Saturday, January 23, 2010
Hand eye coordination
It's common to believe that hand eye coordination is a gift, a talent you're born with. It's one aspect of my game that almost everything else is built on top of. When I don't see the ball well, I move poorly. That leads to panic and lost of confidence. I start to play conservatively and stop volleying. So the question is how do I improve my hand eye coordination? I started to practice forehand serves yesterday on the court by myself. In the beginning, I didn't even see where the ball hit the front wall. I don't believe my eyesight is poor. I truly believe I have lazy eyes, or rather lazy mind. I repeated the serve many times. Each time I saw a little more. First I began seeing how far from the center the ball was landing on the front wall. Then I started to notice how high the ball was from the service line. Next I started to watch how far down the side wall the ball was making contact. The last part of the equation is seeing the ball land on the floor and come off the back wall. I gloss over this scene all the time. I nearly always misjudge how far away from the side wall and how much in front of the back wall the ball will bounce. As I practice this serve over and over again I could see and feel how it all goes wrong. The first step is not turning my body completely 180 degrees around to face the back wall. It's not enough to turn 90 degrees to face the side wall. I needed to turn all the way to face the back wall so I have turned enough for my back swing. The second problem is positioning my racquet in my hands. The best position for racquet prep is to have the wrist cocked elbow 90 degrees and shoulder down. The last point is how far away from the corner I must stand. I saw that I was overextending my elbow and overrunning the ball. As I practiced more and more, I began to correct each point starting with the body turn and the wrist and elbow cocked. The exercise was definitely helping to ingrain new muscle memory and watching techniques.
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