There is a big shift now to game-based teaching. I would like to talk about game-based teaching now on this section. Game-based teaching basically means that when people come to play tennis, they come to play. It sounds very basic, but in the old days what we use to do is we would teach forehands and backhands; if they came once a week. Then maybe volleys. The fourth week would be serve, maybe a couple of returns. Fifth week, maybe some overheads, and drop shots and lobs, and then maybe we would squeeze in a little bit of playing doubles.
Game-based teaching simply put says that tennis is a game and people expect to play when they get out on the court, therefore we should start each and every session with an exercise that closely resembles a game of tennis, or at the very least some points. It will then become clear to students what parts of their games need attention, and they will become naturally motivated to work on them.
Another premise of game-based teaching is to quickly get beginners serving and keeping score, instead of the old system of teaching groundstrokes first and playing games later down the road.
But the principle in tennis should be that they play first and any deficits, any limitations or weaknesses that they may have, help them to see and then back up to help them work on it.
Let's start with playing. If they can't hit a ball back and forth, again, get out a beach ball and have them throw. If you have them throw beach ball with two hands, what is this like? Just like a uniturn, it is a uniturn. We are going to do happy feet. We are actually learning groundstrokes on both sides, and you just have them just rotate through. You could do the connect the dots idea. We can put the dots on the opposite shoulder and dots on both hands, if you could catch it, and then I go connect the dots, and then you get all three points, finishing.
You have got the swings, and you could do this with Simon says games, you see. So how much do you really have to talk about mechanics? I would argue not very much, I really would, not very much.
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