> I am arguing that if you want to teach basketball, your students need to play a lot of basketball. Exercises will only really help them once they've experienced the game and have a burning internal desire to compete.
Well. I played basketball since 7th grade. Not just played, trained 3 days a week. Before you can really play you have to master certain elements, otherwise it's just fooling around. And at first we trained all those elements separately. Balance, switching feet, turning. Just turning without the ball. Faster, slower. Jumping from left foot, from right. Catching the ball. Throwing it. Passing. Alone, with partner, against the wall. Hook shot, but just up, up, up, get the ball up. Hook from left, from right. Then hook standing directly below hoop. Left, right, left, again. Then adding movement. Over and over again. And then actually playing.
I play tennis, soccer, ultimate frisbee, jiu-jitsu, disc golf, rock climbing, hang gliding, whitewater kayaking, bicycling, and kite surfing, and I've taught many of the same to beginners.
I assure you that the instruction only works when the student wants to experience the final form, and they will not get any sense of what the final form is until they have "fooled around" and have an actual desire to learn the sport. At every level of their progression they need time to experience unstructured performance for fun. The same is true for writing.
Kids love to write when they're young and no one's hovering over their shoulders grading them. It's only once they get hit with the five-paragraph essays and the term papers and the dry grammar exercises that they learn to avoid writing, and associate it with boredom and stress.
Well. I played basketball since 7th grade. Not just played, trained 3 days a week. Before you can really play you have to master certain elements, otherwise it's just fooling around. And at first we trained all those elements separately. Balance, switching feet, turning. Just turning without the ball. Faster, slower. Jumping from left foot, from right. Catching the ball. Throwing it. Passing. Alone, with partner, against the wall. Hook shot, but just up, up, up, get the ball up. Hook from left, from right. Then hook standing directly below hoop. Left, right, left, again. Then adding movement. Over and over again. And then actually playing.