The Hawthorne Effect

November 10th, 2011

It has been a while since I had time to write a blog post, but I found this excerpt in a 2009 article about the evolution of the Nike + running shoe product.

The article describes a well-known behavior in sociology called the Hawthorne effect, and it is an extremely compelling tidbit about human nature that applies directly to 94Fifty and how we bring value to coaches and players.   Little did we know that basketball and manufacturing had so much in common…

“In the mid-1920s at Western Electric’s manufacturing plant in Cicero, Illinois, the management began an experiment. The lighting in an area occupied by one set of workers was increased so there was better illumination to help them see the telephone relays they were building. Perhaps not surprisingly, workers who had more light were able to assemble relays faster.

Other changes were then made: Employees were given rest breaks. Their productivity increased. They were allowed to work shorter hours. Again, they were more efficient during those hours.

But then something weird happened. The lighting was cut back to normal … and productivity still went up. In fact, just about every change the company made had only one effect: increased worker productivity. After months of tinkering, the work conditions were returned to the original state, and workers built more relays than they did in the exact same circumstances at the start of the experiment.

What was happening? Why was it that no matter what the Hawthorne plant managers did, the workers just performed better? Researchers puzzled over the results, and some still doubt the details of the experiment’s protocols. But the study gave rise to what’s known in sociology as the Hawthorne effect.

The gist of the idea is that people change their behavior—often for the better—when they are being observed (which is why it’s sometimes called the observer effect). Those workers at Western Electric didn’t build more relays because there was more or less light or because they had more or fewer breaks. The Hawthorne effect posits that they built more relays simply because they knew someone was keeping track of how many relays they built.”

Bolds and Underlines added for effect.    What we see everyday with 94Fifty is that what gets measured, gets improved.   It turns out that this is really not a novel concept when it comes to human behavior.

Keep practicing!

CIF-SS Recap

March 9th, 2011

Some thoughts on the outstanding talent and excellent games we saw in Anaheim this past week.

Mater Dei Girls – very very good. Possibly the best high school girls’ team I have ever seen.   No doubt the top team in the country.

Long Beach Poly Boys – very very good.  Could beat any team in the country.  As good as any of the best teams I saw during my 10 years in Indianapolis (Think Greg Oden and Mike Conley on the same team, or Jared Jeffries and Sean May).

It is becoming more obvious to us that the ability to train your muscles to receive and repeat very hard bounces, with high force applied to the ball, is a ball-handling skill that must be developed.  We will be reporting average force as part of our metrics moving forward on ball-handling skill tests.

Young players still need to grasp the importance of shot speed.  We witnessed some very good, accurate shooters, that simply shot the ball too slowly to be successful in college.  Young players need to realize that they need to practice at game speed when working on their shooting.  Any shot speed above .80 seconds from catch to release is in the zone of being too slow unless the player is 6’6” or taller for boys or 5’11”+ for girls.   Height can provide additional shot time, but only if the defender is smaller.  Speed plus accuracy is never bad.  In Cali, we saw a lot of accuracy, but only a few really quick release speeds.

I really like the talent pool and quality of coaching that I saw during the action.  It was as good as it gets anywhere in the country.  The primary disappointment was the fan support.   The most fans I saw at any game maybe topped 4,000.  In most games it was between 2,000-3,000.   Being  from the Indiana, this was less than what I was accustomed to seeing.    The level of play was excellent and these players deserved to play to a full house.   Or at least ¾ full house.!

Overall a great week.  Congrats again to our champions and to all of the CIF-SS team champions.  Good luck this coming week at states.

Now – On to Houston for the Men’s Final Four at the end of the month!

Southern Cal Proves Its Got Game.

March 7th, 2011

Wow.   What a week in Cali.   We sent a full team to Southern California to determine the top skilled players in the CIF-SS (Cali speak for California Interscholastic Federation – Southern Section, we will stick with CIF-SS).  We left Cali having named Senior Dylan Garrity (Edison High School, Huntington Beach, CA, 20.5 ppg in 2010 – 11) and Junior Kari Korver (Valley Christian H.S., Cerritos, CA, 25.6 ppg in 2010-11) as the inaugural skill champions in all of SoCal.  At first glance, naming a champion only for CIF-SS may sound a bit smallish, since it’s only the Southern Section, and not all of California.   But realize that California is an enormous state, and the CIF-SS is the largest of the nine athletic sections.  With 580 high schools in the Southern Section alone, this would make it the 8th largest state.   It’s a big deal.

For those that haven’t been reading our recent posts (what gives?) – 94Fifty was asked to help add a new element to the 2011 edition of the Southern Section finals, and the result was the first ever skill championships of its kind in the world.   Nearly 80 contestants from across the region competed, most of them nominated as the MVP from their respective leagues. We saw some outstanding skills on display.   In addition, 22 games were played over the course of the 5 day event, giving us the opportunity to watch some fantastic basketball.   What basketball junkie could ask for more?!

For the competition, there were two rounds to determine the overall champion, and we named the top ball-handler and shooter for boys and girls after the preliminary round.  The first round of the competition involved our advanced ball-handling drills and a 10-shot shooting competition, where we awarded the majority of points based on the accuracy percentage (80%=80 points) and a bonus for shot release speed – the faster the release the more bonus points a player would receive.  Each player shot from 18 ft, but after each shot the players were required to turn and run to a spot 10 feet behind the shooting location, then return to catch and shoot off the move for their next shot.   We combined the ball-handling scores and shooting scores into a final score to select the top 5 boys and girls to compete in the final round.

After the preliminary rounds, our ball-handling champions were clear.   Gary Mathews from Whittier High School (20.6 ppg in 2010-2011) popped an 81.66 score in the advanced ball-handling to take the boys title, while Tyler Kim from Marlborough High School (16.2 ppg in 2010-11) recorded an 82.10 to easily take the girls ball-handling crown.    On the shooting side, Junior to be Max McCoy (14.9 ppg, Royal High School, Simi Valley) hit 80% of his 18ft shots to earn 80 points on accuracy, and had a lightning fast .697 shot speed to earn 20 bonus points to squeak by a fine shooting performance from Mitch Marmelstern (St. Margaret’s, 20.9 ppg).     On the girls’ side, Kari Korver hit 80% of her shots with an impressive .657 shot speed to cruise to a victory.   Korver also performed well on her ball-handling and advanced to the final round at the top of the leader board as did Tyler Kim and Riki Murakami (Redondo Union, HS).   For the Boys division, Max McCoy joined Garrity with Marmelstern and Carl Cooper to compete for the overall skills title.

In the final round players performed the same set of ball-handling drills, but had each player shoot 20 shots instead of 10.  Korver dialed up her skills and popped an 80+ on the ball-handling to take a surprising lead over Tyler Kim, who recorded a 75 during the finals heading into the shooting round.  While on the boys side, Garrity took the early lead on the ball-handling with a 74.15.    During the shooting segment, Tyler Kim bounced right back by hitting 16 out of 20 of her shots with an impressive .76 release speed, giving her 85 points and what looked like enough to win it.   Korver responded by starting out hot, hitting 9 of her first 11, but hit a cold spot to finish with 13 out of 20 but a much quicker .68 shot release.   The difference in shot speed gave her 20 bonus points to Kim’s 5, closing the gap enough to give her the 165 to 160 victory and the girls’ title. Our scoring worked as planned, rewarding the shooters for a faster release combined with accuracy.  We want shooters to be fast and accurate, and while both had very good release time, Korver was more likely to get her shot off in a game situation.

For the boys, McCoy shot well in the finals, hitting 13 out of 20 and again with lightning release speed of .639 to get 20 bonus points and a total of 85 shooting points.  But it was not enough to overcome a very accurate 18 out of 20 shooting display by Garrity in the final round, despite his release speed of .982 seconds.  The 90% accuracy gave him 90 total points.  More importantly, Garrity’s ballhandling lead of 74.51, ahead of Carl Cooper’s (Arrowhead HS) 68.88 and McCoy’s 67.66 gave him an overall final round score of 164.51, well ahead of the pack.

Overall – it was a great event and every player came to win.  We could see the focus and the intensity by every player, which is what we love about this game.   Congratulations again to all the finalists and the 2011 champions.

The Secret to Playing Your Best Basketball

February 17th, 2011

Surprise!  The answer to this question will not be to do more drills, practice more, play more games, or to play against better competition.  These are all important, but none of them are the most important thing to know.   Now that I have your attention, read on.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with many promising young players who possess loads of skill and potential.  I’ve also seen a few of those same players struggle mightily in game situations – seemingly unable to match their skill potential to game production.  Sometimes, the on-court struggle becomes so bad that the player finds themselves riding the pine, only to play more awful every time they see the court.

This scenario is also one of the most widely asked questions I get from coaches – that possessing skill does not necessarily guarantee success on the court or in a game.  This question is usually followed up with the quote “I have this one player who is a gym rat and can do all the drills, but….”  You can guess the rest.  The scenario they point out can be very true.   It doesn’t make logical sense to extrapolate that to all basketball players – more skill generally means better production.   But…there is a common cause for this particular situation, and today’s post provides a secret to any player to escape this scenario should they encounter it.  And guess what – most of you have a high probability of encountering it as you continue to play against better and better competition.

The Cause:

The primary cause of mental lock up – which prevents a player from playing “free” of distractions during a game, with perfect focus, and amazing production, is a disconnect between a player’s expectations of themselves and the team’s needs to win.

Let me be more precise.   Every time I see a player struggle over a long period of time, when their skill says they should not be struggling,  EVERY TIME, it is due to the player entering a season or a game with a pre-set expectation of what should happen.   For example – a player thinks that they are a 25 point per game scorer before the season begins, but during the first three games, they score only 5, 10 and 8 points.  Soon, the player starts to panic.  He or she hears the voices – from a parent, from friends, from imaginary scouts in the gym.   “What’s wrong ?”  “Why aren’t you scoring more – you should be scoring more”   “Your not going to earn your scholarship, all conference, etc”

Then, the spiral starts to happen.  The player starts to compete with other players on the team – who might be scoring more, fearful that another player is going to get that scholarship, or get noticed.  Now, instead of playing to beat the other team, the player starts to try to beat their own teammates in games.  They begin to press their game, almost as if in a panic.  Now, in an attempt to do even more,  they take chances on defense, and get burned.  They make more turnovers, their shot gets a little stiff and stops going in, and the basket shrinks so that it looks like it’s only 2 inches in diameter.   Now, the coach starts to look at the stat sheet and notices that the player who was supposed to be a top contributor is shooting only 20% from the field and turning it over 6 times a game.  Worse – they are making mistakes on defense and bringing the team down.  The coach has no choice but to find other players who might be less skilled but more focused, and bench time ensues.   Now the player starts to blame the coach for the struggles, and the coach senses this and gives up on the player – relegating the player to mop up minutes.   Sound familiar?  Have you seen this happen?   I have – it happened to me once.  It’s a very frustrating cycle that can spiral into a complete collapse of confidence and a miserable basketball experience.  I don’t wish is on anyone, but I see it happen all too often.  Thankfully, there is a simple, powerful cure to stop this cycle.

The Cure:

When I see players enter this cycle, and I hear the blame moving towards teammates or coaches – I dedicate an entire session to talking about the only thing that matters.   If players can grasp the only thing that matters, and understand the importance of it, then the player magically starts to play free again within a matter of a few games,   finally matching their potential.  The secret has nothing to do with physical skill.

What is the only thing that matters?   Focusing on the rim more?  Nope.   Playing better defense?  Not really.   More practice time?  Not even close.      The only thing that matters, and the only thing a player should focus on during a game is the scoreboard.   More importantly, focus on the score.   At every point in the game the player should only ask themselves questions surrounding the score.   Are we winning?  Are we winning by enough?  What can I do to help us win.     Period.   That is it.   Think of nothing else.

When you put all of your energy into a simple goal that says I am going to do whatever it takes to win – then what happens is that you free your mind to focus on only one thing.  And the more focus your mind has will have a direct effect on how well you make decisions (fewer turnovers, better defense) how confidently you make them ( better shooting, penetration)  and how well your energy transfers to your teammates (better chemistry).      Magically, your coach starts to notice your production and his or her confidence builds in you.  You get more playing time, and start to produce even more, and soon, your team is on a winning streak.

In the end, the best players ever in the game knew this secret.   They were winners, and focused everything on winning.  Period.   Don’t believe me?   Ask Bill Russell -he was just awarded the Medal of Freedom this week for being one of the greatest winners of all time.   Funny thing – he wasn’t much of a scorer.  He seemed to do everything in his power and to his skill to win.  And he won at every level.  I guarantee you that Bill Russell focused his mind on winning games.   There are countless examples I could site, but Ill spare you the reading time.

The answer, the secret, may seem too simple, but clearing the voices from your head is very tough.  And the best way to do it is to focus.  By far the most effective, productive, focus point for you mind that will lead to wild success for you is to focus it on the scoreboard, and to always ask yourself what do I need to be doing right now to win this game.

Number 1…

February 9th, 2011

Number 1…

This has turned out to be good number for 94Fifty so far this season, at least in the State of Ohio. Two 94Fifty customers currently share the distinction of being ranked number 1. Ohio State currently has a lock on the Men’s college scene, still undefeated, looking strong, and ranked No. 1 nationally. Meanwhile, Cincinnati Archbishop Moeller boys team, (See my previous blog post from December)is 17-0 and ranked No.1 in the Ohio high school large school division.

Full disclosure – our system did not create either team’s success. That came from the respective coaching staffs and the player’s commitment to excellence. But the fact that both programs have purchased 94Fifty tells you something about their goals of staying at the top. The great programs never stop looking for ways to get better.

Congrats to both teams and good luck for the rest of the season.

Kinetic Shooting Energy Part IV.b – the Finish.

January 29th, 2011

In the last post we left off with a description of Up and Outs, which is a simple drill you can do to get the timing of the lift of your core muscles in sync with the upward lift of the ball and its rotation into a shooting position.   If you do the drill correctly, your hands are always placed correctly on the ball, the shooting elbow is always in, and you are low, knees bent, before you receive the ball for the next shot.

But what about the part when you shoot?   How do you release the energy into the ball so that it does what you want it to do – which is go in the basket?   Great question.

A player can do everything we have discussed to this point correctly, and so much to a shot’s mechanics can go right just about to when the ball is released, then the wheels can fly off the truck if this last part is missing.    Here is what you MUST know.

1)       The ball must be in the power point of your shooting hand when you shoot

2)      Your shooting elbow should NOT flare out, but don’t tuck it in too far to the body.

3)      We strongly recommend shooting from the eyebrow, going up and out at about 50 degrees

4)      You Must generate power from your ONE wrist to provide touch and backspin to the ball

5)      You MUST follow through to the rim – pointing to your target after the ball is released

If you can execute these last five steps, then the Up (ball rotating up to the eyebrow with the hands cocked back, ready to release) and Out (the release angle and follow through) will be complete and correct.    Let’s discuss.

Remember – the final release ultimately should be a ONE handed shot . The off-hand, or balance hand, should be used for just that – to balance the ball in the shooting hand.  DO NOT use the off-hand thumb to add power to the ball.   “Thumbers” as we call them, generate power from the off-hand and this can many times (not all the time) cause misses to the left or right, low backspin, or sidespin.   But as Reggie Miller (a famous thumber) would quickly point out, thumbing the ball does not always mean that you will miss.   He had an ridiculous use of both hands on his shot, but the results spoke for themselves.) Still, so that you learn to effectively bring all that leg power to the right spot and to maximize accuracy, we recommend you learn to release the shot without thumbing.

When you can maintain the ball in the power point of your shooting hand (see previous post titled Part IV.a) then the power you generated from your legs and transferred through the core will be waiting for you to release it through the wrist.  So it’s very important when you practice to get used to how that feels, because if you are not used to it, it will feel very weird at first.

But now that you have the ball at your eyebrow with your elbow in line with the basket, and the off-hand balancing the ball but not thumbing it, the release towards the rim can begin.   With the ball in the power point, you have maximum control and power ready and waiting at your disposal.  Now – all that work to get the ball to the rim is worth it because you have harnessed it to this one point in time.

As your wrist starts to move out towards your target, the goal is to snap the wrist towards the target at an approximately 50 degree angle.  We say approximate because that release arc can change depending on your height or distance to the rim, but generally a 50 degree release will give the ball a chance to enter the basket at 45 degrees, its optimal entry arc.   When you snap the wrist, the off-hand should have left the ball at this point, and the very last finger to touch the ball is the index finger, and it should be pointing straight at the target.  (The front of the rim.)   Pointing anywhere else indicates a shooter with weak wrists.   We know that excellent shooters can generate about 135 spins per minute onto the ball, so if your wrists are too weak to do this, spend time doing some Flicker work against the backboard.   Stand straight up, isolate your wrists high, and just flick the ball up with your wrists, emphasizing the release point to the target.   After awhile you will feel your wrist muscles start to hurt and this should tell you that you are doing the drill correctly.   I credit my college scholarship to this drill, so it is a very good one to do every day.

Ok – that’s it.  Pretty simple right?   Just take a ball, chuck it up there, and in it goes.    What the kinetic shooting series should highlight, if nothing else, is that shooting is an EXTREMELY complex series of movements that require as much timing, coordination, and repetition to become proficient.   Anyone can be a great shooter, but to do so you must be prepared to commit to many repetitions of the correct way to shoot.

In the coming weeks and months we will be leveraging the use of video more on some of our posts so that you will be able to see some of these concepts.   In the meantime, do your best to stay disciplined and focused during your shooting workouts.  Remember, the three point line is not your friend if you don’t have your mechanics right, and the risk that you will learn to shoot incorrectly is very high.   Stay close, stay focused, create little games that keep your attention on the right mechanics, and happy shooting!

Guest Contribution: Dribbles from Coach Burson

January 21st, 2011

I’d like to welcome Coach Jim Burson this week as a guest contributor to the 94Fifty Blog.   He has graciously agreed to provide a consistent flow of ideas to our site so that our viewers don’t just have to read my stuff week after week.  We think you will find his insights to be very good reading.  Coach B was the past President of the NABC and brings an enormous amount of basketball knowledge our forum.  He is perhaps best known for being featured by Sports Illustrated as the only coach outside of the Princeton system to have deciphered the Princeton motion offense.  In basketball terms, its equivalent to deciphering the Rosetta stone.      With that – a warm welcome to Coach B’s first of many blog contributions.

The Daily Dozen

“We become what we repeatedly do.”                       -Aristotle

How important is teaching the fundamentals of the game? Fundamentals are the basis for all of your coaching. That’s how important it is.

I coached at the Division III level for nearly forty years and won over 540 games in my career, and at this level, my fundamentals development program was essential. In other words, the players needed to get better each practice, each day and each year.

I developed the Basic Daily Dozen Dribbling Drills and the Basic Daily Dozen Passing Drills. We did all these plus form shooting every day before practice. Repetition was the key – at least, I thought it was. The truth was and remains today:  players have to want to get better themselves regardless of what their coach or personal skill trainer tells them to do.

And that was my most compelling job – to get the players to want to do the drills – those endless, repetitive drills.

My own experience with the power of drill work was pretty compelling. I started my son Jay on the Daily Dozen Drills when he was just 6 years old. He did them for years, even before he knew how to play the game.

One summer, I spoke at Coach Charlie Huggins’ camp, and I brought Jay along. I spoke at noon, and Jay wanted to play in the pick-up games that began that evening around 9:00 PM. Jay was a skinny high school freshman, 5 feet 4 inches and 125 pounds. His head accounted for half that weight.  But even then he had averaged 19 points a game his Freshman year in high school and thought he was a superstar. I tried to tell him that he wasn’t ready to play with the college players. I admired his courage, but doubted his intelligence.

Finally, at about 10:30 PM after someone had called “last game,” Jay was picked to play. He took one shot and it was blocked; the ball was stolen from him twice and his team was beaten 10-2.

We headed home. Jay pouted, showing a full case of Lower Lip Syndrome, and complained all the way about getting fouled. We arrived home around midnight. As my wife asked me how our day had gone, the light went on over the patio at the back of the house and we heard the distinctive sound of a bouncing basketball.

I ran outside and there was Jay, practicing. I asked him what he was doing. He replied, “For nearly ten years I’ve done the Daily Dozen Drills because you told me to. Tonight I’m doing them for me. Next year I’m going back to Huggins’ camp ready to play.

The next year Jay led the nation in scoring, averaging 40.1 points per game as a high school sophomore, and he still was only about 5’10 and maybe 140 pounds, and went on to become a an all Big 10 guard at Ohio State where he still holds multiple season and career records to this day.  Jay had two things that led to his success – he could handle the ball without thinking about it, and he had a very accurate, lightning fast release.  Both skills developed through repetition.

You don’t have to wait and hope for a “eureka moment” like Jay’s.  This game is about repetition, and improvement can begin as soon as a player decides that he or she wants it.  It helps even more if you can measure those results, (which is why I like 94Fifty so much). Committing to the repetitive drills can make any player, regardless of athletic skills, become a fantastic player.  And as I have seen both in my own home and with my many college teams, you are never too young or too old to develop a high level of muscle memory skills.  It just takes your commitment to be the best you can.

We become what we repeatedly do.

Part IV – Release Mechanics and the Focus of Energy.

January 16th, 2011

To this point in the kinetic energy shooting series, we have covered the basics, the source of power, and the transfer of power through the core muscles.   In the final part we will bring it all together with the shot release.  But as you will see – I’ve extended the final part into a mini-series of two parts since this is such a technically important subject and this post would be far too long to read.   So today – we will cover half, and later this week Ill post the other half.   (This is starting to look like a legal document now that we have Part IV.a and Part IV.b)

As you may recall, in Part III we talked about the importance of mental patience with the ball as energy transfers through the core muscles up towards the shoulders, at which point the shooter needs to begin hand rotation on the ball into a release position.  There are four parts to a release to consider including hand placement and rotation to begin the shot,  hand rotation and ball control in the hand during the shot, shot release angle, and follow through to maximize how to put the perfect amount of energy (touch) into the ball.

Hand rotation is extremely important for energy transfer.    When the shot is in the Holster – which is the starting position off the pass or dribble – hand placement is really important to make sure that the final release energy is maximized AND controlled.  Where should the hand be placed?   Good question – we see many shooters who do a nice job of generating leg power start to fail right here.  The optimal position is to place the index (pointer finger) pointing 180 degrees from the body.  Take a ball and spread your fingers on it as if you are going to shoot, and put your index finger just under the needle hole.  The index finger should point straight out from the shooter and into that hole.  If your index finger starts at any other angle, then your hands are already at a disadvantage when it will come time to release the ball.  Why?   Look what happens to the elbow when the hand is too far to the outside of the ball and your index finger points “in” – the shooting elbow starts to flare.   When the elbow flies out, it is almost certain to lead to a push shot or a shot with funky backspin.    Too many times a shooter will start with their hands too far to the outside of the ball, immediately increasing the likelihood that power will be found in the wrong places when it comes time to release the ball.

The next point is to make sure that the ball is not held or rotated from the middle of the body.  While it might feel comfortable to put the ball at the belly button and raise it to the middle of the forehead, this shot line will make it difficult to release the ball accurately and efficiently.   We always teach shooters to release the ball at a line the runs up from their shooting knee to their eyebrow (right eyebrow for right hand shooters, left for left hand shooters).   It’s a straight, efficient line.  If you put the ball at the belly button, or tuck It under the chin, then your elbow flares, your eyes get obstructed – (yes, you will need to use your eyes) and you run the risk of hitching your shot somewhere.

The other critical piece to hand placement is to consider where the ball rests on the hand.  There is a particular point on the hand that will generate the most power for a shooter by far, we call it the power point.   This point is the pad of the index finger that exists between the thumb and the middle finger.   We always teach the ball to rest across the upper pads of all the fingers, but this one pad is particularly critical.   The thumb should be spread wide on the ball to create a small gap that you can see through.    Putting the ball too far into the fingertips, effectively cupping the ball in fingers will cause a huge loss of power at release, while putting the ball all the way into the palm of the hand will cause a loss of control.   The power point is the place to be – so practice getting it to that spot quickly.

Our favorite drill for enforcing the discipline of receiving the  ball and rotating it to the shooting position is called Up and Outs.    We start every shooter at 5 feet from the basket in a shooting stance with hands ready to receive the ball and “feed” the ball directly into their hands.  We make sure that the hand placement is correct during this process and that the player raises and rotates the ball in the line from the knee to the eyebrow and then the shot.  The player tries to swish every shot, and we repeat for 10 shots then again at 8 feet and 12 feet.  The next “feed’ is not done unless the player is ready to receive it.

This concludes part IV.a – later this week, we will finish up with the release arc and follow through.      Stay Tuned !

Shooting Energy Part III: The Patience Of Energy Transfer

January 1st, 2011

Happy New Year – I write this in the middle of a lot of American Football.

Now on to Part III of our Kinetic Energy shooting series.   One of the more difficult parts of the shot to describe in words, but I will do my best to create some mental images to help with the blog post.

A quick detour to get us started takes us to the movie Bravehart, where Mel Gibson (Playing William Wallace) has assembled his rag-tag army to fight the mighty British army.  It looks on paper like they have no chance to win.  Charging at them full-speed are about 300 thundering heavy horses saddled with heavily armored and armed men, and behind them another 5,000 soldiers on foot.   Mel’s men see this massive charge surging at them and aren’t doing anything – they look terrified as the ground shakes and the horses speed towards them.  In fact, Mel keeps yelling to his men in his fake Scottish accent to “Hoooold….Hoooold…..Hooooooold”   Finally at the last minute, right before the horses run through his line, he yells “NOW!”  , and the Scottish army picks up these huge long spears, plant one end of them in the ground in and point the other pointy side right at the oncoming charge.   The horses can’t stop in time, the British realize they are in deep trouble as the horses run into their spears, and cutting right to the end, the Scots pick up a much needed upset victory.

Fast forward 700 years to this blog post.   What is the point?  I’ll come back to the movie later on,  but in shooting, there is a very similar mental discipline with great shooters – they know how to be patient with the ball as they transfer the energy from their legs (using both legs with power distributed equally) into their core muscles (buttocks, stomach, back) and up to their wrists.   This patience allows the leg power to easily create momentum into the ball as the player raises the ball to the release point at the wrists.   The problem with many shooters is that they are not patient with this energy transfer, which requires precise timing that MUST be sequential.   This specific sequence is as follows:

1) Legs power up and with equally distributed power

2) Core muscles tighten and the core and shoulders start to move up off the ground

3) The ball, which starts in the holster (not the shoulder, chin, or anywhere above the stomach), now starts to move up in sequence with the core

4) The shoulders raise the ball and allow the wrist to “rotate” into a release position just above the shoulders as the player starts to leave the floor, and

5) Player releases the ball.

The difficult part of this sequence is that all of those steps must occur in as little as .6 to .8 seconds for an accurate, fast shooter.    That is fast.  And it’s easy to see why it presents a problem for young shooters.

A common flaw we see is that shooters will raise the ball too early, reversing steps 2 and 3 above, before the energy is transferred into their core.  Many times players will start the ball at the shoulders instead of the holster, which we immediately will correct. There is very little chance for energy transfer to occur if the ball starts above the mid-section.   But even when players start in the holster, they raise the ball up above the core muscles too early in the shot.  We call this problem “Leading with the Ball,” when instead we want the player to “Power the Ball up with the Legs.” This flaw is a sinister one.  It’s very difficult for players to spot, and even more difficult to correct once it has become habit.     But the obvious signs of “Leading with the Ball” are that you get a seemingly physically strong player struggling to find any range, arc or backspin on the shot.

So what happens to a player when they shoot out of sequence?   First, the ball finds itself up too high and waiting for energy.  When the ball waits for energy, it has lost momentum, and now the player has to find a second burst of energy into the ball to restart momentum.  The problem is that all of that power from the legs is now gone – and the only remaining source of power is the shoulder or what you may see has a “hitch” in a players shot.   A hitch looks like there are two shots in one.  The player starts up, the ball hesitates somewhere, and then you see some sort of pike at the waist or ugly looking release with little arc and backspin.  The player has literally tried to find power from sources not capable of getting the ball to the rim.    Ugliness ensues, no one is happy, and both the player and coach get frustrated.

Fixing the problem is tough – but here is the lesson to be learned by a famous Scottsman waiting to be trampled by 300 armored heavy horse:    Fight the temptation to act too soon.  Timing is everything.  Remember the words (in a Scottish accent if you can)  “Hooold” –  Hooold!”

The player has to learn how to keep the ball in sync with the core muscles as the shooting energy flows up to the shoulders and wrist.  Mental patience is the key to this success.  And by far the best way we have found to teach this patience is with a heavy medicine ball.   As with all shooting mechanics training, limit the player to remain within 5 to 10 feet (1.75 -3.25 meters) of the basket using at least a 5lb (10kg) ball. Be sure to enforce that the player starts each shot with the ball in the “holster”, and allow the weight of the ball to require the player to power it up to the basket with their legs and core.  The goal is to train the player to propel the ball to the basket with the leg/core muscle combination while still enforcing a proper release/follow through. What the player will immediately recognize is that they cannot “Lead with the Ball” because it feels like shooting a ball made of lead.  The player can no longer raise the ball too early, and as we have seen at our facility, the mind will start to recognize what you want it to do and will start to learn the new method.    Have the player repeat this exercise in sets of 20 at this distance, then repeat it again at 8 feet, and then 10 feet.

Diligently continue this process for a couple of weeks, and both you and the player will be amazed at the results: a transformation of an inefficient, range-limited shooter into a smooth, effortless shooter with confidence.   Unless of course the release mechanics need work – which we will cover in Part IV.

In any case – teaching energy transfer requires discipline and patience.   And every time you want to give up or you see the player wanting to revert back to their old habits – just picture 300 heavy horse charging at you, (or a 6’5 long-armed defender) and stick to the program.   Shooting confidently and accurately at long-range is one of the most satisfying parts of this game.  It’s well worth the wait, and your shooting career depends on it.

Next up, the final addition to the shooting series:   Release

Kinetic Shooting Energy Part II – The Source of Power.

December 26th, 2010

In my first post on kinetic energy and its impact on shooting, I provided a conceptual, 50,000 foot summary of what kinetic energy is, and why it is applicable to shooting a basketball.

Today – we’re going straight down for a 200 foot, tree top, fly-by of the details.  This post will cover where energy originates for great shooters, and what all great shooters do to maximize energy into their shot.

When we encounter shooters who struggle with generating efficient or sufficient power for their shot, we immediately look at a player’s legs.  Why?  Legs are the jet engines for a shooter.    Our favorite riddle for these players is to ask them if they think they could make a basketball move at 450 miles an hour.  The answer is always NO – although most look at us knowing that there is another hidden answer hidden somewhere – and there is.  The fact is that anyone can make a ball travel that fast, just take one up on the plane during your next vacation and give someone a pass up the aisle.  If the plane is traveling at 445 miles an hour, and you pass the ball at 5 miles an hour towards the front of the plane, the ball now travels at 450 miles an hour.  The energy from the plane has already been transferred into the ball – you just gave it an extra shot of energy.

Why is this relevant?  Because that same principle applies with the power generated from a shooter’s legs and into the ball – by far the largest source of power for any shooter.  Efficient shooters understand that they can make a shot release seem effortless by generating power from the legs first and transferring that power through the core and into the wrists.   But we commonly see shooters who have never learned to use their legs.  Many poor shooters don’t enter their shot with enough bend in the knees to create this power.  In fact – too many shooters start their shot standing straight up and down and then try to bend their knees after they have caught the ball.   All of this creates inefficient power that is very difficult to harness into accuracy and range without using a less efficient or accurate source.

So what are the keys to efficient power generation? (I just realized this is sounding a bit like an infomercial for air conditioning units) Here are three points that we teach and measure:

1)      Practice a deeper knee bend into the shot with the player’s weight on the balls of the feet.  It’s amazing how many shooters just don’t bend their knees or bend them way too late into the shot.  This habit almost guarantees that the shooter will look to other less efficient power sources like the shoulders or off hand to get the ball to the rim.     It’s also important that as younger players become more advanced they learn to step into the shot before they catch the ball to increase momentum even more efficiently.  Too many players wait until they catch the ball before they begin this motion, which again causes a loss of power.  As a secondary habit, many players put their weight into their heels rather than the balls of the feet, taking away their ability to get efficiently off the ground.

2)      Jump slightly towards the rim without turning. This one is important.  Many shooters rely too heavily on their strong leg when they jump, creating an uneven power distribution into the shot.  The symptom?  You can see these shooters by the way they turn their hips on the jump.  Coaches need to focus these players on getting their feet set towards the rim as they approach their shot, and to come in low.  Mark a clear landing area during practice so that players can visualize how much they turn their hips from their original shooting position.

Learning to set up a shot with a deeper knee bend will help players that step into the shot too vertical.  These players lose energy by having to “bounce” their legs down then up again to create force.  Doing so also adds time to the shot, which is a secondary effect to the loss of range that will also occur with this habit.

3)      Avoid drift on the jump. Look more closely and you will see what we call “drift”,  which means they drift slightly left or right because one leg is generating more power than the other.   We correct these symptoms by teaching players how to jump evenly with both legs, off the ground, and slightly towards the rim.  Many great shooters will land slightly ahead of their starting point, which indicates they have learned to use their legs as “jet engines” for the ball.

Now that you have a grasp of the how to harness and practice using the most abundant source of power, Shooting Kinetics part III will zero in on the transfer of energy through the core muscles.    Part IV will then finish with shot release, including how to generate spin and arc for deadly accuracy.  Until then, focus on the source of power and you will begin to see immediate results in both accuracy and range.

Happy Holidays from 94Fifty!   Shovel that snow and keep practicing.