Why it is important to practice the correct technique repetitively when shooting Free Throws

By Christopher Atwood, MA

Former certified Athletic Trainer and Athletic Director.  Currently, Director of Academic Computing; Chairman of the Digital Arts Department; Instructor of 3D Animation, 3D Modeling, Ecosystem Design, and Residential Architecture at Pomfret School, Pomfret, CT

If you’re like most basketball players, you’ve taken thousands of free throw shots since junior high. How many of those free throw shots were performed under the trained eye of a coach you believed in and who insisted on correct form with every shot?

Is it any wonder that your free throw percentage has barely improved over your lifetime of play?

It should be easy, right?  One task: put the ball through the hoop.  It’s just you on the line. You’re stationary. The hoop is stationary. One game-winning point with every shot.  If it were easy, free throw shot percentages would have increased over the last 50 years, but they haven’t!  We need to make a permanent shift in our training.

Understand this: “Practice Makes Permanent, not Perfect.”

If you repeat the same physical movement thousands of times, then you pre-dispose your neuromuscular pathways to fire the same way every time, and if your practice is sloppy and inconsistent, then your shot percentage will be sloppy and inconsistent.  Look at your own percentages and you can tell.

I’ve taught a Human Anatomy and Physiology course for 24 years, and here is a quote from a handout that I use:

Motor development: 
Refers to the neurological pathways that are triggered by voluntary and involuntary movement. Frequent, repeated firing of neural pathways predisposes that pathway to repeated firing. Remember: "practice makes permanent, not perfect.' If you inconsistently practice a movement with the wrong neurological pattern (that is, repeated firing of the neurons, triggering incorrect muscle groups) then you will groove an incorrect neuromuscular pattern that will be hard to "unlearn" at some later point in time. Thus we have coaches, who help us train with technical precision, and also tell us when to stop training. We should stop performance training when fatigue interferes with grooving the correct neuromuscular pattern. This is most important when precise movements are called for; less important when the movements are gross motor movements and involve a higher percentage of strength moves.

If you want to improve your free throw shot percentage then train correctly, that is, with technical precision. Train your motor pathways and your mind to execute the shot correctly and consistently.  Groove the correct neuromuscular pattern thousands of times and lock in the movement patterns that will help you to increase your free throw shot percentage.

So often, the difference between an average free throw shooter and a great shooter is this: a great shooter practices the movement precisely and correctly with EVERY shot. An average shooter just tosses the ball at the rim and every toss is different.  The “great shooter” creates a clean, noiseless neural pattern, while the “average shooter” stimulates all kinds of extraneous “noise” in his neural pattern.

Since a successful coach will not attend every one of your practice sessions nor join you at the line during a game, you must train yourself, correctly and consistently so that you lock in the correct mental and physical patterns that will enhance your free throw shooting.

When you stand at the line, in practice or in game conditions, you want your mind and your body to be saying the same thing:  “I’ve done this thousands of time in exactly the same way, and with confidence I will do it again right now.”  Everything has to be aligned.

The “Nothin’ but Net”™ Free Throw Trainer holds great promise for helping players of all ages to lock in the correct motor patterns that will increase their free throw shot percentage.

The Free Throw Trainer will give you a new way of thinking about your shot and a new means of training your shot pattern. Mind and body working together.  Consistently.  Successfully. 

Al Heystek and Andy Atwood Heystek & Atwood, LLC

Providers of the “Nothin’ but Net” FREE THROW TRAINER™"

www.FreeThrowTrainer.com

contact@freethrowtrainer.com