Isolate to Integrate!
What I am seeing more lately (especially with myself I admit) is that coaches tend to hinder their players’ progresses in shooting and other developments. It’s not because of the coach’s supposed weak knowledge of the game or that their advice may be wrong or ineffective. It’s because their players aren’t given time to integrate what they’ve learned! What’s the point of doing the coach’s advice to a tee when you cannot carry that over and become proficient at accomplising the main goal: making your shots.
What do I mean by integrate? To integrate simply means to put the actions together into one common goal or movement. Now, you may be thinking why you should be listening to me, or why am I trying to tell you stuff that you (probably secretly don’t want to admit) haven’t heard of. Because this blogpost will be probably one of the best teaching lessons that will get you to become the best shooter you can be. So just have an open mind and consider what I have to say.
All coaches suggest different techniques to get players to focus on a particular aspect in their shooting. When a coach suggests, “hold your follow through after your release”, your coach believes that that aspect (follow through) in your shot is ineffective and may be contributing to you not reaching your shooting potential. The jumpshot is the whole skill, while the follow through, or your stance or release or whatever, is the particular aspect coaches look at to focus on. Essentially, you are isolating the skill.
What your coach is not telling you (or suggesting to you) is that you should then integrate after. Integrating involves just aiming at the rim and shooting. It’s funny because as coaches, we think it’s best to give players advice all the time, when it should be advice and then integration. Or, isolation and then integration. Just letting your players instinctively aim at the hoop and shoot with no thought is surprisingly the key to better shooting (I believe now). Letting all the advice and isolations of the skill get into your head is counterproductive! When my brother and I put up videos for you guys to practice a pushing release (with elbow locked and hand relaxed, blah blah blah), we don’t intend to have you thinking about this isolation when you go ahead and shoot around for the heck of making the shot in. When you learn to put on the brakes while riding your bake, you don’t constantly think about timing your breaks on your rides. That would be redundant and counterproductive. The goal is to ride more proficiently, so your integration would be to simply just ride your bake. No thoughts or suggestions from coaches should be running through your mind (at least, if you want a good, proficient ride of course).
So, in conclusion, take time to listen to your coaches’ suggestions: in follow through, release, stance, power, etc. Practice, feel and become aware of the feeling and effect it has on your shot. Then, just simply aim at the hoop and shoot instinctively with no thought. As a result, you will know what is actually making your ball flight effective (higher arc and consistent) and what is making your ball flight less effective (flatter arc, erratic and inconsistent). A big reason why I don’t elaborate into “where to aim at the rim” during shooting is because it is counterproductive. If you aim at certain spots of the rim, you are integrating to aim at the spot on the rim! You are more likely to hit that spot on the rim if you do so and produce a ‘miss’. Please, just don’t complicate it. Look at the entire hoop because that is what you are truely aiming for the ball to go into.
Happy shooting,
Michael
