Would you like to boost your speed enhance your control and decrease your
chances of injury? Then you're going to want to practice your ABCs.
Hey Everybody it's CJ Johnson. Just around the corner Tuesday October 30th I am going to be
starting a brand new show. It'll be on Facebook Live Tuesday nights
at 6 p.m. Pacific time. That show's going to focus on all the health and wellness
concerns that you've shared with me. How to maintain and healthy weight. How to
get or stay fit and most importantly how to remain injury free. If you'd like more
details and want to stay in the loop just make sure you click on the link
that's coming up above. Today we're going to talk about your ABCs and how it can
help you to improve your foot speed and quickness as well as remain injury free.
Now this is going to sound like a stupid question but is there anyone who
wouldn't like to be as fast as Ben Johns or Kyle Yates?
The fact is most of us aren't in our 20s anymore but even if we were the loss of
coordination and speed begins somewhere around age 26 for most of us. Now we
can't stop the hands of time but there are things that we can do to lessen its
effects. And that will help us to remain injury free and that's improve our
agility our balance as well as our coordination. Agility in pickleball is
the ability to move around the court fast and remain in control.
As we know balance decreases with age but good balance and an effective lower body are
what give a stable platform for our upper body to move and ultimately leads
to paddle control and consistency with the pickleball. Throw in the last thing
coordination and that allows you to make shots from a variety of different
positions. Here are three simple drills that you don't need any special
equipment for other than a good pair of court shoes and if you don't have one of
those make sure that you click on the link and that'll tell you how to pick a
pair that's perfect for you.
This first drill is the baseline shuffle. As the name implies stand at the
baseline start slowly moving from side to side making sure that our feet our
knees and our hips stay facing forward. As you begin to get comfortable with
this motion increase your speed. Again hips, shoulders are forward and you want
to keep your eyes up.
Now let's work on our forward and back movement. Start with your dominant foot
which is normally the hand you write with. We're going to do one, two, three,
four across a line moving forward and backward. As you get comfortable with the
motion pick up the pace. The key points here are again to make sure that your
feet your knees and your hips are always facing forward.
That your eyes and your head are up. Let's move to the opposite foot. So start
with your non-dominant foot. Again slowly one, two, three, four back across the line.
As you get comfortable increase the speed.
Now we're going to start to challenge your coordination. We're going to do that
same drill but alternating feet. Start with your dominant foot. Do 2 on that side
then change to the non-dominant foot 2 on that side. As you get comfortable with
the motion pattern see if you can do it with one on each side. Again
once you've got confidence there start to pick up the pace. If you've got
somebody who's close by have them holler switch and whenever they do that
change from the foot that you lead with to the opposite foot. That will challenge
your coordination. Let's work on the side-to-side motion once again. This
looks like a little dance step, so as we start we're going to move one, two, three
one, two, three back and forth across the line. Just like all of the other motions
we want to make sure that our knees and our hips are forward. We're going to
start out slowly as we get confidence with this motion then we're going to go
ahead and pick up the pace with this motion. It's really important here to
keep our upper body and our hips stationary as our feet move back and
forth across the line. Head and eyes up just like you would have if you were
playing pickleball. If you liked this video make sure that you click on the
subscribe button over here and if you wouldn't mind leave me a comment down below.
Tell me how your reaction time is getting faster and what you're doing to
accomplish that. Because together we can
Train Smart, Live Bold and Age Well