Practice Design and Shooting Variability

True story.

My second trip to the Basketball Manitoba Coaching Clinic was in 2019, five years after my initial trip. I suggested shooting as my topic because I had started to write Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st Century Guide. My team in the previous season, 2018-19, was top 10 nationally in three-point field goals, three-point percentage, and free-throw percentage, and we had the #2 shooter by percentage (50%) in the nation.

Speaking and discussing ideas helps me to clarify my thoughts, as happened with my first trip to Manitoba, which turned into SABA: The Antifragile Offense. Many ideas in my books appeared first, not fully-formed, in my newsletters, blogs, or presentations.

I was told an NBA shooting coach also was speaking, and they promised him I would not speak about shooting. Of course, I had not agreed. I said it was a bad idea for me to speak at the same clinic, as he did not like me. We had never met, but I mentioned him briefly in Volume 7, Number 24 of my newsletter (below), which apparently angered him.

He contacted and lectured me about the use of his tweet after someone sent him the newsletter. I do not understand people who post on social media, but are offended or upset when people react to or disagree with a post. Just shows people are on social media for likes, not discussions about ideas.

There was clear attribution: I did not attempt to take something he said or wrote and claim the ideas as my own, as do many others. I simply included his publicly-available statement as a counterexample to my own beliefs to demonstrate two different viewpoints on skill execution.

After I replied to his initial complaint, he called, and asked for my opinion on methods to improve an unknown player who he only vaguely described. After I offered some suggestions, I never heard from him again, but randomly saw he blocked me on Twitter. As far as I know, he is the only person who has blocked both of my accounts.

The organizers assured me there were no problems. I agreed to speak about practice design using shooting drills. We have two different viewpoints on shooting and skill development, so nothing duplicated his presentation. If he was worried about the overlap or the differences between us, he could have changed his topic.

According to the organizers, he texted angrily throughout my presentation because my presentation involved shooting. Again, I watched his presentation; there was nothing in common. It is not like I presented his ideas in front of him, as another coach did when speaking about SABA at a different clinic where I spoke; we have virtually nothing in common. We represent opposite spectrums of shooting instruction and development. Why not expose coaches to both sides of the spectrum?

Anyway, I have no problem recounting this publicly because he was rude to the women who presented after me, and I saw someone last week post that they learned about variability in shooting from him, which made me laugh, as I guess he took away a lot more from watching my presentation, in between his texts, than I did from his.

Here is the article from Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter, Volume 7.24 (2017) that angered him.

Variability in Shooting Skills

NBA Shooting Coach Dave Love tweeted “When you are shooting free throws you want exactly the same leg push every time, and this is easier to do when you keep the feet down.” My response was that “exactly the same” never happens in sports. Coach Love is an NBA shooting coach, and more qualified than I, and this illustrates the difference between two viewpoints of skill execution.

The genius of the human body is the ability to vary its movements to create consistent results. In relatively simple movements such as pistol shooting or handwriting, it is accepted that “although experienced actors show lower variability, there remains a base level of variability” (Müller & Sternad, 2009). This variability is not negative or noise, but a positive. Variations in body and pistol angles compensated for each other to achieve a steady pointing position (Arutyunyan, Gurfinkel, & Mirskii, 1968, 1969). Essentially, when the shoulder position changed, the wrist and elbow position compensated to maintain the steady position. In basketball, when the legs fatigue, we use more arm or hand force to compensate. The end results remain consistent, but the internal process by which we achieve those results vary.

In a study of elite shot putters, Schöllhorn (2000) found that no movement was repeated identically over the course of a year; there was no “exactly the same”. Every repetition differed. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Every shot differs, and the shooter differs on every shot.

Internal and external constraints change each shot. When a player makes a few shots in a row, she shoots with more confidence; she relaxes, which tends to improve inter-muscular coordination. When a player has missed a few shots in a row, she may be tense, which restricts some movement and interferes with her coordination. Players lacking confidence often look as though they want to place the ball in the basket rather than shooting free and easy. Confidence and previous results are only two factors that impact the next shot; external constraints such as angle, distance, defense, movement, and more prevent two shots from being identical, despite our best attempts.

One of the better explanations of functional variability is from an article on the virtues of long toss in baseball:

“In every human movement, there are components that must be stable and others that may vary. The stable components are known as ‘attractors’. The variable components are considered ‘fluctuators’. Attractors can be identified by finding patterns that are commonly demonstrated by performers across all levels and experience and ability.

“To optimize movement efficiency you need some fluxuators (but not too many). If your training involves throwing only mound pitches from 60’6”, you engrain the attractors so deeply that all of the necessary fluxuators are eliminated and you have no adjustability. Now, when your arm begins to drift outside the rigid boundaries you’ve created, you have no pre-rehearsed motor plan to bring it back. With no capacity for adjustment, the arm could wander into areas beyond tissue failure thresholds, and injury could occur.

“The key to safe and efficient throwing is to make sure your attractors are stable, but not too stable and to have just enough fluxuators available to allow sufficient choices for adjustment” (Sullivan, 2017).

When we attempt to shoot every shot in exactly the same way, we risk making the attractors too stable. When this occurs, we have only one potential execution. Many believe this is the objective, but what about internal and external constraints that vary between shots? Does fatigue, to name one variable, affect one’s technique? Fatigue (increased repetitions) was shown to change the biomechanics of a squat (Hooper et al., 2014), which suggests that fatigue may change the biomechanics of a more complex skill such as shooting. When the attractors are too stable, one may be unable to adapt to variations caused by these constraints, such as fatigue.

The body naturally adjusts to these variations, but we can increase the motor workspace by intentionally varying repetitions. When Steph Curry shoots with extreme arc, most view these as throw-away shots. Instead, he is increasing his motor workspace. He is adding variability intentionally. When a long defender closes out and forces a higher release and a higher arc than his normal shot, he has sufficient variability to adapt to the constraints of this task. His attractors are stable — primarily his hand placement on the ball, his release, his coordination, and his follow-through — but he has adaptability to vary as necessary depending on the constraints of a specific shot.

Some players are adept within a narrow range of execution, but when forced outside of this range, whether due to defense, speed of movement, angle, fatigue and more, they struggle. These shooters are limited, although they may be very good at some shots, such as free throws.

Variability is not always a positive. Generally, the learning process for a novice is to reduce variability initially. Once the novice has established some attractors, the process to move from intermediate to advanced is to re-introduce variability around these attractors.

The typical learning progression for most shooters illustrates this: Players start close to the basket with form shooting; as they improve, they shoot further from the basket and incorporate more movement; as they improve, they differentiate the movement, add the dribble, increase the speed, etc.

Every added variable changes the shot slightly from the original form shooting, which also questions the validity of form shooting for an advanced shooter. As more variables are added, the shooter needs a greater motor workspace to account for the variables because not every shot starts with perfect foot positioning, balance, hand placement, etc. Picking up the ball from a dribble changes the shot compared to shooting off the catch, and shooting off a perfect pass changes the shot compared to a bad pass.

These changes are subtle, and often imperceptible. but they are present. Rather than reduce all variability and eliminate the fluctuators, we want to increase the motor workspace to allow shooters to shoot confidently and competently regardless of the situation that they face in a game.   

References

Arutyunyan, G.H., Gurfinkel, VS., Mirskii, M.L. (1968). Investigation of aiming at a target. Biophysics, 13, 536-38.

Arutyunyan, G.H., Gurfinkel, V.S., Mirskii, M.L. (1969). Organization of movements on execution by man of an exact postural task. Biophysics, 14, 1162-67.

Hooper, D.R., Szivak, T.K., Comstock, B.A., Dunn-Lewis, C., Apicella, J.M., Kelly, N.A., Creighton, B.C., Flanagan, S.D., Looney, D.P., Volek, J.S., Maresh, C.M. & Kraemer, W.J. (2014). Effects of fatigue from resistance training on barbell back squat biomechanics. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 28(4), 1127-34.

Müller, H., & Sternad, D. (2009). Motor learning: changes in the structure of variability in a redundant task. In Progress in motor control (pp. 439-456). Springer US.

Schöllhorn WI. (2000). Applications of systems dynamic principles to technique and strength training. Acta Acad Olympiquae Est, 8, 67-85.

Sullivan, R. (2017). How NOT long tossing or throwing weighted balls could get you hurt. FloridaBaseballRanch.com, July 14.