About 4 months ago I decided that enough time had passed to be sitting at my desk and barely leaving the house except to go shopping or go to church. Working from home definitely has its benefits, but in the last 2 years I gained about 20lbs that was sitting around my midsection and before I knew it, I was feeling SO lazy.
Years ago I had played racquetball once or twice with a friend and it was great. Although he was terribly out of shape. He had very little stamina and I was out of breath quickly. Also, he didn’t really know how to play the game.
So I decided that this was what I had to do to solve my health problem and get out of the house. So I signed up as a member of a local club and started playing about twice a week. Right before that I started playing tennis again (before I thought about racquetball) and was enjoying it. But to be honest, it’s not that intense.
After an hour of racquetball, you burn around 600 calories, which means you’re off to a great start for weight loss right there. He played about an hour and a half twice a week. Then from time to time I would add another day maybe in the evening or in the afternoon.
Luckily, I have several friends who wanted to get started with me, so we hit the ground running and learned the rules (more on that in a minute). Fortunately for us, a friend’s husband was on military leave and he decided to play with us while he was here. We found out in 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 advice and skills.
When you play against people who don’t know how to play, you get lazy and don’t try. Anyway, let’s talk about the rules.
Basically you have two players (in singles) and one server will stand in the middle of the court and hit the ball against the back wall. They should make the ball hit the back wall and bounce off the ground behind the service line, but not hit the front wall (the wall behind you).
The ball may hit one of the side walls, but that’s about it. If the server hits 3 walls, it’s an out. The server has two attempts to put the ball in play. However, after the ball is in play, ANYTHING goes. Any wall is a game and you can make the ball hit as many walls as you like.
That’s how you win. Once the ball hits the back wall, it can only bounce off the floor once before it needs to be hit against the back wall again. So if you hit the back wall, the ball bounces once, the other player has to make the ball hit the back wall before it bounces again, that resets it.
So to win, just hit the ball so the other player can’t reach it in time and it bounces more than once on the ground. It’s that simple, and it’s not only fun, it’s a great way to get in shape.
