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Balancing Your
Knees?
The movement of your lower body is the foundation
for balance and efficiency. Your feet, in contact with the court,
provide leverage for all strokes. Your knees, flexing and extending,
make it possible for force to transfer through the body in a smooth and
efficient sequence.
Because your lower body does the additional and
often exhausting task of moving you from one shot to the next, it is
easy to experience a "leg lapse" during the execution of your stroke.
A
leg lapse means that your body has an inefficient base of support due to
poor footwork or knee flexion. A leg lapse causes the upper body to
compensate for the loss of leverage, resulting in a stroke that is off
balance, inefficient, and usually ineffective.
The most common example of a leg lapse occurs when
a shot is wide to either side of your body and you simply reach for it
instead of moving your feet.
The second most common leg lapse occurs
when a shot is low and you flex at the waist without flexing the knees.
Both of these leads to back problems after continued leg lapses without
correction or understanding.
Fatigue is the number one cause of leg lapses and
general laziness takes a close second. The best way to avoid fatigue and
laziness is by conditioning your lower body.
The best way to condition
your lower body for racquetball is to maintain balance while you
rehearse your strokes. Jogging can develop endurance, sprinting can
develop quickness, weight lifting can develop strength, but stroke
rehearsal (practice) can develop all of these qualities, while
simultaneously programming your muscle memory.
Jogging, sprinting, and weight
lifting are effective ways to supplement practice, but they are only
supplements. Actual stroke rehearsal is the best way to condition the
necessary lower-body movement involved with preparing, executing, and
recovering from one shot to the next. To win consistently at racquetball
you must utilize your lower body effectively.
If not, you will have
back, knees, and elbow pain, in addition to other physical maladies that
result in muscling a swing with only your arms. So use your legs
effectively and they will carry you to victory and prevent serious
injuries so you can keep enjoying the great game of racquetball.
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