Specific sports skills teaching content requirements

There is no unified standard that is universally applicable. All content design must anchor the three core anchors of "learner stratification, essential rules of the project, and balance between skill mastery and interest retention" to ultimately achieve the development of transferable sports abilities and the establishment of long-term sports habits.

When I was an assistant coach at a district youth basketball training camp two years ago, I saw two coaches arguing over the teaching content until they got red in the face. The old coach who retired from the sports team insisted that 10-year-old students must squat until their thighs are parallel to the ground when dribbling. No rest is allowed if each set of 200 reps is not up to standard. ； The young coach who just graduated from the physical education major disagreed. He said that he should first let the children hold the ball and play the staking game, and then talk about the standard of movement after they can run the entire distance without losing the ball. Both of them came to me for comment afterwards, but I didn't dare to answer the call at the time - this is essentially the core contradiction that has been debated for more than ten years in the teaching of specialized skills: Which priority should be given to technical standards or interest adaptation?

To be honest, the persistence of the old-school coach is not without reason. If you are bringing in reserve talents who want to take a professional route, you really have to be careful and not let go of any deformation of movements - otherwise when it comes to the level of high-intensity confrontation in the youth team, the wrong movements raised since childhood will be a time bomb, either easily injured, or the technical limit will be directly locked. The CBA youth team has two hours of basic dribbling training every day. If they make a mistake, they will stop and retrain. This logic has no problem at all in the training of competitive talents. A few years ago, I went to the provincial team for exchanges. I watched the table tennis team teach 12-year-old players to hit the forehand ball. They even used a ruler to measure the height of the wrist. I thought it was harsh at the time. Later, I heard from the coach that there was a good prospect who had a habit of swinging his wrist when he was a child. When he was 16 years old and entered the national team trials, he would go out of bounds when encountering strong confrontation and could not change. Only then did he understand the rationality of this strictness.

But if you are dealing with ordinary students in school who only have one physical education class a week, or retired middle-aged and elderly enthusiasts who want to have some fun, this teaching method will purely discourage them. I had encountered this pitfall when I was giving badminton classes to a university public sports class. I did nothing in the first class. I first taught how to swing the racket, and required everyone to swing the racket 100 times. If the movements were not standard, I kept practicing. As a result, a third of the people asked for leave in the second class, saying that their arms hurt so much that they couldn't lift them. A few of them dropped out of the class and chose shuttlecock. Later, I changed the content. In the first class, we played "hitting and shooting." We put mineral water bottles on the field as targets. If we could hit the target, we would win. After playing half a class, I said casually, "If you adjust your grip on the racket like this, you can hit more accurately and it won't hurt." Instead, everyone took the initiative to come over and ask about the essentials of the moves. After one semester, not only did no one skip class, but many people took the initiative to ask to play ball after class.

Here I have to mention a pitfall that many people easily fall into: don’t directly copy the training system of professional teams into ordinary teaching. Take skipping as an example. Nowadays, many online celebrity classes teach cross jumps and double swings, which are all fancy. But for ordinary people who want to lose fat, the core essence of skipping is the elasticity of the lower limbs and the coordination of hands and feet. You must first learn to land on the balls of your feet, slightly bend your knees without locking them, and be able to jump continuously for 10 minutes without gasping or knee pain. It is more useful than any other tricks. I once saw a student practice double-shaking with an Internet celebrity for three days, and then suffered from Achilles tendonitis and took a break for half a month. The essence is that the teaching content is completely divorced from the learner's foundation, and the core rules of the project are not grasped.

Of course, this does not mean that there is no need for standards at all. The current consensus in the industry is that "technical actions have a baseline and no ceiling." The baseline is injury prevention. For example, when playing badminton, you cannot hold the racket with your fists, otherwise you will definitely get tennis elbow after playing for a long time. ； Don't hit the ground directly with your heels when running, otherwise the knee meniscus will have problems sooner or later. These contents must be taught in the first lesson and are not subject to discussion. But above the baseline, it can be adjusted flexibly. You can't ask an ordinary person with short arms to hold the shot at exactly 90 degrees like Chen Long, right? As long as it can exert force, it doesn't hurt, and it can be hit accurately. According to exercise physiology, the initial stage of skill formation is the generalization stage. It is normal for the movements to be crooked. If you dig into the details as soon as you get started, it will make the learners fearful of difficulties and make them unable to let go of the movements.

Last year, I participated in the revision of the content of the campus football class for elementary schools in the district. Previously, the content for the first and second grade students was about stopping the ball with the inside of the foot. The children found it boring and ran to play on the slide next to it. Later, we changed the content. In the first and second grades, we started dribbling games and shooting competitions, without even mentioning the footwork of stopping the ball. In the third and fourth grade, we taught basic passing and receiving movements, and in the fifth and sixth grade, we were introduced to simple tactical coordination. After one semester, 60% more children voluntarily participated in after-school football clubs than before, and the skill passing rate in the final test increased by 20%. You see, it’s not that children don’t like learning, but that the content is not designed to meet their needs.

It’s interesting to say that the design of special teaching content is actually a bit like making milk tea. The essence of the project is the tea base, which cannot be changed. If it is changed, it will no longer be this project.； The basis and demand of learners is the degree of sugar and ice. Just give them what they want. If you insist on giving full-sugar milk tea to an old man and old lady who is controlling sugar, they will definitely not buy it. The industry is still exploring content standards for different scenarios. There is no absolute right or wrong, and there is no need to compete for a higher or lower level. To put it bluntly, the teaching of specialized sports skills has never been about teaching others how to "complete standard movements", but about teaching others how to "enjoy the sport". This is the lowest requirement of all content design.