The first point in this section is to teach the whole first and then if necessary, break the skill down into its parts. Not only will this be less tedious and more active for the students, but you will also find it more effective for the vast majority of learners. This reminds me of when I was learning to juggle, my parents got me a set of juggling balls and it came with instructions. There were three steps to follow.
1) Hold two balls in one hand and one in the other.
2) Get on balance with your feet, shoulder width apart.
3) Juggle.
Now this is a bit extreme, but the idea of teaching the whole first really works, because in fact backing up, I didn't learn to juggle with those instructions, it was more difficult. Now take serving for example, years ago many of us taught the service motion in 20 or more steps and it took ten minutes to explain before the student even hit a single serve. Now, I find that most people will learn just by watching one full motion of a serve and then they get to try it themselves. After they get a feel for the whole motion, you can always back up to make some minor adjustments as needed for each particular student. They might need some guidance to have a more relaxed starting motion or their toss may be too high like we see here.
Here we go ahead, little high; here is just a beautiful collection that a friend of mine who lives in Savannah, Georgia came up with. Alright, you all notice a little toy, and it's at the finger yo-yo and you can play all sorts of games with it and have a lot of fun and help with your coordination right. It's a real soft spongy thing but for the toss, she said, well this is what I need, my toss is too high. If he tossed too high, he can't catch it hardly and if he tossed soft, then you have got control over your toss. So we put this on her finger, for a very, very quick direction. So toss easy. Not so easy, is it?
Let's see, now you don't want to hit it but you are going to just catch it, but see if you catch it without extending it all the way up. In other words soften up. Go through the whole thing, just don't hit it Sarah, interesting and you can have people do this as a station until they really soften up. Sarah, you know what Pauline has said, she will pay $20 if you can do it on this. Ready, soft. She motivated or what. What should she do on a windy day, folks? Anybody ever served on a windy day?
Go and doers, you got it now, okay. If you are serving on a windy day and the toss starts going all over the place because it's blowing. What's your direction? Don't toss this high, sometimes you need to toss in here. Okay so let's see that, look how hard my toss is, very well, it's just like you are doing.
Soft, even softer, softer, yes, softer, just catch it soft, perfect. Give her little hand, now toss at the same height and you will be amazed and you are going to get it. Toss low and just work through this, give it a toss low. So that was a lower toss that she is accustomed to, but I am a firm believer, as probably all of you are if that player needs to be flexible to adjust to various conditions. True or not true.
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