One step at a time...

It occurred to me today (and partially last night while observing another coach's lesson) the importance of teaching one point at a time and concentrating on this particular point until enough repetition has been preformed until the neural path is formed (partially or fully).

An example...
1. Find the nearest book or magazine, pick a page at random and start reading aloud - no problem right?
2. Keep reading aloud whilst at the same time writing your name on a piece of paper - not so easy?
3. Keep reading aloud and writing your name and with your other hand touch your nose repeatedly - game over?

Okay, so aside from looking a bit daft to anyone who may have witnessed your experiment, you can see how difficult it is to focus on two or more tasks at the same time. Relating this back to tennis, if I am asking a student to concentrate on keeping the racquet head up on their forehand preparation, then that is all I am going to comment and offer instruction on. If they get their feet in a mess and I make a correction there as well, they now have two things to concentrate on - feet and racquet head. If, on the next ball, they forget to use their non-dominant hand and I make a correction there, they have three things to concentrate on - diminishing the effectiveness of all of them.

If my (our) goal is to work on racquet head, then we concentrate on racquet head technique only, the other issues are for another lesson, another day! Consistent repetition of technique is the only way to create the correct neural pathways (more on this in another post - one thing at a time right???!!!), so let's make sure we don't confuse the issue by trying too many corrections at once.

A great coach knows when it's time to add another ingredient to the mix, a poor coach chucks everything in the bowl at once and hopes for the best. In the case of the lesson I observed yesterday (a 6 year old lad), after half an hour, the steam coming out of his ears and the blank expression on his face suggested he had probably had enough instruction for a lifetime, let alone a quick lesson!

Cheers

The ambiguity of language...

Something all new coaches are taught to consider is how they communicate to their new pupils, what tone of voice to use, what volume, intonation, clarity, speed, body language, gestures, position and so on and so forth. It's one of the first things we look at on the courses I tutor and it can be a potential minefield!

Never was this more accurately brought home to me that in a lesson I taught yesterday afternoon. We were attempting a very simple exercise with a group of mini red players (more on mini tennis structure in a future post for those uninitiated, but suffice to say for now they were all about 5 years old) that involved throwing and catching. Little Jimmy is throwing to his partner and is playing Darts (throwing from in front of his nose), "Jimmy, can you throw underarm for me?" says coach, at which point Jimmy puts his left arm across his body and literately throws the ball from under it.

Now, technically it's my fault! I knew what I wanted to see (and what Jimmy did wasn't it!), but to a 5 year old, with a very literal view (and ear apparently) of things, he did exactly what I had asked, he threw the ball "underarm"

This got me really thinking about the things we say as coaches and educators and how often we actually get across the point we mean to make. If a pupil misunderstands our words, do we really take the time to make sure they are performing the task as we want or need them to, or do we just settle for them being approximately right? I like to think, with my obsession to detail, I will always seek to clarify and confirm understanding and that I make this clear to my trainee coaches too and it is certainly something I am becoming more aware of.

The next time you take a lesson, or are on court next to a coach. have a listen to what they say and how they say it. If (when) they say something like "hit over the ball" (my pet hate :-( ), see if the pupil really understands what they mean - if they follow it literally they'll either miss the ball completely or hit it into the bottom of the net. What the coach probably means is hit up and across the back of the ball or similar, but that might not be what they say!

You've got to love the English language!

Cheers

Welcome!

Thanks for checking in and welcome to my new blog! Having become moderately addicted to Facebook and now having a rough idea how Twitter works I figured it was time to master the whole blogging thing. I find myself spending far too much time obsessing over tiny details in tennis and tennis coaching (both about my own players and coaches who I am tutoring) so I have decided to share my thoughts with anybody who cares to listen (well read)!

I hope, whether through technical analysis, instruction, musings, match reports or any other nonsense I care to scribble down, you find something of note or interest to you. If you do please let me know!

Thanks for stopping by...

Ash

You look great today by the way :-)