Want to hit the ball further? Sure. And there are plenty of cyber coaches out there to help you.
A common piece of advice given to get that extra distance is to ‘transfer your weight to your left foot as you hit the ball’.
Now all this makes good sense. Transferring your weight on the downswing has the effect of speeding up hip and shoulder rotation.
But is this really good advice?
Whatever the sport or physical activity coaches always want their young charges to go faster, further or higher. But how?
Let’s take swimming for example. Say we’ve got two swimming coaches teaching freestyle. One tells their future champions they should focus on ‘pulling their hands back’. The other says they should focus on “pushing the water back”.
So does it matter? After all, they’re both saying pretty much the same thing.
In Part 1, we learnt about Samantha doing the seemingly impossible by learning two skills at once. Somehow, after practising a topspin backhand, she could then hit a more difficult topspin forehand which she couldn’t previously do. And all without further instruction or practice.
Can you really learn two skills at once? It might sound impossible but the answer is yes. And to show you, we’ll look at someone learning to play table tennis. We’ll then move on to how you too can learn two skills at once in all sorts of endeavours, not just sport.