Breathing to Improve Free Throw Shooting
Last week, someone tweeted a video of a player missing 13 straight free throws in a professional game in Lithuania, and I joked about the Instagram trainers burning up his DMs.
A coach asked what I would say to the player, presumably in the moment. I responded with “I believe in you” and the gif of Ted Lasso telling Sam Obisanya to be a goldfish because a goldfish as a 10-second memory. Instructions, feedback, and cuing will only increase self-doubt and pressure in the middle of a game.
I had a similar situation as a junior-college head coach. A player missed several free throws in a row, and the bench grew anxious. You could sense the angst. Players shouted support. My assistants shouted instructions. Players offered advice. Finally, I told the bench to stop talking. The worst thing to do when a player struggles, and feels the pressure, is to give the player more instructions to think about (Bend your knees! Hold your follow through! Keep your elbow in!).
Pressure causes overthinking or paralysis by analysis; the player attempts to consciously control the skill. Internal cueing (Bend your knees!) increases the overthinking, as the player thinks about her knee bend, not making the shot. Additionally, the nervous energy and angst may cause a player to stop attacking to avoid free throws.
The human body is designed with redundancy; we have different ways in which we can perform a skill. Imagine you stub your toe. You still walk around, but your gait changes to avoid putting pressure on your toe. Your body easily transitions to a different gait. Any minor injury would leave us immobile, and from an evolutionary perspective, easy prey if we lacked redundancy,
Our free-throw shooting has redundancy as well. Fatigue has been shown to change free-throw shooting kinematics, the technique, but not free-throw shooting accuracy (Rupčić et al., 2015). The body somewhat paradoxically alters its performance to keep the results consistent, which requires variability or redundancy. Without redundancy, an injury, fatigue, defense, or any other variable would render our shooting skill ineffective. We imagine we perform each skill exactly the same every time, because that is how it feels and we rarely think about our skill performance when things go well, but each repetition varies even without the presence of an external constraint to force a change.
Players reduce their body’s ability to self-organize using redundancy when instructions or overthinking shift their attention to a specific body segment (elbow, knee, wrist). Their focus changes from making the shot and centers on the knee bend. Players often noticeably control their elbows consciously when attempting to change their shots or follow a coach’s instructions. The conscious thinking and altering technique may be required in practice when players attempt to change their shooting techniques, but the conscious overriding of a well-learned skill is deleterious during performance, especially in a playoff game.
I spoke to my player after the game. She was 5/11, I think, for the game. I explained points per possession (PPP). She gave us nearly 1.0 PPP at the free-throw line, not to mention other ancillary benefits from drawing fouls, which was good offense at our level. The best offenses in the country were +/- 1.0 PPP. I referenced Dean Oliver’s four factors from Basketball on Paper; he found free-throw rate or attempts, not free-throw makes or percentage, contributed to winning. I implored her to keep attacking and told her that I and the team trusted and believed in her. She never shot that poorly again.
Years ago, my men’s professional team lost a game because we had a horrendous night at the free-throw line. Everyone in the club mentioned it, and it hung over the team at our next practice. The players expected me to yell and belabor the point, and I imagine everyone expected to shoot a lot of free throws.
We changed nothing. Within a few games, the player who had the largest part in our struggles, our best player who got to the free-throw line the most, hit some clutch free throws to secure a victory. Nothing changed. It is simple regression to the mean.
Bad games happen. Slumps happen when we focus on the bad game, and it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of decreased performance. Missing 13 free throws in a game causes the player to believe he must change something, and he spends the next day or two messing with his shot and thinking about his elbow and knees and follow through. He steps to the line in the next game with trepidation; he’s not even sure how to shoot anymore. He has the “yips”. One bad game has become a perpetual problem.
As for actual ways to improve free-throw shooting, first become a better shooter. Next, I focus on breathing. A simple technique is box breathing: (1) Inhale deeply through your nose while counting to four; (2) hold your breath for a four-count; (3) exhale slowly through your mouth for a four-count; (4) count to four; (5) repeat. The purpose is two-fold: First, slowing one’s breathing has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety (Russo et al., 2017), which may enhance performance at the free-throw line, especially for a player who feels anxious; second, controlling and slowing one’s breathing before shooting improves performance because heavy breathing reduces free-throw shooting accuracy (Giancamilli et a;., 2022).
Frequently, coaches scream at players to relax, an amusing juxtaposition to those observing. Instead, my frequent instruction is simply to breathe. By game time, there is nothing left to do but perform. It is too late to change shooting technique; the time to become a better shooter was the offseason or at least prior to the game. In the moment, there are ways to enhance performance, and most center around psychological tools, such as self-belief, confidence, feeling relaxed, reducing anxiety, and more. Breathing is one way for players to reduce stress and anxiety and feel as though they are in control. They control their breathing; they control their performance.
More on free throw shooting in Fake Fundamentals: Volume 2, Fake Fundamentals: Volume 4, and Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st Century Guide.
References
Giancamilli, F., Galli, F., Chirico, A., Fegatelli, D., Mallia, L., Palombi, T., ... & Lucidi, F. (2022). When the going gets tough, what happens to quiet eye? The role of time pressure and performance pressure during basketball free throws. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 58, 102057.
Rupčić, T., Knjaz, D., Baković, M., Devrnja, A., & Matković, B. R. (2015). Impact of fatigue on accuracy and changes in certain kinematic parameters during shooting in basketball. Hrvatski športskomedicinski vjesnik, 30(1), 15-20.
Russo, M.A., Santarelli, D.M., & O’Rourke, D. (2017). The physiological effects of slow breathing in the healthy human. Breathe, 13(4), 298-309.