Speaker: Let's start this section on game-based technique correction by emphasizing that a creative learning environment is mostly action and little talk. The opposite, a lot of talk and little action, here's more on this important point.
Speaker: There was a study in the United States that the average adult has an attention span of 42 words, that takes about 15 seconds. Now in the old days when I first started teaching full-time in 1973 the paradigm was, the pattern was we would talk for five minutes in a group. Give the drills for 15 minutes and do a summary for five minutes, that should be history. We should do maybe 15-20 seconds introduction talks and then get people moving, get them involved.
Speaker: Visual interest is another critical element in creating a stimulating tennis environment. The opposite is practicing standard down the line drills or cross-court ground stroke drills on a standard tennis court. Think about this point, it's important. All tennis courts basically look the same.
And finally a tennis court has 490 feet of lines. Alright, actually if you headed up exactly 490 feet of lines they never change never. If I walked on a court and said boy, is this an interesting tennis court? Do you ever do that?
Guys look over some of the courts here and say, boy, that one looks interesting, maybe we should play on that one. Alright. No, can you imagine golf, if every single hole was a rectangle of grass it was flagged with the bumper in the same spot and the green was the same and the trees were identical who would plan. It would be visually boring. So we need to bring onto the court visual aids. Whatever you decide to use, I am going to be sharing some but use something, that's my point. Visually aids, kinesthetic aids to get people experiencing the different perspective, create interest.
Speaker: Now refer back to the four-step approach to game-based learning we described at the beginning of this tape. After we play we isolate part of someone's game that might need attention.
Now keep in mind that those opportunities to make corrections must be like laser surgery, quick and painless. It is a fact that visual and kinesthetic aids or techniques definitely speed up the learning process. In addition to creating the interest as we just discussed.
The next group of workshop sequences define and demonstrate the four focus options we have on a tennis court. These four focus options are, first, technique correction; second, primary targets or net clearance; third, secondary targets or bounce; four, result orientation targets, or what the ball is doing to your opponent. First we will look at a couple of examples of kinesthetic technique corrections.
The first is for someone who is repeatedly late in preparing to hit a backhand ground stroke.
Speaker: A backhand, okay, I am going to be late on this backhand. I am going to be late and hit it late and be a little harder, okay, that's it and I am late, and I am hitting late continuously.
So a good correction for that for example if I was going work on technique just to isolate something would be that I swing twice, I'll take a swing through, go ahead. Swing through and then I hit.
Now after doing that three-five times then I pull it back and the teacher tells me to wait and then I hit, you see, just to get somebody swinging twice. Once they can master that preparing early for one will be very, very simple, that's an example of technique correction.
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