Trying To Unlearn Bad Habits

Something that frustrates coaches in any sport is trying to fix some problem with a players form or mechanics. Trying to get rid of a goofy foot hitting approach is one that a lot of volleyball coaches might be familiar with. On a college team I worked with, I once took a player aside to try to accomplish this very task. On the surface it is a fairly simple task. It's a matter of getting the player to start his or her approach with the other foot, and then use the same footwork, just reversed. On a four step approach the right handed hitter goes from left-right-left-right to right-left-right-left. That gives the player a better hitting posture, and the extra torque means a harder hit. There is no downside. But then you actually try to accomplish this task.

This is exactly what I had in mind when I watched this video.
Smarter Every Day is a Youtube channel by Destin, an actual rocket scientist. He talks about the science of how a lot of things we might experience happen. He does some hands on experiments, and it is a lot of fun. In this particular video he has a backwards bicycle. When you turn the handle bars to the right, the wheel turns to the left. Superficially learning to ride this bike is the exact same problem as fixing a goofy foot approach. In the video, Destin took 8 months to learn to ride this bike,  or to unlearn how to ride a normal bike. Interestingly, when he got back on a standard bike he had similar problems to first learning to ride the backwards bike. He was able to figure it out much more quickly, but he still had a difficult time trading one set of motor programs for another. Fortunately for the volleyball coach, balancing a bike is a vastly more complex motor skill than a hitting approach. Still the constant reps thinking through the proper application of the skill will get you to establishing the motor program for a proper hitting approach. Once the motor program is established, the proper hitting approach will override the goofy foot one.

The other thing I took away from this is how his young son was able to unlearn in 2 weeks instead of 8 months. Coaches of younger players will have a much easier time teaching the proper performance of volleyball skills. Fixing mechanics problems at an early stage is going to be orders of magnitude easier than fixing them in an adult athlete. Regardless, both athletes are going to need a lot of reps.