter route to the ball and an earlier split step.

Same rally. Same twelve shots. You are hands on knees and they are already walking back to serve.

It is tempting to file that under fitness and go and do more running. Sometimes that is right.

More often, you covered noticeably more ground than they did to play the same points, and no amount of conditioning closes a gap that is being created by your route rather than your engine.

Where does the extra distance come from?

Three places, in roughly this order of magnitude.

Not returning to the T properly. The T is the shortest average distance to every point on the court, which is the entire reason it exists. A player who recovers to a position a metre and a half off the T after each shot is not just badly placed - they are adding that distance to every subsequent movement, in both directions. Over a twelve-shot rally, a metre and a half of poor recovery becomes a very large number.

Late reading, which means indirect routes. If you start moving after the ball has been struck, you are chasing. If you start moving as your opponent commits to the shot, you are intercepting. Chasing produces curved, corrective paths; intercepting produces straight ones. A curved path to the front left corner can be several metres longer than a straight one.

Stopping and restarting instead of flowing. Acceleration is expensive. A player who comes to a complete stop, then accelerates, then stops again is paying the acceleration cost repeatedly. A player who moves through the ball and lets the recovery flow out of the shot pays it far less often.

And a fourth, smaller one: hitting shots that make you run. A loose shot to the middle gives your opponent the whole court to move you around in. Some of the extra distance you covered was created by your own shot two rallies ago.

Why does this matter so much more in squash than other sports?

Because the recovery periods are short and the direction changes are constant.

In most racket sports there is a natural break between points that allows meaningful recovery. Squash has that too, and squash rallies are also longer, denser, and involve far more changes of direction per minute than almost any other sport.

Changes of direction are the expensive part. Running in a straight line is comparatively cheap; decelerating, changing direction, and reaccelerating is not. Squash asks for that roughly every second.

This is why squash fitness does not transfer neatly from running fitness, and why a player with an excellent running background can still be finished by the third game. The demand is repeated high-cost accelerations with incomplete recovery, and efficiency in those accelerations is worth more than aerobic capacity beyond a reasonable base.

It also means the gap compounds. Being ten percent less efficient does not cost you ten percent more effort - it costs you more, because the extra work happens in an already-fatigued state, and fatigued movement is itself less efficient. By the fourth game the gap in distance covered can be substantial and the gap in perceived effort much larger than that.

What Nobody Tells You About Moving Efficiently

The split step is where most of the efficiency lives and it is nearly invisible. A small hop landing just as your opponent strikes the ball preloads your legs and lets you move in any direction immediately. Without it, your first movement is a weight shift, which costs a fraction of a second and forces you to accelerate from static. That fraction of a second is what turns a straight route into a curved one.

Recovery starts before your shot finishes. Good players are already moving back as they complete the follow-through, and the movement is a continuation of the shot rather than a separate action. Players who finish the shot, pause to watch it, and then recover are adding a stationary moment to every single shot in the rally.

Watching your own shot is one of the most expensive habits in the game. It feels natural and it costs you the half second in which you should have been recovering. Play the shot and go - you will hear and feel whether it was good.

Facing the side wall on recovery beats facing the front. Standing square to the front wall on the T means turning before you can move sideways. A slightly open stance lets you push off directly.

And breathing is genuinely part of movement efficiency. Holding your breath through a shot, which nervous players do constantly, both reduces available oxygen and stiffens the trunk, making direction changes harder. Exhaling on contact is a small habit that shows up in the fourth game.

How do you actually train this?

By practising routes rather than fitness, and by getting feedback on where you actually are.

Ghosting with a focus on the T, not on speed. Move to each corner and back to a marked T, and make the marker the standard rather than how fast you go. Most people ghost quickly and sloppily, which trains the exact habit that is costing them.

Film a game. This is the single most useful thing available and hardly anyone does it. Watching yourself for two minutes reveals recovery habits you have never been aware of, and it is far more convincing than being told.

Practise the split step deliberately. Condition games where you must land the split step as your opponent hits, with no requirement to win the point. It feels artificial for about a week and then becomes automatic.

Play length and work on shot quality. Every shot that lands tight to a side wall or deep in a corner limits your opponent’s options and shortens your next movement. Shot quality is movement economy, and this is the connection most club players never make.

Train repeated efforts rather than steady running. Short intervals with short recoveries match the demand. Court sprints with 15 to 20 seconds of work and a similar recovery are far more specific than a steady five kilometres.

And take the base fitness seriously too - none of the above removes the requirement. It just means that if you have a reasonable base and are still finished before your opponent, the problem is upstream of your conditioning.

FAQ: Squash Movement Questions, Answered

How much more distance can a less efficient player actually cover?

Studies of court movement have found significant differences between playing standards for the same rally length, and the differences are large enough to be decisive over a match. You do not need a number to act on it - a filmed game makes the gap obvious.

Is it worth working on movement if I only play once a week?

More so, not less. Movement efficiency is a skill that improves with attention rather than volume, and a once-a-week player has no chance of out-conditioning a better mover. It is the best available return on limited court time.

Why do I get more tired against a weaker opponent?

Because weaker players hit less predictable shots, which makes them harder to read early, and because loose shots land in awkward places that require more direction changes. It is a real phenomenon and not a sign that you were not trying.

TL;DR:

• Two players in the same rally can cover very different distances - poor T recovery, late reading, and stop-start movement are the three sources.
• Direction changes are the expensive part of squash, which is why running fitness transfers poorly.
• The split step and recovering as you finish the shot are where most efficiency lives, and both are nearly invisible.
• Film a game, ghost for accuracy rather than speed, and treat shot quality as movement economy.

If you are exhausted and your opponent is not, the honest first question is not how fit they are. It is how far each of you actually ran.