Shooting Footwork and Variability

Embracing the ways in which children learn best

I tweeted a video, edited by Alex Silva, of J.J. Redick and Cam Johnson discussing shooting on Redick’s podcast. Their commentary echoed many of the ideas presented in Evolution of 180 Shooter: A 21st century Guide. The replies varied as many coaches supported their thoughts on practice repetitions and variability — a significant change over even the last five years — while others questioned their thoughts because they are professionals or the 1%, and their experiences are not applicable to everyone. On one thread, Redick even replied, agreeing that players “gotta have the base footwork for sure.”

Coaches and trainers believe players must learn — or, more accurately, must be taught — the correct skill executions first. We believe skills progress linearly from easy to more difficult, and we learn through repetition after repetition. The adult mindset is to work, to grind, to do more.

Is that correct? Is that how we learn best? More importantly, is that how children learn best?

A study by Torrents and Balague (2006) found children learn rapidly, with variety of movements, small number of repetitions, and with minimal following of directions.

Coaches embrace repetitions. We have taught in this way for years, but it is not the way we always learned. We used to learn on the playgrounds and playing around with our fathers or siblings. We were introduced to sports in playful environments, with variety, a lack of repetitions, and minimal instructions. Coaches refined those skills when we joined teams. Now, children often are exposed to sports and skills for the first time when they join a team. Does that change how we coach?

I could shoot a layup before I joined a team. I honestly do not remember learning a layup, but we started to play on the playground in 2nd grade and did not join a team until 5th grade. How did I learn to make a layup before joining a team or receiving coaching? Watching others, practicing in my front yard, playing at recess and lunch, and more. It was not through drills or by following directions.

Is that the best way? Does repeating the task over and over at practice with coach feedback quicken the learning process or do the drills and repetitions lengthen the learning process because children do not learn when they lack motivation due to boredom?

Coaches tend to favor a lack of variety, a large number of repetitions, and a desire for players to follow directions, and do not expect the learning to be rapid. Coaches often put beginners in a single file line to perform repetition after repetition under the coach’s watchful eye. This study found children learn through an opposite approach. Who is correct? Do children need a large number of repetitions of repetitive tasks? Should coaches design practices and drills to fit with the way children learn?

We practice to automate skills, to make them habitual. We do not think about our hand manipulating our fork to pick up a piece of food off a plate and deposit it in our mouths; we just do it because we have done it thousands of times.

Once we automate or habituate a skill, change is hard. Americans, at least those around whom I grew up, eat differently than Europeans, at least in places where I have lived. I learned to cut with my right hand, put my knife down, switch my fork to my right hand, pick up the food with the fork, and move to my mouth. Many Europeans eat two-handed: They cut with their right hands and scoop the food onto their forks in their left hands and use their left hand to move the food to their mouths. When I have lived abroad, I have attempted to change, to learn a new way to manipulate the fork, but change is hard. I revert to my habits.

Several coaches in the thread suggested learning one method as a base and eventually adding or changing footwork. Many coaches teach a permanent pivot foot: Every right-handed player uses a left-foot pivot. I wrote about the contralateral pivot foot in Fake Fundamentals, Vol. 4. When players learn to shoot with a left-foot pivot foot, a left-right step-in to all of their shots, anything else feels different, awkward. The right-left step-in or a jump stop is not awkward in and of itself, but in the context of shooting, it feels weird because the players developed their shooting habit with the left-right step-in. Change is hard; despite attempting to add or change footwork to a jump stop or an inside pivot foot, they often revert to their habits.

Why connect shooting to a single footwork? If the end goal is footwork variability, do players need a single base footwork initially? Should we focus on the correct footwork or making shots?

I have coached successful shooters who preferred a single footwork and others who were so fluent with their footwork they could not tell you how they stopped to shoot: Jump stop, right-left, left-right. It did not matter or affect their shooting. They acquired balance and coordinated their shot regardless. I saw that as an example of exceptional skill, not a flaw.

Why focus players on their footwork when the goal is to make shots? The only time I concentrate on footwork is when there is a way to enhance their shooting or when they are prone to traveling violations. Otherwise, the truly exceptional shooters (one below) I have coached used either foot or jump stop, front pivot or reverse pivot, and went left and right, forward and backward. Their footwork variability allowed them to shoot in many different ways, which enabled them to shoot more shots.

Imagine layups. Often, children initially jump off their right foot to shoot right-handed layups. Coaches dutifully explain the correct footwork is to jump off the left foot for a right-handed layup. Teams practice this over and over. The focus shifts from making the shot to jumping off the correct foot. Why? What makes a left-foot takeoff correct and a right-foot takeoff incorrect?

After sufficient practice and corrections (repetitions!!), players learn to jump off their left foot to shoot right-handed layups and automate this execution. Then, when players reach high school, a coach or trainer returns to the right-foot takeoff — a goofy foot layup — because the same-foot takeoff gives players more options, often shooting more quickly or off-balancing the defender attempting to block the shot. In the end, the right-foot right-hand layup is not wrong; it is valuable! The players spend hours changing to the correct footwork, only to have the incorrect footwork become a valuable skill. However, many players struggle to return to the right-foot takeoff due to years of habituating the left-foot takeoff.

I attended an NBA team’s offseason workouts years ago, and a coach worked with the backup point guard on same-foot takeoffs. He could not do it. He tried repetition after repetition, and travelled or missed the shot or stepped with the left foot before jumping. He could not override his habit.

Once players and coaches scrimmaged, he jumped off his right foot to avoid a defender. This is the self-organization to which Alex Silva referred several times in the thread. He interacted with the defender in the environment and moved in a manner that allowed him to finish the shot rather than repeating his practiced or habituated movement.

He struggled when he tried consciously to disrupt his habituated movement; the interaction with the defender forced a novel movement. The coach and player attributed the finish to the unsuccessful practice; when I write unsuccessful, I mean he did not complete a same-foot takeoff once in the entire 10-15 minutes of practice drills. However, we practice to improve. Therefore, when the finish appeared in a game, it had to be due to the practice, regardless of his futility during the unopposed drill.

This, of course, is why traditional practice and beliefs (Fake Fundamentals) persist. Logically, this makes sense. We see the correlation between the practice and the improvement, and we confuse correlation with causation. There is no way to falsify this claim because it happened. He practiced, then he improved. One led to the other.

It is just as easy to conclude he could not perform this finish, even at less than full speed and with no external constraints (defense); then, he could perform the finish in the presence of the defense. Therefore, the interaction with the defender caused the behavior change. Each argument is as logical as the other, except one conforms to our traditional belief system, and the other does not. Therefore, we are biased to the explanation we expect.

What if we changed our belief system? What if we shaped our beliefs around the Torrents and Balague (2006) study? What if our default was increased variety and decreased repetitions and instructions as with more playful or play-oriented environments?

Why indoctrinate players to one method if footwork variability is desired eventually, and not a mistake? Why not start with variability, fewer repetitions, and minimal directions? Why not focus on the goal — making shots — and not the technique, of which there is no single, perfect, ideal, correct execution?

Again, we defer to our adult beliefs. We have a low tolerance for risks or mistakes. We — whether coach or parent — want immediate success, except we also preach the need for numerous repetitions and time. Success, then, is not mastery in terms of outcome (shooting a higher percentage), but organization or order. When players perform the same on every repetition in a practice drill, adults see order and equate the order with progress and the path to success. Constant change or variability looks chaotic; one might even hear a parent question what the coach is doing or if the coach is even trying to teach anything.

Of course, games are chaos. We rarely use preplanned, patterned movements during games. We need functional variability: An ability to use different footwork, different hands, different finishes, and more. And, despite our adult sensibilities, this is how children learn best.

Many coaches working with young children comment on the lack of obedience: Players in the back of the line do not pay attention. They get to the front of the line and they do not know what to do; they were not listening. The suggestion is something is wrong or lacking with the players; maybe they do not care enough or they do not like to work hard. Instead, the problem is the practice and not aligning with the needs of the children.

Children do not pay attention in line because they did not sign up for sports to stand in lines; they want to play. A game fits the natural learning of children: Minimal repetitions, maximum variability, minimal directions and rapid learning. Why do we want to suppress this in children?

How should we proceed? Is it our job as coaches to teach players to do things they do not like? Do we need players to embrace tedious, repetitive tasks? Is that imposing an adult mindset or an adult learning model onto children? Is our goal to teach the children to do a skill or to teach children to accept an adult way of learning (minimize variety, increase repetitions)? Is there a reason children learn new things quickly? When should we learn from the behaviors and motivations of the children rather than doing things our adult way?

Torrents, C. & Balagué, N. (2006). Dynamic systems theory and sports training. Baltic Journal of Sport and Health Sciences, 1(60), 72-83.