The Tri Valley Pickleball Club put on their second Pickleball 101 class today. This is in cahoots with the Livermore Park District.
I selected dinking as my topic of teaching. I had been the serving instructor the last two times out.
I taught five or six groups of four students. And to my surprise each bit of teaching came out totally differently. This was based on the skill level of the students for the most part. While all were beginners, the dinking ability was varied in success. The ones who got it, were able to do it after very little exposure to the art and science. I was impressed in the improvement in just minutes, and by minutes, let me guess two or so.
If the group got it, then we played the dinking game, where it was straight PB, but you had to hit the ball in the kitchen. This was good for the dinking and also as an introduction to the scoring and to switching places after a point had been won.
There is research about drilling versus playing "a game." The game scenario has been found to be a better teacher than drilling. The skills are picked up faster and the retention is also better. Basically, get them playing something as soon as you can.
When I thought about how to teach dinking, I was expecting to talk about the lift dink and the push dink, but as it played out there wasn't time to get into it. What I did pass along was: a quick grip check, then a simplified arm stroke, a target of hitting the ball about six inches above the net. After that I turned them loose and kept two balls going at all times. We did cross court, then straight ahead dinks and then basically, the horn sounded to move on to the next skill.
One of the errors that seemed popular is to use the venerable wrist flip at the ball instead of an arm or arm/body movement. I think that little kids might be more inclined to flail their whole body at the ball. Perhaps we adults, having used a mouse and keyboard as solutions to things, are apt to be more hand oriented. Interesting to golfers, this is a common problem in that sport as well. Trunk and arm movement is easier and more consistent than hand and wrist, but it does not seem to a universal starting point. Curious.
If one were to teach dinking for an hour or so, how would it be different? When some of the students were really struggling, I stole an exercise I've seen Kirby use and I had the folks just lob the ball over the net without the paddles. I think this is a great way for a student to feel the motion and get some idea of the effort required to dink. This went over well and I think is useful. Not everyone needed it.
For an hour's lesson, I think I would spend more time to make sure of grips. Some people's grips deteriorated as they played. Then I would work on keeping the wrist neutral so that the paddle stayed at an angle to the arm. Then work more on a ready position and hitting the ball in front of them and being in more of a crouch rather than standing fairly straight.
Keeping the paddle up with a modest follow through would be stressed. Most of the beginners let the paddle stay low. Also if you wrist flip, then your arm isn't moving, so a follow through to a ready position is not natural.
Finally, I think putting out some cones to aim for would be useful, one across from the student, then middle, then cross court.
I enjoyed the challenge of teaching a new topic. But the lack of time was a frustration. I don't know what the students will retain. Perhaps that is every teacher's cross to bare...
An item that I noticed that might be a problem with my own game is to break the wrist when hitting a dink that is coming at your body. I think I tend to have the wrist flat and I want to present a paddle face that is close to parallel to the net. Not exactly parallel as I do want the paddle to be pointing to the sky just a bit. I'll play with this in mind on Monday and see how it goes. I'm hoping this will eliminate some pop ups.
That's all I know for now. Sorry for the lack of posts, but I've not had much to say this past week.
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