Think back to when you were in school or maybe your last business meeting or conference. When we went to learn something, how was it presented? How many of us can say that the presenter just stood up front and talked to us? We acquired a ton of knowledge, but not the skills to use it. Something we strive to focus on at 10sKidz is Skill Based Learning. That is a fancy buzzword for learning through the process. Since this is a way I try to live my life, I feel that is the best way to teach our students. As we
often say, "One of the best ways to master a skill is to teach it to someone else." I learned that from my International Relations Professor at UWEC my freshmen year of college.
Skill based learning is where we focus on teaching a skill, like the forehand, but the student may have only one thing they are focused on doing. So when they are in a cooperative game, they are focused on that part of the skill. Something that we do to help our students focus more on the process is take away the focus of the end result. When students play, they are not playing to win. The score just tells where they are in their game and when they reach the final point, it just says, the game is over. Their goal is to keep playing until the game stops.
Another way we teach students to focus on the process and not the result is to always make it look good, even if you miss. You see, everyone misses in tennis. Make the stroke look good, develop the movement, let that movement inspire you and those watching. To help student's work through the process and get over the fear of the result, we teach our students to get good at starting over. Tennis is a game of starting over. After each point, you start over. The real fun is how long you can keep starting over until the game stops. We like to say the best part of the game is when we are playing not when some one wins or loses, that means the game is done.
Let me make a guarantee, that if you teach effective and efficient technique and focus on the process, you will see players make gains they never thought they could. They develop such a focused mind-body connection that their skills become a part of them and they will love the feel of the ball on the strings.
