It’s not every day that I can hit a tennis ball faster than my tennis idol Roger Federer. Here’s another one of those Guinness World Records that real people might not even attempt. Alternating hits on a tennis racquet is actually a pretty common activity to entertain yourself on a tennis court (just like juggling, but more accessible) so maybe Federer has tried it. If so Roger, let me know!

182 isn’t MPH, it’s the number of alternating hits I got in one minute. That’s over 3 per second for an entire minute. When I first started practicing for this record about a year ago the 1-minute record was only 135 hits or just over 2 per second. It was readily accessible but the 30-second record was 90 hits, and much harder to reach. I was tempted to just go for the easy one and move on but I decided to approach my practicing with a growth mindset and try to break both of them at the same time.

90 hits in 30 seconds seemed impossible and so out of reach that I nearly gave up a few times but stuck with it. In the meantime, the 1-minute record of 135 hits was broken by a run of 160 hits so that one became just a little more challenging as well.

I got all the folks together for this attempt and had one hit on the frame of the racquet just about at 30 seconds disqualifying the first attempt but I nailed both of these on just my second attempt with the news station on hand.