Believing without practice is dreaming, not believing

As the joke goes, two priests walk into a bar….you can fill in the rest, but the punchline has to be delivered perfectly to make the joke funny! What does this have to do with racquetball? Bear with me! I marvel at the lack of creativity sometimes when watching tournament and league play. What I mean by that is the serve goes in the same trajectory to the same place at the same speed over and over. Eventually the receiver of the serve will dial in and be able to handle the serve. Even if you can rip the serve …

The mental wars-the toughest opponent you will ever meet is the one in the mirror. Everyone has doubts, and everyone faces the fear of competing. That is what drives athletes to great performances but it also drives athletes to fail and sometimes even quit. Psychology 101 calls it the fight or flight response. When faced with adversity, those are your choices. How do you practice “hanging in there”? In practice subtly blow a few points and get behind. Then fight back. Always try to win a practice game with a perfect shot, not an opponent’s mistake. Find hard charging folks …

How do I get better faster? Here are two of my favorite drills to take an athlete up a level of play. One I touched in a recent post, hit a great drive serve. If you are practicing your great drive serve, you are probably also practicing your forehand (or in rare cases backhand, if you have a backhand serve.) Start hitting a hundred drive serves three times per week, charting your perfect serve percentages, and you will have a great forehand and a great serve. Be sure to bring your practice book, and write down what you are doing …

Crowding 101- This is something I see in all levels of play. When an opponent is getting into your line of vision here is an old school trick. Cross the line of vision between your opponent and the ball but it has to be done early and not late. Move too late, and it is a rally hinder. Move early and the movement puts you in better position and the opponent will be aware of your position. This puts the opponent under more pressure. Another trick I see being employed (consciously or unconsciously) is restriction of the follow through because …

Handling jealousy, competition, and pettiness is a challenge that faces all players. I’ve stated this many times but getting better at your craft means you have to play and practice with players who will help you improve. Often, those players are rivals who do not like you! How do you handle this? I have fielded this one many times with my athletes. What sometimes happens is rivals will not play each other in practice. The theory is their opponent will get used to “their game”. I never understood this and once I tried to work out with a rival only …

This one came across my desk. “Coach awhile back you mentioned a book titled, So Good They Can’t Ignore You” What lessons for racquetball can you draw from that book. The person who read the book plays racquetball I think and coaches it. How could you miss this blurb? “Chapter four-paraphrasing here: two mindsets-the passion mindset-quite simply says, what value does my job offer me? The craftsman mindset is “what value am I producing in my job?”. This explains the clash of many mindsets in our great sport. When people looking what they can get out of racquetball they will …

Recently I trained two national level players. I was amazed at how much they had improved in such a short amount of time. At one point in the session I asked them if they noticed I had not mentioned much in terms of mechanics. Then I asked them why I had not corrected them. They both sought answers that were really guesses. It never occurred to them they had improved so much I did not have to go back and correct mechanics like I did in our first lessons. Both of these athletes have left their comfort zones and embarked …

This one sounds so simple but it is true! Develop a killer serve and your game goes up at least one level. The Wintertonian glossary of terms defines a killer serve as: A serve that just gets over the short line, with about an inch to spare on either side of the court with great deception. The receiver will be unsure which side the serve is going to and thus, you will have a killer serve. The Killer serve does not have to be hit hard, and in fact a softer killer serve makes the receiver of serve have to …

I am often asked, “What in the world do you do for over six hours with an athlete on the court?” Every lesson starts the same-looking at forehand and backhand mechanics.This player is a top pro and the mechanics review sometimes finds a little flaw they had no idea had crept into their game. Most of the time at Pro level it turns into a routine drop and hit to set up and hit. (est time 45 minutes-1 hour) From there we head to serve and serve return. The little things that apply to technique can add to a poor …