Ballin’
Today I finally got some decent exercise for the first time since my surgery: John and I played racquetball.
Now I’ve played plenty of tennis, so I thought I was prepared for this, but hoo boy, the two sports are not the same. Tennis, for instance, requires good hand-eye coordination—the ball is coming toward you, and you have to figure out where to place yourself and your racquet so that you strike the ball in the middle of the racquet with your arm in a strong position. Racquetball, on the other hand, requires good BODY-eye coordination—the ball is going somewhere, not necessarily toward you, and it can change direction in a split second. Think of it as an analogy: ping-pong is to tennis as tennis is to racquetball.
This results, I’ve found, in much awkward contortion of the body when the novice player lines up to hit a forehand, then realizes that she’s next to a wall and so the ball has reversed direction and zoomed across her body to the backhand side. I’ll give myself some credit, though, for only falling once. Even then it was more of a sit than a fall, as my legs became too tangled in each other to support my weight.
In half an hour we played two games, both of which John won handily. He’s played before, though not too often and not too recently, I think. In any case, he out-coordinated me today. Together we managed to crack the ball nearly in half. Because we’re bad-ass.
One downside of playing in a room with bouncy walls is that the echoes are redonkulous. It’s nearly impossible to talk unless you’re right next to each other. Sometimes, though, the ball makes a cool thwwooonnnnggggg sound, so that kind of makes up for it.
I’ll definitely be back to play another day. Despite my coordination issues I had a blast, and sprinting across the tiny court is more of a workout than you might think. Plus, climate control! I highly recommend racquetball to anyone who doesn’t mind other people seeing her flail about and can get over her fear of things flying at her head. Not that I’ve conquered the fear yet, personally—I duck and cover every time I lose sight of the ball. I imagine this is not a technique the pros use.
Tags: NaBloPoMo
November 19th, 2007 at 12:17 am
I think you did much better at racquetball than I did the first time we played tennis. Well, you did when you weren’t cowering against a wall