Hi, my name is Jo Shattuck with Racquetball Academy. I am here at the Denver Athletic Club. Today, I am going to teach you some techniques of racquetball. What you will need is a racquet, a ball, eye guards, and some good court shoes. We are going to start with forehand. You should face sideways, keep your racquet up, have a slightly wider base so you'll have a good solid base to hit from. You are going to lead with the elbow. Hips rotate as well, arm is extended at contact and follow through. Notice my hips and my shoulders are facing the front wall at contact after I finish. It looks like this. Okay, some important things are, you don't want to swing with your arm; you want to swing with your hips. You want to pull this unit of the shoulder and the arm and the wrist and the racquet with your hip. At the last second, flips out. That's where your power comes from and you are facing the front wall ready to move in any direction that you want to. So, one of the differences in the backhand and the forehand is the grip. You can see on the backhand the knuckle on top here is on the top skinny part of the racquet. That's the backhand grip, as opposed to the forehand, when this knuckle is on the flat side. So, since we are doing a backhand, we are going to put our backhand grip on. Same stance. Face sideways, solid base. Again, the hip pulls this unit through to the ball. So, I take a step and I don't push with my arm here; I pull with my hip. And, you can see the whole unit moves, then contact and follow through. Hips and shoulders facing the front wall, body upright. Looks like this. And, now with the ball. So, this is called a 2-step drive serve. Notice the footwork. The back foot moves first here. Notice, my hips are pointed this way, still loaded. The front foot moves forwards next with the racquet up, where I am going to pull with this hip and push with this leg so this whole unit of my shoulder and my racquet and my arm are behind me for a long time. The last second, that follows through the ball; follow through. It looks like this. My name is Jo Shattuck; you've just seen some techniques on the forehand and backhand strokes and a 2-step drive serve. So, make sure you use these in your next game.
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