Challenging blog post from @ImSporticus on how language (in this case, specifically as employed by PE teachers) might help participants to find deeper engagement with movement activities beyond “health & fitness”.
Finding meaning in movement
There has to be more to movement than fitness.
I could (and sometimes still do) bowl a cricket ball in the nets, unopposed.
This practice became almost a meditation for me.
I’d bowl just for the feeling, not of mastery (still a long way short of that), but of momentary control over the flight of the ball, with spin or swerve or pace.
And I can happily engage with the physicality of bowling without worrying so much about what happens at the batter’s end.
It’s true that I have played in teams where catching by fielders has been extremely optional. I lost count of the catches dropped, or missed, or not even attempted. But carried on in the quest for the perfect outswinger, as an almost purely aesthetic exercise!
“Feel” in technical coaching
But as well as the philosophical investigation of meaning in movement, I think that “feeling” has a place in practical, technical coaching.
One of the adult group I am coaching this autumn is trying to convert to off-spin, after injury and an ageing shoulder effectively put an end to his earlier efforts as a seamer.
I have been making a similar bowling transition, myself, but finding that “old habits do indeed die hard”. Replacing the seam bowler’s cocked wrist and flick down the back of the ball at release for the spinner’s snap (or roll) over the top of the ball is proving to be more of a challenge than expected. I quickly revert to undercutting the ball, spinning it like a top, with the axis of spin (almost) vertical rather than like a wheel (spin axis horizontal).
And it’s feel that is lacking. I need to find a way of (mechanically, at first) adopting the “correct” spin axis, until that becomes automatic.
The plan is to do a lot of bowling with the K-bowl balls AKA The Aggot †.
The K-bowl is effectively all seam, so the feel of the fingers is emphasised — all you have is a seam! It might well qualify as a constraints-led approach to coaching.
So the bowling session will have a dual emphasis on the flight of the ball (very obvious with the K-bowl when it is incorrect) and on how it feels leaving the hand.
Rather than telling the bowler how to release the ball, I’ll be asking how the release feels when it comes out right. Partly to help him know what to do next time, partly to bring him a little closer to that understanding of his own movement patterns via mediation in bowling.
† Perhaps an unfortunate choice of product name. See the entry for aggot in Maquarie Dictionary Australian Word Map. An aggot (or agate) can be a playing marble, but also can refer to (one of) the “crown jewels”!
What do you think? Leave a reply.