The Champion's Secret: Practice Loops
🎯 Today's mission briefing
We are learning to improve the overarm throw, catching and striking using practice loops with self-checking cues.
You'll know you've got it when:
- I can say the cues for the overarm throw and use them to check my own technique
- I can run a practice loop: pick one cue, try ten goes, count honestly, tweak one thing, go again
- I can find my just-right challenge level — hard enough to miss sometimes, easy enough to keep improving
The Aunty Deb mystery
Connects to what your guest already knows and makes them curious. Activating prior knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of new learning.
Family barbecue. Someone sets up a bucket across the yard and everyone takes turns lobbing a tennis ball at it. Most people miss, laugh, miss again. Then Aunty Deb steps up — and lands it. Again. And again. 'She's just naturally talented,' someone says. But here's the mystery: scientists who study champions — cricketers, netballers, Olympic throwers — have searched hard for 'natural talent' as the main ingredient... and they keep finding something else instead. Something Aunty Deb has done thousands of times that the others haven't. What do you reckon it is?