The 1% Download

How to manage the emotional component of learning to motivate the work and minimize the quit

by Walter Oden

Introduction:

Coaching children is a blessing of my full-time job.  Coaching parents is also part of the job description.  Learning is more than a hobby of mine.  As a full-time professional coach, I must be obsessed with the process.  Over the years, I have discovered there is rarely an “always” in the process.  However, there are some patterns.

The Talent Code

The science of teaching the long-term process has been well chronicled in groundbreaking books like The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.

Through Daniel’s research, we were blessed to learn about Myelin, Deep Practice, Highly Talented Pockets and Chunking. The details matter.  Yet, no matter how much valuable material a book like this contains, the public just can’t help themselves.  What do people remember the most? 10 years, 10,000 hours.

Daniel gave us the perspective of a reporter and researcher.  This article is from the perspective of a teacher and coach.  My goals are very different than just applying science. It’s one thing to go to work every day.  It’s another to go to work with a positive outlook on the process.

I do not want to reinvent science.  I want an easier to digest version to use with our students.  We also need to consider another equally important concept.  The “Emotional Component” of learning.

The Emotional Component

As coaches, nothing is more exciting than working with students with great attitudes.  Enter the other end of the continuum; A talented student with a bad attitude.  In reality, we can’t teach the love.  Our hope is to help students get to a skill level where a discipline is fun.

For instance, I teach tennis.  A talented tennis professional knows how to make tennis fun even in the early stages.  Ultimately, the sport of tennis becomes fun when a certain skill level is reached.

During the early days of tennis, skill development can vary greatly student to student.  Overall,  a student’s attitude towards learning these skills is directly related to many factors.  For instance, how do they feel about the subject matter? How familiar is the student with what is being taught?  This can matter when new topics or skills create stress due to lack of experiential reference points.

You also have external forces like parents and peers impacting the student.  Their familiarity, experience and attitude can vary greatly as well.

Finally, the expectation of results (from all parties) can impact the student’s attitude.  How does this student deal with error rate?

All these components wrap up into a category we will call the emotional component of learning.  This article homes in on how to support and coach the emotional component to maximize long period learning.

I have a case of Whiplash

A movie that seriously impacted me as a coach was the academy award nominated Whiplash.  If you haven’t seen the movie, do it.  Click the link to the left to get a sense of what this movie is all about.  Profanity warning! Whether it is music, sports, parenting, teaching, or management we have all seen this style of coaching.

J.K. Simmons plays a jazz teacher/conductor at a small college.  Miles Teller plays a young jazz drummer with aspirations of excelling like his idol Buddy Rich.  What transpires will hold you breathless.  In essence, there is a coaching style that seeks out “the one”.  If you are not “the one” you are emotionally expendable.

Most will agree this is not the best approach to coaching.

Error Rate

I  love writing about the concept of error rate.  How do your students deal with error rate when learning a “hard” or “long period” skill?  Some skills are by definition “long period” meaning that the sheer number of repetitions needed to gain familiarity will take years (not weeks).

 

Everyone is different.  Some people can handle the error rate, some can’t.  High level academic performers may have problems dealing with error rate in sports.  Why? They  are used to regular gratification through grades on tests. This problem is magnified when a student has done something a certain way for a long time.  Unlearning or changing a technique gets even harder when a student is competing regularly.  Let’s define “competing” as anything that has a score, a winner, a loser or grade attached to it.

Sell it

Therefore, “selling” the long-term process is part of the emotional equation.  Yes, part of our job as coaches is to sell the end game.  In fact, it is a major part of our work.  Students (and parents) can get hyper focused on performance results as a measure of success.  This type of student needs something they can grasp on to during the periods of high failure rate. High failure rates are a FACT during the early stages of long period skill development.  The goal is to help prevent their head from melting while making the necessary errors in the early learning process.

 Simplify 

I was presenting at a USPTA World Conference on Tennis and made a statement.  “My goal is to take complicated science and make it simple to apply”.  That presentation was about brain science.

Simplicity is essential if “science” is going to make an impact on students.  It better be simple, or you will lose them.  That means students (and parents) may not need all the scientific details.  Sometimes it is not the “idea” that matters, but how it makes the student “feel”.  How they feel will impact their practice mentality and their ability to stay focused on the future.  Academic principles don’t motivate all students.

Albert

What do people remember Albert Einstein for most?  Was it for his General Theory of Relativity? Was it his hair?  His hatred of shoes and socks? Maybe. Most people remember E=MC²

Out of the clutter, find simplicity  – Albert Einstein

E = MC².  That simple formula created more buzz than the theory itself.  The common man may not understand the complexities of warped space-time or gravitational waves.  Yet, this formula changed the world.  Everyone knows it.  It may have also spawned a surge in young people pursuing careers in physics.  Students are starved for simple concepts.

The Concept

We have all been there.  Been notified of a new Windows 10 update?  Had a bad WiFi location and tried to download an app?  Maybe it is a YouTube upload and it’s a big file.  It is one of the most annoying tech realities.  You start a download and see the dreaded 1% complete.

Most of the time, we just put our phone down and walk away for a while.  Then, we check on it periodically to see how far its gotten.  We get motivated when 1% has moved to 3%.  As long as we see it moving, we don’t panic.  We know it’s working, even if it is slow.  In fact, we are more motivated to walk away and simply let it finish.

The Human Brain

This is exactly how the human brain learns.  It is a slow download.  Then again, everything can download if you are willing to wait.  The human brain is like unlimited cloud storage with a really slow WiFi connection.  It can be both annoying and stressful.  Sometimes, during slow sections of a download, we may question whether things are really downloading at all?

You ever get to a point in a major update (like the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update) where it stalls at a number like 47%?  You start to question whether something happened.  Did the progress stop because of a flaw in the connection?  Is there simply a problem with the install?  This is how students (young and old) may feel during the learning phase!  Parents are also subject to this “learning lag” phenomena.

This is where our job as a coach becomes so important.

Patience 

If we are not patient, we often sabotage the download by rebooting the device or exiting out of the process prematurely.  We can equate this to periods of “quit”.

Therein lies our secret to this concept.  Think of learning “hard things” like the 1 % download.  Tennis is a hard, long period skill.  Playing an instrument is in this realm as well.  Learning a sport and playing an instrument are “large downloads”.  Be patient.  It doesn’t have to happen all at once.  Accept progress that is small. In fact, you may not even notice the progress.  Yet, the download is happening.

Your brain is powerful, but it can’t bite off everything all at once.

The tub is filling, but is it draining?

Another good analogy to emphasize (and sell) this concept is a fast filling tub of water.  A full tub is a metaphor for a lot of information we are trying to put into our brain.  There is only so much water that can go down the drain.  The drain represents maximum input rate our brain can handle.  That is your brain processing hard data.  Be patient.  The tub will drain.  In fact, even a slow drain goes down eventually.  Be careful, overfilling a tub or glass of liquid only gets the floor wet.

How much water you add to the tub is directly related to how much it can hold.  This is where the concept of dosage becomes important.

Dosage

Would you ever get a prescription for a medication and ignore the directions?  I know, just open the bottle and take all the pills!

That’s why it is important to sometimes cutoff new skill drills with a time limit.  The emotional component is directly related to dosage! One example from tennis is  introducing young players to continental grip skills.  Once we get to a certain amount of time, we should stop.  It can be counter productive to keep coaching a skill to get a performance breakthrough in a single teaching session.  Again, dosage impacts the emotional component of skill development.

We can agree that some students can take higher dosages than others.  We will address that later in the article.

How to use dosage in teaching

Here is how I use dosage in a one hour lesson.  I predetermine the topics and approximate time I want to spend on a topic.  When the allotted time on a topic ends, simply tell the student “dosage”.  This message goes well with the 1% download concept.  You ever see a kid hit their phone screen repeatedly if it’s not loading?  You can only get so much data in.  Put it down and let it download.

Danger Will Robinson!

As was noted earlier, we all learn differently.  I am constantly reminded of an unintentional emotional story I heard once from the great American tennis player Eliot Teltscher.  There really isn’t a nicer guy in the world of tennis.  I was attending the National Competition Training Center Seminar in Key Biscayne.  Eliot was recently hired by the USTA to head up High Performance Coaching.  During a round table discussion on junior tennis, the panel was asked “what motivated you to excel?”.

We heard lots of stock answers until Eliot responded.  “My fear of my dad”.  He went on to say that “my fear of my dad probably forced me to practice harder and get to the level I became.  Unfortunately, it didn’t do much for my long-term relationship with my dad”.

We have heard this story from Andre Agassi as well in his book.  This emotional component is a very real pitfall applying science and research literally.  Let’s agree the math on being world-class (10 years, 10,000 hours) is a fact.  This math fails when we try to factor in things like mental health and relationships with people driving the work.

Dosage has to be different to different students.  One size does not fit all.  A 1% download at a slower pace may be the perfect pace for maximizing skill and positive long-term emotional development.  Others can take more push.

Progressive muscle overload 

We are likely all aware of the concept of in strength training.  In short, it is a method of training which puts muscles in a state that pushes them beyond their normal breaking point.  Some research shows this may increase performance gains over traditional training.  You must be careful not to injure the athlete, so there is a lot of skill that goes into this accelerated style of training.  If we think of the brain as a muscle (neuroplasticity) it might work as well.

Capacity Training

Dr. Jim Loehr wrote many books making reference to developing a capacity for stress.   His key to success included adding just enough stress to improve the student’s tolerance for stress.  The magic is in the dosage!  The point of this section is to point out that “overfilling the tub” at times is completely reasonable if it is part of a bigger plan.  Getting the athlete used to having “too much information” could be an argument for better dealing with stress.

However, this may not be the best approach when learning a NEW or LONG PERIOD skill.  Could it be better to control the dosage and calmly preach the 1% download?  The answer depends on the student.

Almost done?

Another strange premise is when you have almost reached 100% of the download, but don’t notice.  Imagine a long staircase where the last step is so high, you can’t see over the top to the finish line.  Students in this mode of thinking may quit right before they are there!

This is like the 87% complete with a lag.  The student is stuck at 87% and thinks they have failed and it will never finish (or get better).  Remember, I talked about certain parts of a download that take extra-long?  It is important as a coach to be aware of this process and make the student know “you are close”.

I often see a student that is very close to mastering a skill in a private lesson, but won’t work on it in a group clinic.  This just stalls the download.  It is these moments that are critical to “push through” the lag.  It is even worse when the students are competing.  They will almost never work on a new skill while trying to win (nor should they).

This is why the 1% download concept is so important.  You don’t need a fast download if the student understands the concept and the end game.  A student can move the needle 1% during the week, but doesn’t have to move it every day during the week.

Partial Download

Apps don’t work unless they are fully downloaded and installed.  This is not true with learning.  It is way more like a low resolution picture becomes higher resolution as the download becomes closer to 100%.  That means the skill is useable long before 100%

Slow download doesn’t mean no download 

Milestones are both useful and dangerous.  They can be a powerful motivation tool when you are exceeding accepted milestones.  They can choke confidence and belief systems when you lag behind the norm.  Enter parent’s fear of their child being “behind” and you have a recipe for Armageddon.

This is another huge advantage of the 1% download concept.  Do you really care how long it takes to get to 100%?  I am specifically talking about students that are lagging in specific areas of academics or sports.  The answer is maybe.  School forces these timelines, so we might not have a choice.  Young tennis players are forced into timelines called “junior tennis”.  Yet, in the grand scheme of life most students and parents would agree that getting to the finish line matters more than the timeline!

If you have a seemingly slow learner, who cares!  As long as the download is progressing, you are headed in the right direction.  Don’t be influenced by other people’s download speeds.  If it looks like the download is progressing, continue to support it towards the 100% goal.

Moments of Suspect (The Shanks)

All apps crash.  It doesn’t mean it’s a bad app.  It doesn’t mean the app doesn’t work.  It just crashed.

I invented the term “moments of suspect” to comedically describe how a well-developed skill goes awry. Remember the scene in Tin Cup where Kevin Costner gets “The Shanks”?

This is caused by lots of things.  I could be you think you are at a 100% download, but might be in the 90% range.  Getting to 90% in the download process is often a time when you FEEL like you have mastered something.  Yet, moments of suspect might be the tell-tale sign you are still not there.

Moments of suspect are in every sport.  We have all seen Lebron have a bad day.  That doesn’t change the fact that he is one of the greatest of all time.  There is a natural ebb and flow of a skill.  It is a lot like a fully charged battery that loses charge without it being plugged in.

Usually, moments of suspect will pass unless you try to fix them right there.  Trying to fix the “Shanks” leads to the scene in Tin Cup.  Sometimes, just walk away from the skill and allow your system to reboot is all it takes.  Usually, your download will pick-up right where it left off.

Some Conclusions

There are no easy answers to being a teacher.  In a perfect world, all students would show up motivated to try hard no matter how they are doing or feeling.  I am convinced that you must have a feel for neuroscience to really maximize the learning of any student.  All students learn at different rates.  All students have different motivation levels.  Finally, different students have different emotional components to manage.

As teachers, we should be careful not to sell performance expectations. Stick to selling  learning expectations.  Remember, that 1% download is a big file.  It takes a while, but what an app!

Copyright Walter Oden, November 2017, all rights reserved.  Please see Global Copyright Notice on Home Page Sidebar

 

 

 

 

 

Wakarimasu ka?

How misunderstanding can lead to both comedy and war

Introduction:

” The key to strong relationship is great communication”.  That may be true.  Good communication is the constant cliché of books and videos.  Yet, miscommunication is an equal cousin.  I thought it would be interesting to look at the power of miscommunication.

Some miscommunication we can laugh about.  Still, miscommunication can make you scratch your head and go hmmmm?  This was my chance to make you watch the video from C & C Music Factory.

Still other miscommunications can create hate, violence and war.  Much like dark matter makes up a large chunk of the universe; I like to think of “miscommunication” as a dark side of the communication continuum.

Technology and Communication Fails

Autocorrect is an inadvertent addition to the comedy world.  It all starts with a text message.  We try to type quickly to keep up with a conversation.  Then, artificial intelligence kicks in and changes certain words as it predicts what your were trying to spell.  Some of the autocorrect threads are way too saucy for my blog.  If you are so inclined, it will take you 2 seconds to search for all best autocorrect fails. One interesting note, a couple of years ago all text auto correct fails were due to spelling corrections.  Now with voice to text, they are increasingly due to true language misinterpretation.

Three’s Company and the birth of the Sitcom

John Ritter played the character Jack Tripper.  He was the star on the hit sitcom Three’s Company.  Each week, you would watch a script that was essentially based on misunderstanding.  It was set in my hometown of Santa Monica.  For those of you that didn’t know the subplot on the show, John had to pretend to be gay to be able to live with two women.  This essentially created the foundation for the entire show.  Just changing each person’s perception of the “real story” allowed the screenwriters to create funny moments.  They even had a character Chrissy Snow that communicated in such a convoluted way, nobody understood her.

Most sitcoms have the same theme.  They are situations based on miscommunication.  The premise is that we all will laugh at the misunderstanding of the characters.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Morris the Cat

My dad told a story that I will never be able to do justice.  He describes a time when he was a professor at Kent State.  We were living on University Drive (for all the locals out there).  We had an orange cat name Morris.  Yes, it was from the old catfood commercials with the finicky cat name Morris.

Morris was an outdoor cat.  That means he would go out all night.  He would only return for food and an occasional rub.  Well, one night he went out an got in a fight.  He was a big cat, but got pretty messed up.  He had open wounds and my dad was worried about him.

My dad went to the University and was visibly upset.  One of my dad’s fellow professor friends noticed the demeanor change.  It was easy to see when my dad was upset. That was because he was one of the most outgoing happy people around.  Everything was about comedy.  So, when he was sad or upset it showed.

My dad’s  friend was of Indian decent.  I need you to imagine the accent because when my dad told the story, it was always there.    If I see you in person, I can demonstrate.

My dad’s professor friend asked “Dick, what is wrong today?”  My dad’s name was Richard.  Yes,  it is old school.  Everyone called him Dick.  My dad couldn’t hide his depression.  “It’s Morris, he got hurt and is really messed up”.  My dad’s friend was immediately upset.  “Did you take him to the doctor?”  My dad sighed and said “No, I will just wait a day and see how he is doing”.  This set my dad’s friend off.  “You should not wait!”  My dad walked away and started his day.

The next day, Morris was not better.  In fact, he was probably worse.  My dad was a good cat owner.  This has happened before.  He had certainly taken his cats to the vet for a variety of reasons.  Morris had also been in fights before.  He was a tough cat and had healed each time.

Once again, my dad was in a breakout room with his friend.  His friend immediately asked, “How is Morris?”  My dad sadly reported “He is worse”.  You can predict the response.  “Are you kidding me?  You are the worst father ever!  You don’t wait a day to take someone to the hospital after they get hurt!  What kind of person are you?  I don’t even know who you are anymore!”

My dad was really shocked.  He couldn’t believe his friend was so emotional about cats.  He decided to try to lower the tension by saying “My friend, I appreciate your passion for cats.  I will definitely take Morris to the doctor the minute I get home.”

My dad’s friend changed expressions.  He went from bright-eyed shocked to laughter.  “Morris is a cat?  I thought it was your son!  My god, we would eat cats when I was younger!”

One note on this story.  It was so much funnier when you add the Indian accent.  I am also sure I missed a lot of build up.  Yet, I never claim to be as good a story-teller as my dad.

Curb your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld

Larry David became famous as one of the writers on the hit show Seinfeld.  The character George Costanza was said to be based on the real life Larry David.  This Seinfeld writer decided to embark on a darker, more stressful show.  Curb your Enthusiasm was the HBO hit that was based on unscripted miscommunication.  In fact, the comedy was always based on misunderstanding Larry.  The best way to describe the show is uncomfortable.  You try so hard to root for Larry, but things never go as planned.  For instance, watching Larry describe Parkinson’s Disease can make you cringe. The interesting twist to miscommunication is that both Larry and the audience were always aware of the miscommunication.  Viewers have to painfully live through what follows.

How World War I began

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is famously linked with the start of World War I.  World War I may have claimed 10 million lives.  Yet, the final cause of his assassination was linked with a strange miscommunication in directions.  Apparently, the Archduke  had escaped an initial planned assassination attempt.  In fact, the assasins attacked the wrong vehicle.  So, an initial miscommunication saved his life!  Yet, when the Archduke attempted to visit the unlucky victims of the attack, his driver got mixed up on where to go.  In fact, his driver tried to back-up on a street to change directions.  This coincidently caught the eye of one of the members of the political party that planned the initial attack.  Sure enough, the new assassin hit his mark.  The rest is literally history.

MapQuest’s Rise and Demise

You would think that direction miscommunications were limited to turn of the century errors.  Horror movie plots love this premise.  Yet, I can remember a recent event that involved the “flash in the pan” website MapQuest.

Remember when we used to load addresses into the MapQuest website and print out directions?  Remember how many times it failed?  I wrote a whole blog post on that fail.  The post was called Real American.  If you didn’t read it, it received quite a few nods of approval.

War of the Worlds

This is one of my favorite stories ever.  The legendary Orson Welles was a radio personality before he became a movie star.  In 1938, he and his staff decided to tell the story of War of the Worlds (written by H.G. Wells) as if it was an actual news event.  What happened next was nationwide panic.  By the end of the broadcast, people assumed we were being invaded my Martians.  It was brilliant.  Yet, Orson Welles was later forced to apologize to the public.  I found the original recording.  Let it run in the background when you are doing something in your house.  The build up made you realize that the age of radio was so special.

Original radio broadcast of War of the Worlds

Wakarimasu ka

The title of this article comes from my memories of watching James Clavell’s Shogun mini-series.  Want a quick lesson in Japanese?

Conclusions:

This topic of misunderstanding spawns an important discussion about communication.  The problem is the cliché of communication.  We always talk about relationships being based on trust and communication.  The question is how hard do we try to understand others?  More importantly, how much do we care to understand one another?  I think many misunderstandings occur between families.  With that in mind, I will work to listen to my kids as they describe how they feel.  Right after that, I will try to convince them we are being invaded by Martians.

Copyright Walter Oden – September 2015 – All Rights Reserved.  See Global Copyright Notice on sidebar of home page for additional notifications.

 

Cross Hand Dominance – The Lefty Righty Conundrum

Why we need more sophisticated methodologies to analyze handedness in our children

By Walter Oden

Introduction

As I have started to wrap our summer of tennis camps, I have an observation about children.  The younger the child, the less obvious hand dominance is present.  On the other hand, there are some markers.  Why do we care?  Don’t children naturally gravitate to their genetic handedness?  Parents are often very sensitive to their child using the “correct” hand. My goal is to present some theory to help you understand handedness.

The Premise

I will argue that all human beings fall on a continuum of hand dominance.  Many of you know my obsession with brain dominance theory.  This premise is not that different. There are actually (2) handedness graphs for every person.  There will be one for FINE MOTOR skills and one for GROSS MOTOR skills.

| Left Handed —————— Gross Motor Skills ———————- Right Handed|

 | Left Handed ——————- Fine Motor Skills ———————– Right Handed|

 Throughout this article, we will firm up our evidence for this hypothesis.

The Signs

The best examples of our hand dominance confusion come straight from professional sports.  We will tell stories of handedness from Baseball, Golf & Tennis.

Maria Sharapova

The hard court season in tennis is in full swing.  Memories of Wimbledon & The French Open have long passed.  Yet, I started writing this article during the French Open!  So a little memory lane is needed.

The French Women’s Final had a Romanian newcomer Simona Halep. Her opponent was the veteran Russian Maria Sharapova.  Maria was serving at 4-3 in the third set.  Then, the double fault.  It was her 12th of the match.  For you non tennis players, that is essentially giving up (3) whole games.  Maria is a hall of fame caliber player.  So, this sheer volume in double faults is truly an enigma.  On the other hand, this has happened to Maria before!

We all know she plays tennis right handed.   Yet, her serve is a constant love hate relationship.  It is both a weapon and liability.  How can that be?  How could a world class athlete have a problem with a something as bio-mechanically natural as a serve?

Rumor has it that she is naturally a lefty.  In fact, she recently had a Facebook post playing ping pong.  Yes, she was playing lefty!  Want some evidence?  Check this video out with Ellen DeGeneres.

Maria Sharapova playing Ping Pong with Ellen

At some point, there was a decision to make her a right handed tennis player.  Clearly, it worked.  Yet, how can we get it right for other young athletes?

The Tarantula Test

We do a test with little kids.  I am shocked how often parents tell us “My child is right handed”.  Then, we lay out the premise.  “Place a tennis ball on the ground and pretend it is a giant tarantula.  The net is the rain forest.  When I say go pick up the tarantula and throw it as far as you can back into the rain forest!”  This always gets laughs.  It also gives us information.  We immediately learn what side the player THROWS a ball.  In addition, they have to use GROSS MOTOR skills to pick it up and throw it.  99% of the time, we can determine a child’s dominant throwing arm.  Every now and then, there is the 1% that seems to throw equally with both hands!  That 1% includes Luke Jensen!

The Public School Test

I am always in shock how public schools make an early determination on what hand a child should use to write.  The simplicity reminds me of how they used to cut off legs “just in case” it could go gangrene.  Their “classic” method is placing a pencil on the middle of a table.  Then they observe the child pick up the pencil.  Which ever hand they pick it up with, that is the hand they designate as their hand to write with for life!  I am not kidding either.  That is a typical preschool test.  Then, if the child is having writing problems, they simply assign them to occupational therapy.  Yes, you sense some sarcasm.  That is because there are so many reasons this methodology has a failure rate.  The major failure here is that writing is a FINE MOTOR SKILL.  Whereas, moving and grabbing have elements of GROSS MOTOR SKILLS.  Below, we will address that in even more detail

Throwing versus Writing

There are big differences in writing versus throwing.  Throwing is a BIG MUSCLE group skill set.  We call those GROSS MOTOR skills.  Anything that makes the body move as a whole is a GROSS MOTOR skill.  Running and jumping are also classified as GROSS MOTOR skills.  In tennis, forehands and backhands are in that classification as well.

A FINE MOTOR skill is generally use of the hands or feet independent of the body.  Writing is a classic FINE MOTOR SKILL.  You can also think about using the fingers independent of the body.  In tennis, a volley is often considered a FINE MOTOR skill even though you must use your body to get to the ball.

Cross Hand Dominance Defined

I invented the term to describe people that have GROSS MOTOR dominance on one side and FINE MOTOR dominance on the other side.  For example, a person might throw very well with their RIGHT HAND, but write effectively with their LEFT HAND.  I will now present a perfect example of this argument.  He is Mallorca’s own, Rafael Nadal.

Rafael Nadal

Rafa was hitting with two hands on forehands and backhands early in his junior career.  At some point, his coach “Uncle Toni” told Rafa to “pick a hand”.  Uncle Toni recommended Rafa become a lefty for tennis.  I think we can say this experiment was a big success.  Want to see the discussion? Click on this link. It is a whole interview with Rafa and Uncle Toni on his handedness!!

Interview with Uncle Toni

Can you imagine Rafa NOT being a lefty?  Would he have even excelled?  How many athletes start with the “wrong” hand?

Phil Mickelson

Even other sports have signs of left – right hand confusion.  Phil Mickelson is a natural right hander.  Yet, he is a left handed golfer.  Thanks to my PGA Professional friend Jim Beers, I know he warms up throwing a baseball with his caddie in the parking lot!  Yes, he throws with his right hand.

Golf Technique

The technique in golf is not that different than baseball.  In fact, hand dominance issues are the same.  This is why Phil Mickelson is such and outstanding left handed golfer.  He uses his dominant RIGHT HAND to PULL the club through.

The Relationship between Golf and Tennis

In 2010, my great friend and PGA professional Jim Beers and I presented at the Midwest USPTA Convention.  Our presentation, the Relationship between Golf and Tennis, was a full technical comparison between the two sports.  One of the largest conclusions we made was that the technique of a golf shot is more of a PULL than a PUSH.  Therefore, a GROSS MOTOR skill right hander should play golf LEFTY and tennis RIGHTY

Guess who else figured that out?

Ivan Lendl was famous for winning (7) majors.  He later became famous again for coaching Andy Murray to a Wimbledon victory.  He never won Wimbledon himself.  His joke was always “I am allergic to grass”.  One year, he refused to play Wimbledon and played golf during the fortnight.  Yes, he figured out the left – right golf conundrum.

How about the endless array of hall of fame baseball players?  How many of them threw right handed, but bat left handed?

Baseball

I grew up playing more baseball than tennis.  As a young Southern California youth, I probably played baseball (7) days a week.  I picked up tennis as an add-on game.  I always batted left handed.  Or maybe I didn’t.  I remember being a huge fan of Fred Lynn.  Fred Lynn was an awesome player with the Boston Redsox.  He threw left handed and bat left handed.  So, since he batted lefty I did too.  Yet, I couldn’t throw lefty.

It turns out there are tons of Hall of Fame caliber players that threw right handed and bat left handed.  One example was the great Rod Carew.  He was a fantastic hitter.  He bat left handed, but threw right handed.  He is in that amazing 3,000/1,000 club.  He had over 3,000 hits and 1,000 RBI’s lifetime.

George Brett was one of the best hitters in that era.  I never really rooted for him since he played for the Kansas City Royals. Although, the famous charge of Billy Martin in the “Pine Tar Incident” goes down as one of my favorites!

What a hitter.  He also threw right handed and bat left handed.

So what is with all this right handed throwers batting left handed?  It is all in the technique.

In baseball, the dominant hand (like Golf described above) is actually the bottom hand.  You ever see how modern hitting technique includes letting go of the top hand?  So, the dominant GROSS MOTOR hand should be in charge!  That means that the term batting “righty” is not really accurate.  A Right handed batter is in fact using their LEFT hand much more.

The Curious Case of Alison Biltz

You know how they say teachers learn much more from their students?  Alison Biltz is a highly talented Pre Med student at Fordham University.  I met her when she was about 11.  I was teaching her mom (Beth) tennis.  Beth asked if Alison could tag along.  Alison was definitely being “pushed” to try tennis.  Seven years later, she was a STATE OF OHIO high school tennis runner-up.  Alison was always an interesting student to teach because she had so many non-traditional talents.

She would describe how she wrote.  One hand was for the chalk board and another was for pencils!  She naturally threw a ball lefty.  We made sure she played tennis lefty for the serve relationship to throwing.  On the other hand (pun intended), she had a much better backhand.  She also could play right handed with no problem.  In fact, during her senior year, she had so many injuries in her left arm (wrist, arm and shoulder) she played right handed until the post season!  Luckily, she was advanced enough academically that no one stopped her from changing hands regularly.

Some final thoughts on Tennis

As we come full circle back to tennis, I would argue that it is one of the few sports where both hands are critical.  A GROSS MOTOR right hander should play tennis right handed.  Why?  So they can serve with the hand they throw.  Yet, a player with a two handed backhand will be using a TON of their left hand in this scenario.  Two handed backhands in tennis tend to USE their TOP hand much more than GOLF and BASEBALL!

Terminology & Teaching

Is the major problem in this discussion labeling?  Should we really call a right handed batter a righty?  Here is the funny part too.  A right handed batter stands on the left side of the plate!

I think the key to success is to have knowledge.  People need knowledge in sports too.  Be careful in labeling people right handed or left handed too quickly!  Also, be careful on labels that may not describe a technique.  People are all individuals.  You can have different hands to do different things.  I might even go out on a limb.

Out on a Limb

Dominant Right Hand throwers (GROSS MOTOR SKILL) should consider playing TENNIS right handed.  On the other hand, they should also consider playing GOLF and hitting a BASEBALL left handed.  This “dangling limb” theory is based on coaching technique.

David W. Smith

My old friend from Utah is used to be most known for his writings in tennis.  On the other hand, he is currently coaching a future LPGA player!  He was the Senior Editor at the highly acclaimed TennisOne.com tennis instructional website.  He is also a national proponent of teaching a two handed forehand.  His first tennis book, TENNIS MASTERY, goes into detail on this theory.  His premise allows children to develop bilateral handedness early in their career.

Carla Hannaford

I was tipped off to a real genius in teaching.  Carla Hannaford is well known in education circles.  On the other hand, I am surprised by how many supposed “neuroscience” people have never heard of her!

Carla has written quite a few ground breaking books.

Two that are fantastic are THE DOMINANCE FACTOR and SMART MOVES.  These are not books you have to read cover to cover.  Rather, you can read sections of chapters randomly.  Her premise in the DOMINANCE FACTOR was that all human beings have a DOMINANT side, but they don’t always synchronize well.  In other words, you might have a person with a DOMINANT right arm and DOMINANT left foot.  In most circumstances, these differences don’t matter. Yet, add elements of STRESS and there can be a FAILURE rate to these differences.  I am painfully paraphrasing.  I highly recommend these books.  I am fairly certain she has not received enough “acclaim” for her work.

What we might take away

I think my biggest conclusion is that we need to develop more human beings to use:

• BOTH hands
• BOTH feet
• BOTH eyes
• BOTH ears
• And BOTH hemispheres of their BRAIN!

That means allowing our children to practice all sorts of GROSS and FINE MOTOR skills using both sides of their body.  Long term, they will gravitate towards certain dominant traits.  Yet, as pointed out with my “Cross Hand Dominance Theory”, this may allow for our children to work out all their unique differences without too much influence.

As always, I really appreciate your time and energy you took to read this!

Copyright Walter Oden, July 2014, all rights reserved.  Please review global copyright notice on sidebar on home page.

Fixed versus Growth Mindset – Missing Something?

by Walter Oden

How work ethic improves all psychology

Background:

One of my favorite movies of all time is Forrest Gump  The first time I saw this movie, I was so drawn into “rooting” for Forrest.  It seemed that with every turn, good fortune followed Forrest.  The movie implies that a “feather” touched Forrest when he was young and that provided him with the “luck” he needed to overcome his cognitive challenges.

I have a completely different take on the movie.  I have seen the movie over 10 times.  I now see Forrest as a very talented human being.  Forrest has a higher “work ethic” than all people around him.  In fact, he was physically and mentally more capable of sticking to a process than other more cognitively capable peers.  The ongoing “joke” in the movie was that Forrest just kept working and trying “not know any better”.  His hard work and determination ALONE resulted in success in spite of what he knew or believed!

What is this all about?

During the fall of 2013, I attended a presentation at Laurel School of Shaker Heights, Ohio by Dr. Lisa Damour.  She is a high profile school psychologist and specializes in learning styles.  She is a colleague of Stanford psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck.

In the last year, the theory of Fixed versus Growth Mindsets has been published and touted as a positive approach to teaching students to be their best.  Dr. Damour’s presentation was nice enough to summarize the theory as follows:

Fixed Mindset:  How you are born is what you believe is your final place in the world.  You are threatened by feedback.  You are also threatened by others that are doing better than you.

Growth Mindset:  Wherever you are born is the starting point of your journey.  Your end game is after all the work has been done.  You see feedback as a positive piece in the puzzle.  You also look to others doing better than you as a model for your work pathway.

The link below goes directly to a site that summarizes the theory:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/

A theory leap that “feels good”

The Growth Mindset Theory makes a Utopian leap in that it implies that by changing psychology from Fixed to Growth, a person will naturally be willing to work hard.  I think for some of the population this is potentially true.  Yet, that population was likely on the “bubble” as a hard worker.  I wish everyone was willing to work hard once they felt good about their prospects.  As we explore below, that situation may not fit the whole population.

The unpopular truth:

No one feels comfortable having the “Nurture versus Nature” discussion.  Yet, there are certain realities to genetics and traits.  Although no one has successfully isolated the “work gene”, I would argue it exists.  It doesn’t take a scientist to observe society and notice the difference between WORKERS and NON-WORKERS.  This trait is generally unrelated to socioeconomic conditions.  In fact, human resource studies have consistently shown that what a person is paid is unrelated to how good or bad an employee they are.  Yes, a good environment and solid upbringing helps.  Yet, we can all cite examples of people that are just darn “lazy” even if they are from solid families.  Therefore, we have to realistically rate people by their inclination to DO WORK.  This could be called a WORK INCLINATION CONTINUUM or WORK ETHIC INDEX.

I challenge you as a reader to rank your co-workers based on WORK ETHIC only.  How about the students we teach?

How to score WORK ETHIC

There are two ways of looking at this continuum.  First, how do you rate yourself?  Clearly, few people will rate themselves as LAZY.  On the other hand, you might rate yourself as a procrastinator.  Procrastination does not always equate with LOW WORK ETHIC.  It simply implies TIMING of WORK.  Yet, perpetual procrastinators will be addressed in our analysis later.

The most important observations would be how am I perceived by others?  Perception of others is an important aspect of reality.

The Work Ethic Index

A real work ethic index would be some combination a SELF rating and PERCEPTION of the PUBLIC rating.  The highest index would be someone with a LOW SELF RATING and HIGH RATING from OTHERS.  This person is always looking to work HARDER because they don’t believe they are working hard enough.

The worst rating would be where I rate myself as a HARD WORKER and others see me as a LAZY BUM!

Impact on Fixed versus Growth Mindset Theory

The “Mindset Theory” is a good one, but it may need to account for a WORK ETHIC INDEX to address certain realities.  In an effort to include it, I have created a matrix that may attempt to merge the theories.  The reason this matters is that addressing WORK ETHIC may be more important than addressing mindset!

You will note in my matrix below, you are much better off having a FIXED MINDSET and HIGH WORK ETHIC INDEX than both of the LOW WORK ETHIC INDEX quadrants.  Since I am a full time tennis professional, I make some professional tennis player references.

The Oden Mindset Matrix

Fixed Mindset/High Work Ethic Index (Upper Left Quadrant – RED)

These people just work hard.  They overcome any limitations created by their lack of belief.  Often, this person is very error averse and hates mistakes.  Yet, because of their HIGH WORK ETHIC marker, they address their belief limitations by simply “going to work every day”.  The results simply come as a result of work.

Tennis Athletes:  Chris Evert and Steffi Graf.  Steffi was well known for her love practice much more than competition!

Fixed Mindset/Low Work Ethic Index (Lower Left Quadrant – BLUE)

This person says “I can’t because of” a lot.  This person also claims to “try hard” with very little evidence of this reality.  It is generally “someone else’s fault” for their plight.

This person simply sees their situation as stuck and there is no use in trying.  Improvement is futile.  Pushing this person into the GROWTH mindset might help.  On the other hand, this plan will likely fail due to a lack of WORK ETHIC.

Growth Mindset/High Work Ethic Index (Upper Right Quadrant – GREEN)

This person is very END GAME oriented.  They see the “what if” and are willing to “get to work” to achieve this vision.  These people take mistakes in stride and see them as all a part of the “bigger picture”.  They will likely take losses and immediately get back to work!

Tennis Athletes:  Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova.  Listen to their post match interviews.  You will immediately hear their approach.  They are “learning” from their losses and have BIGGER goals to achieve!

Growth Mindset/Low Work Ethic Index (Lower Right Quadrant – YELLOW)

I like to call this quadrant the DREAMER.  They like to talk about all their big plans, with little evidence of action.  This person can have some great ideas and may appear to have a GOOD ATTITUDE.  On the other hand, without an injection of good old fashioned WORK, there will never be any movement.  This person is commonly called a PROCRASTINATOR!

Conclusions:

The Growth Mindset Theory is a really POSITIVE theory for learning.  I am very drawn and committed to positive coaching as a philosophy.  On the other hand, I have strong opinions on utilizing certain realities to improve results.  Sometimes the “truth” is more powerful than a “theory”.  As a final note, writing this article is an attempt to move myself out of the GROWTH MINDSET/LOW WORK ETHIC INDEX quadrant!  At least, that is how I rate myself. Thank your so much for your time and energy reading this!

Copyright Walter Oden and “I Have and Idea”, August 2013, All Rights Reserved.  Please see global copyright information on sidebar of this blog.