23
2012
Minerals 4 (an adult portion)
An article by Stephen Pritchard
Whilst the main focus of the Learning Nutrition experiment is upon working with children, I could not resist using this new method with my adult group. The group was initially for beginners, but has been running now for 2 seasons and as such those that have been coming throughout have reached a reasonable club standard of play. New players have joined along the way meaning there are a range of abilities on show.
Having spent recent weeks looking at tactical elements of doubles play, this week we returned to some technical work – the feared overhead backhand! This is a stroke I feel that it is fairly straightforward to gain a basic level of performance in, as long as the false perception of it’s difficulty is overcome. For this reason, it is a great skill to develop using the minerals approach.
As per previous blogs, I stuck with the method of outlining and demonstrating a range of practices before sending the group away to work through them at their own pace. The first difference between this session and previous one with young players was that the adults paired up with the person stood nearest to them following the demonstration. There was no thought of seeking out players of similar ability which seemed to be of key importance to the juniors. The result was that, as with the juniors, all pairs started at practice 1 and progressed from there. With this group, due to the mixed ability of the pairs, this was probably justified.
What was noticeable here was that the more able players readily offered feedback and advice to newer less experienced ones – something the junior players did not have the confidence (or perhaps analytical skills) to do.
To speed up the learning, when bringing the group in to demonstrate more advanced practices I mixed the pairs up so that they were working with someone similar in ability (in this skill, based upon my assessment). Again, using 3* language the pairs moved off and all re-started at different practice levels. Pleasingly, all reached a point where they were at least hitting a full overhead backhand from a full racket feed. Excitingly, one pair were consistently hitting cross court dropshots with slice!
Why was this so exciting? Previously I would probably not have introduced this skill so soon, so the fact that I did allowed them to achieve it. Perhaps this shows how eay it is for a coach to slow down, rather than accelerate learning? Learning nutrition in action!
