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About 4 months ago I decided that it had been long enough for me to be sitting at my desk and hardly leaving the house except to shop or go to church. Working from home definitely has its benefits, but over the last 2 years I gained about 20 pounds that was just sitting around my midsection and before I knew it, I was feeling very lazy a LOT.
Years ago I had played racquetball once or twice with a friend and it was a blast. I was horribly out of shape though. I had very little stamina and was out of breath quickly. Plus, I really didn’t know how to play the game.
So I decided that was what I needed to do to help my health issue and get out of the house. So I signed up for a membership at a local club and started playing about twice a week. Just prior to that I had started playing tennis again (before I thought of racquetball) and was enjoying that. But to be honest, it’s not nearly as intense.
After an hour of racquetball you burn around 600 calories which means you’ve got a great start to losing weight right there. I would play for about an hour and a half twice a week. Then once in awhile, I’d throw in another day maybe in the evening or afternoon.
Fortunately, I have several friends who wanted to start with me so we got going and learned the rules (more on those in a minute). Fortunately for us, a friend’s husband was on leave from the military and decided to play with us while he was here. We found out at the first game that he actually played semi-professionally! He was amazing. He made us all look terrible, but nothing helped my game more than his tips and skills.
When you play against people who don’t know how to play, you get lazy and don’t push yourself. Anyhow, let’s talk about the rules.
Basically you have two players (in singles) and a server will stand mid court and hit the ball against the back wall. They must cause the ball to hit the back wall and bounce onto the floor behind the serving line, but without hitting the front wall (the wall behind you).
The ball may hit one of the side walls, but that is all. If the serve hits 3 walls, it is an out. The server gets two tries to put the ball into play. After the ball is in play, however, ANYTHING goes. Any wall is game and you can make the ball hit as many walls as you want.
Here’s how you win. Once the ball hits the back wall, it can only bounce on the floor once before it must be hit against the back wall again. So if you hit the back wall, the ball bounces once, the other player must cause the ball to hit the back wall before it bounces again, that resets it.
So to win, just hit the ball so that the other player can’t reach it in time and it bounces more than once on the floor. It’s that simple, and not only is it a blast, but it’s a great way to get fit.
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Source by Ken D Walker