Skills Training

One of the components of the athlete’s assessment at the Bailong Ball competition is the quality of performance. It means the presence of developed skills of free possession of the racket, confidence, dexterity of manipulations.

By the way, these qualities will be useful to you even if you are not going to participate in any competition. They will give an elementary freedom of movement, the ability not to strain your body and thoughts during exercise.

How to achieve this? One of the methods of working out such skills are short, continuous repeating sets of individual elements. In other words – cyclic exercises.

Think up for your training so-called “paths” of elements. You can do so while moving or while standing still. Select an element for training, add to it a few additional basic movements and connect them to one combination.

Do this combination an unlimited number of times continuously, without pauses and disruption of trajectory. For this, be sure to consider the connecting point between repeats of combinations.

The video presents several examples of such continuous exercises:

Some tips:

• It is better to start learning the elements and connections of a new exercise without a ball on the racket. After confident performance of movements without ball, go to work with the ball.
• Start learning new movements at a very slow pace, not missing a single detail or nuance. The main condition is the accuracy of the body position and weight distribution at any point in time during the movement.
• Do not forget about your free hand – without a racket. It has to work, helping to balance the movement. At the same time, make sure that the free hand is not overly tense.

Irina Rusavina
Bailongball Trainer