Learning new skills at home.

Skills can be a part of your game, or just something you do with HECS Balls. The goal is racket control, fun, creativity, and exploring the boundaries of what you can do.

Learning new skills might mean a new shot for your sport. It could also mean an advanced variation on an old favourite. Perhaps you're playing an entirely new sport altogether and need to practice for that.

As an example, think of the pros and their most impressive backhand shots. Perhaps it's a backhand smash or deceptive flick. If you've never tried it before, let alone have the opportunity to practice it regularly, then HECS Balls can be the perfect practice companion. 

With HECS Balls, you can train in a way that teaches you new skills very quickly. It's all in how we approach it.


Let's look at some of the main advantages of skill practice with HECS Balls.


HECS Baller Advantages: 

  • Practice as much and as often as you want.
  • Learn and improve any skill, focusing on your body's mechanics and swing positions.
  • Practice with any intensity, from super casual to intensely ready.
  • Learn at your own pace with solo training methods.
  • Strengthen the connection of hand-eye coordination every single time you try - real-world specificity that transfers to the court.
  • Spaced repetition for optimal skill learning, even a few minutes per day makes a big difference.
  • Focus on tiny details, like HECS Mods, to customize the skill to your needs.


There's more, but you may also encounter some challenges. Are you sure you're doing the right thing? How do you know what to do? Etc. It's scary to go at it alone, but that's why we're here. HECS Baller resources are made to guide you with the simplicity of HECS Balls.

Skill Exercise: Backhand Breakdown

With HECS Balls, we can slow down and really get to know our shots.

Whether you agree or disagree with the technical details, it's important to know that YOU can do anything you want.


Try this out right now if you're ready!


Set-up

For this shot, we have a simple setup. Back facing the wall, bevel grip (or grip appropriate for your sport), and positioned comfortably away from the wall. In this example, I'm kneeling because of a low ceiling.


Feed/Toss

Next, a toss or self-feed will give us consistency for attempting the swing. We can vary where we aim it, where the ball lands relative to us, how much time we have to hit it, and even give us some added challenges. In this example, I'm throwing the ball straight up before the hit. You can also bounce the ball against the wall first, or just continuously hitting against the wall.



The Swing

Next, we should have time to perform the swing. We can break it down into steps A, B, and C, for simplicity. 


A - The prep phase of the swing, the position of your arm before you begin your swing.


B - The major swing path, larger joints moving first, followed by smaller joints down the chain.


C - The contact and follow through, where the angles and speed are controlled through your hand.



Reset/Play

Perform one single repetition at a time to focus on small details, or play against the wall while setting up the opportunity to hit the shot.

When you reset after every rep, you can keep the chaos to a minimum and isolate different movements. As you make progress, a little bit of chaos or unpredictability will help you adapt faster to real-world game situations.


With HECS Balls, you can train in the comfort of your own home. This means you can comfortably make mistakes, try new techniques, explore new skills, and have fun in whatever way you'd like.


A Start for Improving Reflexes

HECS Balls have a promise of faster reflexes, it's on our packaging! Let's dive into what having faster reflexes really means.

  1. Faster movements to the ball: You can easily train this by challenging yourself with more speed. This is done by using the faster HECS Balls and/or hitting the ball harder.
  2. More efficient movements to the ball: You can improve your movement efficiency by reducing the overall tension in your body and only channelling your energy through good technique, like in the examples mentioned above.


Both of these kinds of practices have HECS in common: you see the ball, coordinate your body, move your racket hand, and perform a swing. When it comes to more efficient movement, we'll be looking at exactly HOW these elements come together.

The following is a sampling of the Workshop on Faster Reflexes in the Mastery Program.



Try this out right now if you're ready!


Set up against the wall with the #1 HECS Ball, about an arm and racket length away, or slightly closer for added challenge. Keep all of your swings very short with this one!

Hit against the wall but ONLY move your racket around, keeping your shoulders, hips, and feet stuck in place like a statue.

If you've had a chance to try this, you'll notice your hand having to move at extreme speeds to keep up, while the rest of your body stays fairly inactive. This isn't great for changing levels or reacting to lots of variation.

Now let's do the opposite:

Hit against the wall, keeping your racket centered in front of you. ONLY move your shoulders and hips, rotating them from side to side to get your racket behind the ball. Of course, you can add a bit of movement in your hand to keep the ball in play.

If you try this, you'll find that rotating from side to side is about 80% of the movement needed. As this movement becomes more natural, the last 20% comes from the actual shot you're trying to hit. 


Bonus Tip - Using a HECS Mod:

Do the same drill as before, but use the Peripheral Vision Mod. Stay focused on a specific spot on the wall while letting your peripheral vision see and react. This part of our visual systems are better at detecting movement, so it's useful to sharpen it up.

A piece of painter's tape works fine!

Many HECS Ballers talk about feeling like the real games are much slower after doing this a few times. It's also a great warm-up before hitting the courts. 

We hope you can start to really see the potential of HECS Balls as a training companion and can't wait for you to get back to the court to feel the difference. A few minutes per day of focused practice works wonders!

Improving reflexes and racket control.

An advanced look at how we analyze details of the game through a HECS perspective.

Besides learning new skills, there are lots of ways to improve as a racket sport athlete. Simply doing things more efficiently, quickly, or having more options, will make you a better player.

Racket control is too broad of a topic to just “improve”, but we can break it down into tiny elements that we can change. These are the HECS Mods - how we modify our HECS Balling.

As a HECS Baller, you MUST know this. You can improve your racket control in extremely specific ways. You can find out exactly what to change to make all the difference. Racket control comes from several abilities coming together.

In the context of reflexes, let’s look at one of the most challenging moments in sport: smash defense. 


  • In first frame, we see Loh Kean Yew with squared hips about to drop into the bottom of his split step. All is good.


  • In the second frame, he’s now ready to move, low centre of gravity, but we only see his head and racket hand start to move towards the shuttle. He’s running out of time fast.


  • In the third frame, he finally has his hips rotated, his shoulders turned, but it’s now too late. The shuttle will hit the ground.


Let's analyze this situation from a HECS perspective, see if we can find any recommendations for training.

Professional players are all nearly maxed out with their HECS Scores, 98+/100. There’s not much room for criticism of technique, let alone racket skill, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from their successes and failures.

I’ll be referring to the 20 HECS Mods for this analysis.

Hand - All seems okay. Relaxed yet strong in his movements.
Eye - He sees the shuttle early and reacts correctly, all seems okay.
Coordination - He seems to wait, possibly because he had to cover the whole court. The HECS Mods that stick out are Timing/Rhythm Control, and Non-Racket Side Control. He didn’t quite move his left side early enough to rotate behind the shuttle. This would be a candidate for a future training focus.
Skill - All seems good here as well. He's a pro!


Let’s now look at a more successful movement. 


  • In the first frame, he’s doing exactly as before. Relaxed and ready into a split step.


  • In the second frame, he’s already rotating his hips, but it seems like his time is running out to get there.


  • In the third frame, his hips rotate fully and his shoulders do as well, allowing him to reach behind and hit the shuttle.


Looks like his reflexes are fast enough after all! In all seriousness, reflexes are a combination of multiple things coming together in a moment, without thinking - that's what makes them reflexes! Most players wouldn’t have even shifted to the correct side, let alone get a racket on it.

These are examples of incredible defense and offense coming together at the cutting edge of competition. You’re not likely facing down this kind of attack, but whether you’re just wanting to return the ball or shuttle over the net more consistently, understanding the subtleties of training reflexes will make a huge difference.

We have to put in the work to achieve this kind of ability, but with HECS Balls, even a few minutes per day can get you closer and closer.

That concludes part 3!

Well done if you got to the end. I'm sure you're inspired to go try out some of these skills and drills, so go for it!
Go to 4. Mastery and Beyond