I never said that I was taught "naturally". The term taught would mean that it wasn't self-taught or innate. I was trained from day one and was not given a chance to form bad habbits. People who compliment me on my strokes and say "you must be very coordinated", my reply has always been, I was well coached from day one. It doesn't take an above average coordination to have well-formed strokes. I'm one of those fortunate players to have grown up in So Cal at the height of the tennis boom and benefited from top notch coaching. All the credit goes to my coaches.
Not getting into vague definitional argument about "natural/innate" with you guys.
What I was trying to say is that my coach did not spend endless hours on grip/ and technical descriptions so favored by fourm members. I had the luxury of having my coach standing there giving me the feedback. You learn by doing, and the best coaching is to have the expert correct you immediately with a verbal analogy that hopefully you can internalize into a skillset.
I find it funny, hilarious that people spend time typing about how to hit a tennis ball when the only way to teach anyone is to be there with them.
Self-report is horrible, horrible. You need an expert observing you to tell you if you are doing wrong and you need to immediately see the consequences of your actions/corrections.
Everyone, I suggest you look up the difference between declarative knowledge versus procedural knowledge. Spending time on the board will just improve your declarative knowledge. You end up sounding like you know much about tennis. It does absolutely nothing to your procedural knowledge.
Yah, the best way to learn tennis is to play tennis and not read about tennis, but I think a lot of people are here asking questions or what not because they don't have the money to hire a coach...So yah, while having a coach to give you instructions are definitely the best thing, self-reporting is the best thing that many of the people here can afford.