says
ok, I will go back and make sure you have access.
Be...
Well-Known Member
I posted this in a thread on videos but I think it deserves a thread of its own.
Right now there are some coaches that I know in my city that can take a kid with talent and make them really good really fast, give them really perfect technique, great footwork. (I am watching with amazement the progress some kids here are making now with the various Chinese coaches we have here). Some of those same coaches will understand that an adult middle-aged player, at almost any level, cannot be trained quite the same way as a promising cadet. And some don't ever figure this out. They were trained a certain way, starting at age 7 or 8, and that is what they are going to do. I have seen them injure adult players (worst outcome), or actually lower the level of their game (next worst) or in the end not really help them (maybe not that bad an outcome if the student enjoys the lessons).
But I have known some coaches who were awesome with adult players, sadly the two best no longer live here. (One of them, while a very good player, is not even close to the level of these Chinese coaches, but he is still a much much better coach for adults). People who specialize in coaching adults tend to approach things quite differently. One thing they need is pretty good language skills in the language of their student.
Among adult players there are different categories. There are players who took up the game as adults, and players who played as kids on into early adulthood, often at a reasonably high level, and then took very long breaks to get on with their lives, to take up the game again at some point much later (that is my case, and also quite a few of my regular practice partners). Even those two groups of adult players I think need to be coached a little differently.
If you don't have a coach, and that is true in a lot of places, than you try to find stuff that can help wherever you can.
Right now there are some coaches that I know in my city that can take a kid with talent and make them really good really fast, give them really perfect technique, great footwork. (I am watching with amazement the progress some kids here are making now with the various Chinese coaches we have here). Some of those same coaches will understand that an adult middle-aged player, at almost any level, cannot be trained quite the same way as a promising cadet. And some don't ever figure this out. They were trained a certain way, starting at age 7 or 8, and that is what they are going to do. I have seen them injure adult players (worst outcome), or actually lower the level of their game (next worst) or in the end not really help them (maybe not that bad an outcome if the student enjoys the lessons).
But I have known some coaches who were awesome with adult players, sadly the two best no longer live here. (One of them, while a very good player, is not even close to the level of these Chinese coaches, but he is still a much much better coach for adults). People who specialize in coaching adults tend to approach things quite differently. One thing they need is pretty good language skills in the language of their student.
Among adult players there are different categories. There are players who took up the game as adults, and players who played as kids on into early adulthood, often at a reasonably high level, and then took very long breaks to get on with their lives, to take up the game again at some point much later (that is my case, and also quite a few of my regular practice partners). Even those two groups of adult players I think need to be coached a little differently.
If you don't have a coach, and that is true in a lot of places, than you try to find stuff that can help wherever you can.