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April's Winning Entry for Our Contest |
Congratulations to Roger Dickson of Butler County Community College, PA for his contributions to the Coaching Forum contest. The winning entry is listed below for your review and implementation into your training program.
Roger Dickson
Butler County Community College, PA
An adaptation of a drill presented by Victor Tolkacheva at a Dan Seemiller clinic known as the "CHAIR" drill. Done to work on footwork, aerobic fitness and concentration, the chair drill requires the placement of a chair about 4 feet behind the table and the robot to be set on topspin. The chair drill starts with student behind chair, first moving left beside chair as ball crosses the net. Moving forward and to the right, the student must then execute a FH counter or loop to the cross - court angle. After doing the stroke, footwork away from the table places the student in position to start all over again! Increasing the frequency of the balls requires the feet to work more and more efficiently and changing the robot from topspin to underspin will dramatically increase the effort needed to perform at a consistent level. I highly recommend doing this drill first as shadow practice to familiarize yourself then be a test of the additional factors that weakens a persons ability to loop / counter. If you have a training partner, both can do this drill at the same time and really tax the timing aspects of footwork. BUT USE CAUTION not to hit your partner with the follow through of your stroke or you might need to find a new partner!
