I spent Saturday the 19th of March helping with a racquetball clinic at Recreation ATL. The members of the Facebook group, Georgia Women’s Racquetball, put it on for the interested women in Georgia and Alabama. There were about 40 attendees with all levels of experience. There were seven open or pro level coaches teaching the racquet skills and strategy. My portion was to help with the footwork and off court preparation. I did example ladder drills for just shy of 4 hours, with a new set of 2-3 players needing a demo every 10-15 minutes. Soreness ensued….
My experience with the agility ladder started with Pro Racquetball Academy and two camps I attended with them in 2014. When I returned from the second camp, I picked up an agility ladder of my own, via Amazon.
As the ladies were learning an awful lot of new information that day, I needed to provide some video references so that they could do these new drills when they returned to their home gyms so that they would remember the type of drills that are appropriate for racquetball. Here are my top three picks for quick, well explained, and well demonstrated videos:
Pro Racquetball Academy on Ektelon TV (John Ellis and Jesse Serna)
Jesse Serna on Ektelon TV – starts at 15:58 thru 18:30
There are a lot of other videos of agility ladder drills on YouTube, some demonstrating 30 to 100 or more different variations. I recommend the ones above because the movements are appropriate to racquetball or are simple warmups to get the blood flowing, the heart beating, and the knees and hips moving.
Ladder Drills are designed to fulfill the following purposes:
1. To improve balance, movement, control, coordination, agility, speed, strength, and stability in a controlled situation.
2. To undo the inherent favoritism of 1 foot leading over another for any given direction.
The student is attempting to place their feet in very specific locations relative to the ladder for each and every drill. A lot of effort is wasted doing ladder drills where the foot placement is not done with precision.
Consider adding some of these to your training regimen.
