Pickleball 101 Instruction Thoughts

 I helped with a beginners' class a while back.  The format of the teaching has been simplified.  There used to be four or five skills being taught then some play.  This has been altered to dinking, serving, and play.

Dinking is a skill that is not required when starting out, but it's a good introduction to just hitting the ball, using a paddle, using a continental grip, and feeling what it's like to hit a pickleball.  This is  taught first as it should be.  Get them acquainted to trying to hit the ball a short distance with a modicum of control.  Drills that are useful are having them just bounce a ball on their paddle with their forehand, then backhand, then alternate.  Tossing the ball back and forth makes sense as they gain knowledge of the weight of the ball and how little effort it takes to move it.

The serve is a good second skill as it's needed right away and it's a good model for all the ground strokes.  With someone serving, you need a returner and that seemed to work as an implied ground stroke lesson.  

I don't see the need (usually) to get more technical then that.  Everyone has used paddle like things and the conversion to hitting pickleballs is not a large leap.  There are no unique skills in PB that you find in other sports, so letting people play quickly seems to work.  (The case for more technical instruction seems to be the student who has no paddle sport background (or a lot of it, then talk about wrists and spins seems on point).  Then talking about the basic swing and arm position and stuff might be useful.  Most students can hit the ball a bit pretty quickly and getting technical seems to not help.)

I like the idea of teaching just a few things and then letting them play.  After my group all got to serve a couple of times, I had them play and that worked out well.  They got in two and a fraction games, each side winning one.  There were even some rallies.  

As they played we went over the scoring and the serve rotations and basic setup and some movement for a point.  And this was just enough instruction and they got to play longer.  I see this class as means for people to try the game and see if they want to pursue it.  I don't need to talk about keeping dinks less than six inches above the net and the wrist angles for a shot or what a drop is all about.  Those topics are for the people who want to continue.  And a lot of those topics are not useful early on as long as they are playing with other beginners.  

The big problem that all of the players had, was not physically getting to the ball early enough.  The ball is strange compared to tennis, for example, and we don't see a lot of Wiffle balls late in life.  The next skill needed is just getting to the ball.  I see no need to teach it as it's not difficult and players will see the need for it immediately.  

I think the instructional agendum as modified is an improvement.  I think we got them the introduction they wanted, didn't overwhelm with vocabulary or picky details or esoteric skills.