Basketball Training RECAP before Winter Break

My activity goals for CAS were two fold which started with me wanting to improve my shooting form from being 2 handed to 1 handed to make it more rhythmic and efficient in games, changing shooting forms is a very tedious process and takes time to adapt to. As I said in my goals I will be practicing shooting with the new form 5 times a week as to speed up the process. 

Initial Progress

When starting I did struggle a lot, it was hard for me to get that rhythm that I desired off the dribble as the whole motion was completely different to what I had been doing in the past. Normally I would use a swing motion and bring the ball to my head and shoot it from there, this was effective but not consistent. Using this motion I am able to make shots but not as consistently as I would like. This shooting motion was somewhat inspired by an athlete in the NBA, D’Angelo Russel, he is a good shooter but often is not consistent. This is mainly because of the swing and how much it varies and causes your shot to alter its direction, this shot is also not the greatest when contested by another player as you have to change the swing to get the shot up causing a change in the overall trajectory of the ball which will most likely result in the shot being a miss. To improve my shot I had to change many things. The first was the base of my feet. My feet would often be shifted to the right and not squared to the basket, to have a good shooting form it is more ideal to have your feet square to the basket and it is a lot better when trying to gain space as you are more likely to trick your defender. The second part that needed improvement was my motion with the ball, as I mentioned before my motion would be a swing from the right to the middle of my body but this would take to long and give time for defenders to press up during my shot, therefore I needed to make sure that my motion would go straight up from the middle. The third part was to change my release point, it is harder to contest a shot when it is higher up. The fourth is to make my grip on the ball wider, my grip on the ball is too close as it causes me to shoot with two hands and makes the ball spin incorrectly allowing for there to be less consistency. To improve this I must make my guiding hand (right hand) further away from my shooting hand (left).  

The above table shows how my shooting with the new form has been going.

Reflection:

I have been consistently working towards making my shot better and it has paid off. Now I need to focus on whether I can do this from a longer distance and if I am able to use it against another person. My next blog will show my progress and talk more about my work with Coach Praneeth.