A Truth About Teaching

Bill’s forehand had the nasty habit of consistently finding the net.

He hired me to ‘fix’ it.

We hit a few balls. And, as promised, a high percentage of the forehands he hit smacked sharply into the top of the net.

I asked him to aim higher.

Nothing changed.

“Higher.” I said.

“I’m aiming higher!” He exclaimed.

Around this time I remembered some important info. Bill is an actual rocket scientist. I briefly and unsuccessfully tried to imagine the complexities running around in his cranial kingdom. Whatever they were, I was sure they relied on super small margins of error.

“How much higher are you aiming?”

He held his fingers a few millimeters apart. Which, to an actual rocket scientist, probably seemed crazy huge.

Behind me was a three meter fence. I told him to hit the next few balls over it.

“What!?”

“You heard me right. Hit the ball over the fence.”

“Oh… I don’t know how to do that.” He said.

This was when Bill expected me to earn my keep. To come over and lay the big technical trip on him. Elbow here. This swing plane. And that snap of the wrist. Or some similar bullshit that gave him an excuse to keep missing.

I had no intention of letting him off his own hook. Instead I told him to figure it out.

“Isn’t that what I’m paying you your exorbitant fee for?” He asked.

“Nope. That’s for the pleasure of my company… and the witty repartee. Now, hit this fucking ball over that fence.”

Still nothing changed.

I did not say a single word. A lot of my colleagues talk like they get paid by the word. They do too much of the heavy lifting for their clients… for my taste. Bill put rockets into space. I knew he could figure this out. If properly motivated.

Finally, a couple balls cleared the net by a few inches. A few more and it was a foot. A few dozen more and he was repeatedly hitting perfect forehands… by trying to hit them over the fence.

He was thrilled. I was not.

“I told you to hit the damn thing OVER the fence!”

He put the very next ball into the stratosphere.

“There!” He exclaimed.

“Great!” I said. Then I quickly made a new request, before he had time to think about it… “now put this ball into the bottom of the net.”

He did.

“You just showed that you can put your forehand pretty much anywhere you want.”

The whole process took less than thirty minutes.

Obviously, the issue wasn’t technique. It was fear. Which is normally the case.

The majority of the world has been sold on the idea that more robust technique is the way out of fear. It is NOT.

Later Bill opened up to me a little. For a reason that only he can truly know, he was petrified of losing control of the ball. Through the course of trying to purposefully do what he was so afraid of doing… namely, put a ball over the fence. He got a feel for how unlikely that was to happen. Even the ball he eventually put into the parking lot was under his control. And when he recognized how improbable his big forehand fear was… the fear lost it’s teeth.

Bill taught himself that universal life lesson in less than thirty minutes.

And I’m serious about Bill teaching himself. That’s not an attempt at modesty. (I am not known for my modesty.) If there is one thing I’ve learned about teaching it’s this: people ONLY learn when THEY are ready to. And when they are ready… they don’t need much help. If I contributed anything to the process, it was helping Bill get to the point where he was so sick of screwing up… that he was finally willing to do something about it.

Things are so often what we think they aren’t.