Math Teacher for Sportsman by Shahryar Badar
Have you heard of the new energy
drink? "High powered Math Shake - Gulp one down today and say goodbye to your
weak math forever." Even I haven't. But what if such a thing really exists.
Wouldn't that be great for the sportsmen in particular and sports in general ?
Our would-be world champs be then able to concentrate on their game better and
stop worrying about their upcoming Math paper. Unfortunately, for now such a
product is not available at your local drug store ( or for that matter anywhere
else ).
But thankfully there is an easier way of teaching math to a sportsman.
Sports and Math.
Can sports and math go hand in hand ? It is common to find many talented soccer
and basketball players, swimmers, athletes, gymnasts and other sportsmen
struggling with Math. As it is the Math problems are plaguing the students of
all grades, age and aptitude but the math problems of the sportsman are
particularly severe. That is because sports man hardly gets time in between his
rigorous training sessions to study math and whenever he does, then also the
textbook appears to be written in Chinese.
Sport skills Vs Math skills.
Does muscular flexibility come at the cost of mental ability ? Working as a Math
tutor I have been teaching Math to state level soccer players, swimmers,
athletes and even to amateur boxers ( thank God I teach math online ). I have
found that many of them have weak math fundamentals but almost all of them have
high analytical ability ( the most important raw material to learn math). It has
now been even scientifically proved that sportsman's brain has greater ability
to form synaptic pathways ( temporary circuits ) that lead to faster analysis of
the problem. Understandably so, as their brain is trained to make split second
decisions in the nick of time.
The Ideal Math teacher for Sportsman.
The top shoe companies like Nike and Adidas make specially designed shoes and
apparels for their star athlete to dramatically enhance his performance.
Similarly a sports man requires a Math tutor who can custom design a Math lesson
for his specific needs. This is how a math lesson should be made for a
sportsman.
1. Keep the Math lesson like a 100 meter dash : Sportspersons find it difficult
to sit down still and concentrate for long hours ( I am not talking about the
chess players ). They become restless soon. But the level of concentration they
can generate in spurts is amazing. So Math tutor should make sure that Math
lesson is kept short yet power packed.
2. Build his Math basics first : Before you can teach a person how to hit a home
run, you must teach him how to grip the bat. Even born world champs need to get
their basics right. So begin from the very beginning. Once the sportsman is
taught the right way of solving math problems, he starts picking up the rest of
math pretty fast. Always remember that the mind of a sportsperson is trained to
repeat an action to perfection.
3. Stop being his tutor, start being his trainer : Stop preaching a sports man
theories of Math. Tell him straightway the action he needs to do in order to get
to the answer. I call this a one jab knockout technique. This way you make the
sportsperson play at his strength.
4. Teach sportsperson Math in the language he understands : The secret to learn
math lies in making your brain relate to it. This way you not only learn Math
faster but effortlessly as well. It is not so difficult to understand why
athletes pick up fast the topic of time, speed and distance, while snooker
players are so good at doing coordinate geometry. The math tutor should make it
a point to give interesting stories and examples from the sporting world to
drive home the math lesson.
This kind of Math tutoring for sportsman will make sure that learning math is as
easy for him as gulping down a protein shake ( provided it is not that awful in
taste ).
About the Author:
Shahryar Badar is the Director of
Glad2teach.com
( an online Math tutoring center ). Glad2teach is a pioneering approach to make
Math learner-friendly for the students. It helps the student to master his
syllabus easily and speedily.
For any math help please visit
Glad2teach.com
Source of this article:
www.goarticles.com
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