Tag: hitting against the wall

Good Hands: The August Half-Month Challenge

Who says you can’t start a monthly challenge on the 15th? Self-improvement is hard enough without setting arbitrary time constraints on it. I say, when you feel a passing interest in working on something, you better seize the moment. God knows when that feeling will come around again.

For the remainder of August, and perhaps through mid-September, I’ll be working on my reaction time. (Technically, reaction time is a cognitive process, while reflexes are not, but for this post I’ll be using the terms interchangeably.)

I probably don’t have to tell you that your reaction time gets worse with age. (I don’t know about you, but I have yet to find anything that gets better.) Left to their own devices, our cognitive processing time and neuron speeds slow down by milliseconds with each passing decade for even the simplest demands. Milliseconds may not sound like much, but they’re precious when faced with an oncoming tennis ball.

Continue reading “Good Hands: The August Half-Month Challenge” →

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Dumbo at the Net

A number of years ago, I had a standing weekly date to play singles with my friend Megan. She was a lot better than I was (still is), but I did my best to keep up with her.

Being at heart a doubles player, I’d come to the net at any opportunity. Coming to net was rarely successful against Megan who could rifle passing shots from even the most improbable positions. Unfortunately, rallying with her from the baseline wasn’t a good strategy, either, so I just went to the net and got passed. Over and over. Very discouraging.

One day during a water break, after she’d passed me yet again to win the game, she said, “It’s so funny. You’re not a big person, but when you rush the net, you sound like a herd of elephants.” Continue reading “Dumbo at the Net” →

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The Long Gray Wall

When I was a young kid, my mother used to take me with her when she was meeting her friends for tennis. The park where she liked to play had a long gray concrete wall–really long, and really high. This was back when handball was a popular activity. In the evenings, you could usually find three or four handball games taking place simulaneously on each side of the wall.

But during the mornings, when my mom took me to the park, the wall stood empty. I’d bring along my little wooden racquet and hit against the wall while I waited for my mother to finish her game. I wasn’t very good so I ended up doing an awful lot of running as each inadvertently angled shot caromed off the wall. But I was young and energetic, and chasing down my ball to give it another whack with my racquet was all part of the fun.

Later, when I learned to control my shots a little more, I’d go to the wall on my own. I’d deliberately hit my groundstrokes inside-out, working forehands down the length of the wall and backhands on the way back. I could complete three “laps” of the wall before my lungs would give out. Continue reading “The Long Gray Wall” →

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