PERFECT BASKETBALL PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
What I want to know, and ultimately what you want to know is; are you practicing correctly? Most of a basketball player's practice time is solitary and most of the basketball games are "pick-up" games. Do you know a basketball player's solitary practice time can make them better or worse? Are you creating and/or reinforcing good habits or creating and/or reinforcing bad habits? How do you know?
Video!
Set up a video camera and record your basketball practice sessions. I suggest you record all your basketball training sessions, team and solitary. While reviewing your basketball practice videos become intimate with the rewind and fast forward buttons or you'll waste lots of precious time watching meaningless footage; and the slow-mo button so you can really study, in detail. Why should you record your team basketball training practices? You're able to review your basketball coach's nuggets of wisdom, get to know your basketball team's propensities, your teammate's individual and team propensities, and your own team and individual basketball propensities. If you can get someone to shoot videos of your basketball games, a review of game footage makes for wonderful team practices (an overhead view covering the entire basketball court is the best perspective for this specific purpose as you're able to see how, why, when, and where strategies and situations develop and play out within the ebb and flow of your basketball games).
What are you looking to discover while reviewing your basketball practice, basketball training, basketball coaching, and basketball game videos? Change hats, remove your basketball uniform and don a basketball coaches' whistle. As a basketball coach how will you train that basketball player and/or that basketball team to add, remove, or improve behaviors and habits? Often you'll find, removing bad habits and poor behaviors produces faster results than adding or improving good habits and good behaviors. Allow me to repeat that last nugget; often, you'll find removing bad habits and poor behaviors produces faster results than adding or improving good habits and good behaviors. Always look to simplify; "Occam's Razor,' one should not increase, beyond what is [absolutely] necessary, the number of entities [or movements] required to explain [or do] anything." While you're under the basketball coach's hat and behind the basketball coaches' whistle, two grandiose things happen for you, your team, and your coach. You and your team get better and become empathetic with your coaches. Now, because you are videoing your basketball practice; your basketball skills, your teammates' basketball skills, and your teams' basketball skills are growing rapidly, and simultaneously you're becoming easier to coach. One feeds upon the other in perpetual motion.
There are literally thousands of solitary basketball practice routines a player can adopt. I propose you explore many of them at your local library. In one afternoon, pulling books from the basketball section, a player, or coach, can find solitary practice routines to rapidly improve any basketball skill, from any level to any level. See the list of books below to help you get started.
Look, basketball is an easy game. On offense a player looks to score, or advance the basketball to a scoring position by passing or dribbling, or place one's self or one's teammate into an optimal position to score or to receive a pass and score. On defense, as individual players and as a team, stopping the offense from scoring or advancing the basketball to an optimal scoring position, the exact opposite of offense, is the objective. So study yourself and your team using introspective study and video; find the weakest areas, whether that be basketball skill levels or basketball education / theory, and find a book, a video, or a routine that increases your skill level and / or education. Then, as Nike says, "Do It!"
Mental practice is one of the fastest roads for improving basketball skills and teamwork. And on this road there exists no need to reinvent the proverbial wheel. If you want to improve your shooting, for example, study a player you think has the perfect shot for YOU to emulate. It's best to study a video of the player, and it's probably best to emulate someone close to your height, weight, and skeletal structure, or your future height, weight, and / or skeletal structure. When you have studied the shooting technique so thoroughly that you can imagine the player shooting, and you're not looking at the video, that's a good thing, that's what you want. The next step is to imagine your head, and your uniform, and your feet and hands on that shooter as that shooter is shooting; you are now watching a mental video of you shooting and your perfect shooting form. Now after mentally viewing, hundreds, even thousands, of times (and this can happen in an afternoon or even in an hour or less) the image of you shooting, using that perfect technique, it's time to really make it your own.
In your imagination, you physically slip into the image of that shooter. That shooter is now - you.
Imagine how it must feel looking through the eyes of that shooter that is you; using your eyes to see the basket as you elevate, in that perfect form, gripping and feeling the weight of the ball, the weight of your arms, your legs and feet; feel that smooth effortless release of the basketball; landing on your toes while watching the basketball's flight up, out, and through the hoop. Perfectly imagining a perfect shot using perfect form; it feels perfectly great. After studying this perfect shooting technique in your mind, until it's ingrained (again this will happen quick, extremely quick) begin to slow this imagination video down using an imagined slow motion setting, even the stop frame, so that you can really see how it feels to study this shooting technique; how it feels, inside and out. Learning to shoot this way will allow you to understand the difference of actually taking a shot when you go out and start practicing, and imagining the shot. You'll actually know, feel, and sense what you're doing right and wrong. Then practice, practice, practice, and video, video, video.
The above technique can be used for basketball practice, all basketball skills, drills, and plays.
Learn to take responsibility for your actions and your education. Others can guide you, but only you can be you. Basketball players are made, they are not born; great basketball players are self made, not only by working on their skills level but by studying the game, learning the game, and remembering "Occam's Razor".
Perfect Basketball Practice Makes Perfect
