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FG: Did the fact you had
to stop your career brutally gave you more bite into doing
something big?
I wouldn't put
it that way. That wasn’t the reason for Squashskills, just
cause I wanted to hang out with Jonathan Power or other
famous squash players, but achieving something in squash
having spent 20 years investing myself within squash, yes, I
guess that motivated me.
I think I took an opportunity when
I saw that no-one else was doing this and I think there was
a frustration as well that the fact my squash career got cut
short by my injury, that really gave me a desire to do
something in the squash world.
Because I put so much time and effort into it, and I wanted
to be up at the top of the game and compete against the top
guys and that never got to happen, so I guess by being able
to work with them in a slightly different capacity it just
gave me some comfort I guess.
FG: But with the
shifting in mobile technologies, you started rethinking the
whole site, didn't you?
Jethro:
Yes, i think we realised the limitations of the old site,
which was essentially just a lot of videos in a library that
people could dip in and out of.
And obviously the web has moved on, websites need to be
responsive and work on mobiles and everyone’s using apps. We
feel that we can give amateur players access to what the
pro’s are doing and we can put training programmes
and diary’s in place, help them construct sessions
and follow programmes that are constructed by some of
the best players in the world. We basically just realized
that we could offer a lot more and we needed to be more
sticky with out members, so get them to take Squashskills
out onto the court rather than just dipping in and out of
videos.
FG: So, it's more
"transportable"?
Yes, the new
website is all about getting people to watch a video, then
assess themselves and then go and do a routine or an
exercise that will then improve that and then go and do some
testing and use their test results and then come back onto
the site and follow another training programme and keep
edging forward whilst monitoring their progress.
That was the major driver into the new website, bringing the
tools that exist in the professional game to amateur players
and to also do something for coaches.
FG: You had a few negative vibes from some coaches, didn't
you?
To a certain
extent I think some of the coaches thought that we were
trying to compete against them and that’s never been the aim.
We’ve had a lot of "lower level" coaches come to us and
really appreciate what we’ve done because we’ve given them
new ideas. The new site gives coaches certain abilities to
log in and manage their players, view their test results and
set sessions up for them. We want to work with coaches now
and we’re creating this session function where we
want to have every single squash training exercise, routine
or condition game on there and then people can just create
playlists, have them on their phone and take them to the
squash court.
It really hit home when we put one of the Thierry Lincou
videos up of him doing a solo practice drill
where 6 half balls laid out on the court and he goes cross
court chip, cross court chip and takes it from side to side,
having never seen a solo practice like that in 20 years till
Peter filmed with Thierry!!
And then you speak to other guys and they’re all loving it
and going down to the courts and doing this new exercise
that no-one had ever really seen or heard of before. It’s
bits like that that keep it really exciting and we can
expose people to new ways of thinking with the new site.
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