The techniques and skills of racquetball require five different speed motions:
- STARTING SPEED: getting up to the highest rate of speed as quickly as possible so you can get into good center court position or have better return of serves.
- FOOT SPEED: to negotiate balls that are hit at different angles and come off the wall at different angles, speeds and trajectories.
- HIP SPEED: (or rotation) is often necessary to turn and run as well as used to generate more power which we outlined explicitly in Chapters One and Two, Forehand and Backhand techniques.
- BACKPEDAL SPEED: is to relocate back into good center court after the serve or move back to the back court from center court to hit a ceiling ball or move back from the front court to center court after you retrieved a great pinch or kill shot.
- CHANGE of DIRECTION SPEED: is an often overlooked element of movement skills, but THE MOST important in racquetball. There are four types of change of direction speed that we’ll work on, side to side, forward backward, turning and running, and jumping.
***Conditioning, five different speed motions, can be found in our book Championship Racquetball.
