Hello LES!

This week I would like us to work with ‘striking implements.’ You might be thinking “uh Coach Sadie what on Earth are you talking about?!” I’m talking about ping pong paddles, tennis racquets, pickleball paddles,  racquet ball paddle, badminton racquets, pro kadima paddle, even using frisbee as paddles (what?!).  ‘What if I do not have an implement to strike with?’ You can use your hands! I will get into that part a little later but fear not!

Striking is the act of using an object (typically a racquet or paddle) to hit (manipulate) another object that (ball, birdie, balloon). This task can be difficult because you cross planes with your body meaning you step with your opposite foot, then swing or strike with the opposite upper body, and follow through across your stepped foot.  Sometimes we do the opposite of that and cross our body while stepping with the same foot too! This is a lot to remember!! This is really difficult because our bodies need to coordinate a whole lot of things to be able to do this.

THE GRIP

Let’s talk quickly about the grip. We want to take our dominant hand (the hand we feel most comfortable with, sometimes we use to write with) and place the object in our hand and hold it like we are holding a magic wand. We are not holding it like a pencil, or a marker. Our fingers should wrap around the object and our thumb will rest on the front or side of the handle.

The grips and stances for our two strokes look like this! The differences are where we hold our paddle, aside our body or across our body. Which one looks like we are reaching across our body?

Forehand                                             Backhand

Level 1

The bump up! This is when we take a racquet or paddle and a ball or balloon and try to bounce the ball on the paddle or racquet. This is kind of like juggling but with an object instead of your hands. All I want you to focus on is tapping the ball using what is called your forehand.

Your forehand is the side of your hand where your palm is, think about high fives with your forehand! If you were to use your back hand it would look silly and feel weird. SO we will practice bumping holding the paddle with our high fiving forehand facing up. Try to bump it 3 times in a row, then 5, then 10, then 20! See how many bumps you can do.

Now we are going to bump backwards with out backhand. Our back hand is when we flip our hand over so that we are looking at the back of our hand as we bump the ball or balloon on our paddle.

Which grip did we have more control with? Our forehand or backhand? How did we keep the ball in control? Did we hit the ball really hard? Did we hit the ball so soft it barely bounced? Did we keep the paddle really close to our body? Was the paddle so far away I had to move my whole body to follow the ball?

Try to tap the ball behind your back or between your legs! I tried but my house is a little too small for my movement. I will have to practice outside!

Level II

Now once you feel more comfortable with this try to strike the object over a still object at waist level. Once you get this down try to strike the object so it goes over a still object and into a boundary! For example the still object is the imaginary net you are aiming to hit over and now you want it to land in a certain area. Once you have practiced this with your forehand, try to use your backhand! If you can try to hit the ball to a wall/rebounder and have it rebound back to you. Let it bounce once before you return (hit it back).

Level III

If you are really comfortable with all of the above, NOW you are going to use the overhand and underhand ideas we have talked about this year! When we did bump ups thats using the underhand method, our hand is under the ball and comes from under our waist. The overhand we will toss the ball over our head and our paddle and racquet will follow overhead making an overhand strike!

Here is a GIF of Venus and Serena William’s overhand serves! Incredible!

I don’t have a racquet or paddle….

That’s okay! As silly as it sounds you can use a frisbee as a hand paddle by holding it at the edge placing your thumb on top and your fingers underneath the edge. You can strike a ball with this still! If you have a plastic plate, tupperware lid, or paper plate and balloon all of these work as well! The final alternative is to use your hand! Volleyball is a GREAT example of a time you would use your hands to strike objects. We will talk about volleyball more next week and how to strike specifically for that. If you only have your hand options, keep your hands flat meaning not a fist, you can still strike smaller objects like a tennis ball, raquet ball, ping pong ball, balloon etc.

I hope you all get out and play! Continue to work on previous activities and challenges as practice will help you improve comfort and skill!

As always have a healthy and active week!

Coach Sadie