The Difficulties of using a moving pan to follow a character

At the start of my piece there is a rather annoying issue of getting the camera to turn smoothly to instigate a pan, the main problem comes from the issue of it being such a delicate process and the grip on the tripod itself is just a solid line of plastic, making it slippy at times. I think that in future I am actually going to use some gloves when operating the camera or having others operate the camera, even simply golfing gloves should provide a tight grip to allow smooth flow. The second problem I have with this is how increasing the height on the camera by extending the legs also makes the tripod a tad more… ‘Spindly’, it is a little bit more prone to knocks and shakes as you can clearly see in the piece. To counteract this, one should keep a tight hold and locked body position when turning, be very tight with the control and perhaps press one hand on the base when turning so no shake can ensue as the base is firmly pinned to the ground.