Why You Shouldn't Just Practice "Game Shots" (Podcast Episode 68)

Foreign welcome to the Vision Gym Baptist Training Podcast. Appreciate you guys on Apple podcasts or on Spotify, wherever else you may be listening to this. And of course everybody who's watching on YouTube right now shout out to you guys. You're on YouTube right now and you're new. Make sure you subscribe. Dropping a new podcast every single week and mixed in with that film, breakdowns, workouts, a bunch of different things that's going to help you guys become better basketball players as well. So make sure you guys subscribe. If you're new, drop a like on this video if you enjoy the topic, if you learn anything from this video and of course, if you guys are on Apple podcasts, do me a favor, scroll down, leave a review at the bottom of the page, let me know what you think. As you guys know who have listened before, if I get new reviews, I read them at the beginning of the show. So I've got one new one this week says question, could you do like a crash course for point guards and how to and go in depth on what you have to do and how to get better? I'm also a small guard, so can you include something for that? Thank you. You're doing great things. Keep it up. So I've done some videos specifically talking about small guards before, but I'll definitely do some more, especially looking at some more film breakdown stuff as well with that. Definitely put that on my list of things to do. I appreciate the review. So today we're going to talk about shooting and specifically not really a myth, but I think something that's overstated when it comes to training your shooting. I maybe a little bit of a misconception when it comes to becoming a great shooter. And before I even get into it, I'm going to mention this again, but I want to give you guys my free elite shooter workout, which is going to touch on some of the stuff that we talk about today in terms of building adaptability as a shooter. So that's going to be the top link description below. So go ahead and click that link. I'm going to send you that workout over and it's a workout that really is going to help you guys out if you want to become better shooters, something that you can throw into your routine that you do now, you can do it every day if you want to, and you're going to see some some major changes when it comes to you being able to put the ball in the basket. So like I said, that's completely free. Click the top link. My description below. I'LL get that right to you. So getting into it, I think one of the big things that you're going to hear when it comes to becoming a better shooter is people are going to say, hey, you got to practice game shots, you got to make game shots. And this is not like, I guess it's the expectation that, okay, in order to become a better shooter, you. You have to work on game shots, you have to practice game shots, and you should spend almost all of your time shooting. Like, in your practices. Almost all of your time should be spent working on game shots. And this is something where it makes sense, right, because you want to get good at doing the things you're going to do in games, which is obviously a good point to make and to, To. To keep at the front of your mind when you're practicing. Like, how does this actually translate to the game? Of course that's important, but I think that there's a lot more that goes into shooting, and I think that by just focusing on, okay, I can only work on game shots. I think that limits, Severely limits the improvement you can make as a shooter and how great you. You can become as a shooter. I want, I want to kind of, you know, expand this a little bit. So we talk about game shots, right? What do people refer to as game shots? Well, that could be just a catch and shoot, three, right? That's a game shot. Or it could be a one, dribble, pull up, that's a game shot. Or it could be a jab, two, drill, pull up, That's a game shot right there. So just think about your typical shots. You know, you could even talk about like a floater or a layup being a game sort of shot, right? Something that you would shoot in a game. Very straightforward, very simple. But that's what people refer to when they say, you know, those are the shots you got to be practicing. And, you know, again, you've seen a million Instagram trainers, a million, you know, all your coaches, probably in person, that you guys have, are telling you, okay, you got to work game shots, got to practice game shots. I got to do all this sort of stuff. And this is something that I actually partly disagree with. And this is not to say that game shots are something that you should not practice. Of course you should practice that, right? With all the players that I work with, with my shooting programs, all my shooting workouts, we do practice game shots. Of course, it's not something that we just ignore. But there's more to it than just that. There's more to become a great shooter than just working on game shots. I think when you only focus on those, when you only focus on making your catch and shoot threes or making your pull ups or making your whatever, insert any sort of game shot we've talked about, when you just do that, I think you leave a lot of growth on the table when it comes to actually being a shooter who can make shots in games. Because yes, if you work on those game shots, you're going to get better in the context of practice. You're going to get better at hitting one drill pull ups in practice, you're going to get better at hitting catch and shoot threes in practice. You for sure will. But we have to look at the differences between practice and a game, okay? Because a game shot in practice is not the same as a game shot in an actual game where there's other players on your team and more importantly, there's defenders on the floor, right? It's just completely different when there's nobody on the court and you can go work on your pull up or your, you know, your jab into your whatever, that you can work on that sort of stuff with nobody on the floor. It's just different than when it comes to actually there being a defender trying to stop you as well. So what exactly is a game shot? Right. It just varies between those two mediums, between practice and game. It's two different things. So the first thing to understand that is that there's a lot of factors that go into being a consistently effective game shooter. Okay? Like I said, being, being an effective practice shooter is very, very simple. Just work on those shots with no defense and you're gonna get better at doing in the context of workouts, context of practice, you'll get better at it. Very, very simple. But when it comes to actually being a better shooter in games, this is where it gets, it becomes a little bit more complex to an extent, right? I wouldn't view it as complex, but I think it's just, it's another layer to it. So what I mean by more, the additional factors that go into it, right? It's not just about can you hit game shots now, it's also about, okay, how are you? Do you have good balance when you shoot? Are you able to get on balance quickly? Right. Are you able to gain balance out of uncomfortable situations? There's one example of a factor that goes into being a great shooter. Another thing is your shot speed. How quick, how quick can you get your shot off right out of the catch? Or it could be off the dribble. So we talk about off the dribble. How quickly can you pick the ball up and get it into your shot coming off of some sort of move or coming off of the dribble, how quickly can you go from dribble to shot to release? That's. That's another example of a factor that goes into your ability to be a great shooter in games. So the other thing, like your footwork and footwork, I think, is one of the biggest things. So it goes with your consistency with your foot, but also your efficiency. How efficient are you when it comes to the footwork that you use? Because you can have sloppy, inefficient footwork in practice and be a great practice shooter. But when you get to a game and you don't have time to be inefficient with your footwork, you're going to become a much worse shooter if you have not practiced and not drilled down. Your ability to have that efficient, consistent footwork as well. So another aspect to it, energy transfer is another big thing. So you know how well you're able to transfer energy from the ground up through your body into the ball. And that goes with shot speed, but it also goes with the ability to have range on your shot, your ability to hit shots coming when momentum is not necessarily going straight up and down that. So talking about, like fading away or, you know, fading to the side sometimes, depending on what it calls for, working on, these things are actually the key to becoming a better shooter when you get put into those game situations, because every shot you shoot in a game is going to be a little bit different. We're going to touch on this in a second in more detail. But right. Even if I go down and I shoot a one drill pull up, if I go down the next possession, do the same thing, chances are it's going to be a little bit different. The defender is going to be a couple inches closer, a couple inches farther away. I'm going to have to lean a little bit farther in this direction. I might have to jump a little bit higher on this one. I might have to release the ball a little bit quicker on this one. So every shot is going to be a little. Be a little bit different. So that's again, where it comes to practice versus game. And those divers we talk about, like, getting great at those is actually going to make a big difference when it comes to you hitting game shots in the context of an actual game. Okay. And again, I'm going to go more detailed into this as well. So you Guys can kind of see what I'm saying. So a big thing to understand here is that games are not perfect. So you should be training to be an adaptable player and also training to be able to handle imperfection in these different situations. And so a term that we're going to talk about right here that is going to be a really big key for understanding this is called functional movement variability. All of that means is that basically it's the ability of an athlete to be able to handle different constraints thrown at them at different times throughout a certain movement that they do. So for example, when you are, when you catch the ball and you have a defender on your right side, right, you take a one drill, pull up to your left side and you go into your shot. Well, how do you shoot the ball when you have the defender on your right side versus the next time you catch the ball and you dribble to your left with a one dribble pull up and now the defender is closer to the center of your body, right? It's two different sorts of shots, right? You have to adapt a little bit because your defender is in a different, a different position. Okay? Another example of that is like even simpler one, right? Catch a shoot. Three in the corner, right? That's the first possession you catch and shoot in the corner and you're wide open, there's nobody near you wide open. Three, the next time a defender is closing out to you and they get a good contest in there. So it's two different sorts of shots you have to be able to adapt because again, the first shot you got more time. The second shot you might have to shoot the ball quicker. You might to put a little bit more arc on the ball if they're really close on that contest. So it's two different sorts of shots. So your ability to adapt from one shot to the next depending on the different constraints that you see from the defense. That's what this term functional movement variability is referring to. And this is where, this is where there's a different. Like this is what differentiates great shooters from average shooters, from bad shooters. Great shooters in the context of a game. You know, shooters who are going to be able to put the ball in the basket consistently during games typically are above average to great when it comes to their, their functional movement variability and their ability to be adaptable when it comes to shooting. Shooting different, different sorts of shots, right? They can hit one shot with the defender on their right side and then they can hit the same shot with the defender on their left side. Being able to adapt and overcome. Understand there's a little bit of a difference between those two shots. And this is where the, the idea of, oh, you have to shoot just game shots. This is where that idea kind of crumbles. Because if you just work on your typical one, drill, pull up, two, drill, pull up, catch and shoot, there's no variability between those two shots or between those shots right there. Because there's no like, there's nothing that's forcing you to be uncomfortable. You don't have to adapt to anything right there. So you might shoot the ball great in practice, working on those game shots. When you get to a game and there's a defender who's playing you differently every time, then you're going to shoot the ball a lot worse. So this is where, you know, there's a couple ways we can go that we can go, that we can add to this. So the first part is adding in a contest. So this is what I love to do as often as possible, especially working with three point shots is just throwing a defender to contest the shot. And we can literally do this out of any situation. So we can do this. It can be as simple as the ball starts on the wing and I put a shooter in the corner and then there's a defender at the block, maybe I'll be the passer on the wing, I'll pass it down to the corner. As soon as I pass it, that defender on the block is going to close out to the shooter in the corner and they've got to get the shot off with that defender running to contest just makes the shot completely different than if they were just going to catch and shoot it with no contest coming. So there's an example of changing that up. But the other thing is if, you know, one thing I love to do is put my players in positions where they have to make shots with a defender on them. Okay. Because what that is going to ensure is that every single shot is going to be a little bit different. They're going to have to adapt basically every single shot because there's going to be a defender playing them and they're probably going to be a little bit different every single time. They might play them to the left side every time, but maybe the first time, you know, compared to the second shot, like there maybe there's a 2 inch difference where the defender is and that's enough to where they have to adjust their shot a little bit. So now they're that functional movement variability. They're working on that aspect of their of their game because there's a defender on the floor. So obviously it's important to rep out shots because again, this is not to say that we don't rep out shots. It's not to say that. I won't say, okay, you know what, we've got to make X amount of shots at this spot. And I might not put a defender on the floor. I might not add any sort of constraint to. I might just say, here, catch and shoot with like on air. And we might work that. And again, I'm not trying to discount that at all. But there's, that's only one piece of the puzzle, right? There's a whole nother aspect of shooting. You know, what is your ability like to still be effective as a shooter when the situation adds additional factors and constraints to it. When now you have a constraint that forces you to get the shot up quicker or forces you to have to lean a little bit on the shot or forces you to maybe be a little bit off balance when you shoot the ball, are you still able to knock that down? And there have been studies that have been done that kind of back up and kind of have been researching into this functional movement variability, where essentially these studies support the idea that there's not one ideal motor coordination solution that every single athlete needs to use. All that that means is that one athlete might do something a little bit differently than another athlete. But at the end of the day, if you put yourself in enough situations where you have to kind of figure it out, you're going to get there. Now what exactly does that mean for you as a player? Essentially what it's saying is that if you want to get to a point where you are an expert, what will be considered an expert as a shooter? You need to be exposed to a variety of different constraints, different factors in your practices so that when you get to the game situation and now you see those different factors and those different variances between shot to shot, you're prepared and you're able to adapt to that, right? You're able to sort of figure it out. That's, that's the difference between players who are great and players who are average or players who are bad is that the great players are able to figure stuff out on the fly because they've trained their ability to be adaptable. Right? And that might look different player to player. So again, that's why when we work just game shots on air, it's it, we don't have to work that ability to figure it out because all you're Doing is just shooting the same shot over and over and over again. Meanwhile, if I throw a defender on the floor or a contest in there, you're going to figure out how you're going to get the ball in the basket still when you have less room to get the shot off, or when you have a defender who is trying to take away your left side from you, whatever the case may be. So that's just the example that I'm giving of having a defender on the floor to contest. But it's also ways we can do this without a defender as well. So I'll put some clips of this on the screen for you guys to see if you guys are watching on YouTube right now on. Also going to be posting more about those on Instagram too. So if you're listening to this, you can check that out too. But there's different drills that we can do that force these sort of constraints on us and force us to work these different factors such as balance, right? So we might start with our shoulders facing the basket, or maybe it's our right shoulder face basket. We're facing like our chest to the sideline right there in front of the free throw line. And you've got to jump, turn in the air, square yourself and shoot the ball. Okay. So now we're working on being able to hit shots when our we're not exactly lined up with the basket, right. Our momentum is kind of twisting a little bit. And so that's a whole other factor added into your shot now that you have to overcome and adapt to to still put the ball in the basket, right. So it just makes things a little bit more difficult. And we can add another element of difficulty to that where I might have them start facing completely away from the basket. So back to the basket. They've got a jump so square in the air and then shoot the ball right there. Again, that's not a shot you're probably ever going to shoot in a game unless there's some crazy end of shot clock, end of, you know, quarter situation where you have to do that. But for 99.999% of the time you spend on the floor, that's not a shot you're going to be shooting. But we're, we're just working an aspect of building that ability to be adaptable, right? Of building that functional movement variability within your training. So that when we get into a game and it's not perfect and you have to lean a little bit and you might have to twist your body a little bit, you've already been exposed to that, so you're able to adapt to it right there. So there's plenty of ways we can do this. I love doing drills where we might just have to switch up full work every single time. So maybe we're shooting from the same area, but I'll say, okay, you know what, we have to go from a 1, 2 into maybe the next time we have to hop on. And so we're just rotating between footwork every single time. So now we're able to shoot when we have to step with this sort of footwork and maybe the next time it calls for us to use a different sort of footwork. So now because we've, we've worked on being able to go from this shot immediately to a different sort of shot, we're able to do that in the context of a game because we've worked on it again. So there's plenty of ways we can do this. And so another even simpler drill that I love to use is called bad pass shooting. And this might start from the free throw line in the mid range, or I might even do it from the three point line where I'll just go, maybe we'll go from the three point line. I'll say, okay, we're going to go five spots right here. We're going to go both corners, both wings on top of the key. And at each spot I'm going to throw you a bad pass and you've got to catch it and shoot it. Okay, so now we're working another additional factor of variability because we're working on your ability to. If I throw the ball so high you have to jump and catch it, can you still hit the shot coming off of that when the pass is not perfect? Because the pass in a game, most passes are not going to be perfect to you unless you've got some really good teammates who always put the ball right where you want it. Chances are you're going to have some passes that come high, passes, come low pass, go to the side. So the better you are at being able to hit those shots and the more comfortable you are at being able to adapt when that comes, the better you're going to be in the context of an actual game. Now again, what that's going to mean is that you're probably going to shoot the ball a little bit worse in practice because I would expect that if I'm really challenging you and throwing bad passes to you, it's going to throw off your rhythm a little bit. It's going to make everything A little more difficult, you're going to shoot the ball a little bit worse. But what does it mean when it comes to actual game transfer? Again, we want to train to become experts. Okay. I think that's the biggest key that you guys want to think about when it comes to training anything but especially shooting. What does the term expert actually mean when it comes to shooting the basketball? Those players who are experts in that are experts with. When it comes to functional movement variability? All of that means that when things get switched up a little bit in the context of a game, the defender contests one shot, they don't contest the next shot. The next time, they may have to lean a little bit. The next time, they can go straight up with the ball. The next time, they may have to shoot the ball a little bit off balance. If they're able to hit all those shots, all those different sorts of shots, and they're high in that functional movement variability, that is where you become an expert. Okay, So a novice is somebody who can only make those shots when the. When it's perfect, when it's a perfect catch and shoe or a perfect one drill, pull up, they can knock down the shot, but as soon as they have to lean a little bit, they. As soon as they're a little bit off balance, they can't hit the shot anymore. That's the difference between an expert and a novice when it comes to shooting the basketball. So we want to train to become experts. So that just means we want to add another level of difficulty to the shots that we shoot. So not every shot that we practice is going to be a game shot. So again, anytime you see me post on Instagram, there might be some drills you might say, wow, that's not a shot you never shoot in a game. Why are you working on that? Well, typically it's to work a different aspect of shooting so that when we get into the game and we've got to hit those game shots, we're more prepared to do so. Okay. Again, it's about training to become an expert. And when you do that, it's going to be a little more difficult in practice, you're going to miss more shots. But again, when we get to the context of a game, you've experienced having to hit different sorts of shots with different sorts of restraints, and so you're able to go in and be effective. So, again, hopefully that that made sense to you guys. I feel like I rambled a little bit there, but I tried to be as cohesive as I could with it. Essentially, the biggest Thing to remember is that you want to train to become an expert. And all that that means is that sometimes you want to add some, some additional constraints, some additional outside factors to your shooting workouts, whether that be a defender who's contesting you, which I've posted a lot on Instagram with contested shooting drills. If you guys go on Instagram and scroll, you'll see some stuff on that. If you go to like my, my stories that are highlighted, you'll see some contested shooting drills. I might even have some. I don't know if I have a YouTube video up, but at some point I'll get a YouTube video up talking about more about contest shooting. I do, I'll link that above, but that's one aspect. But also, you know, being able to add in different sorts of factors when it comes to like, okay, working on your balance, working on your shot pickup, working on your ability to hit shots when you have to twist a little bit. Okay, again, more stuff that I'm going to talk about. I'll post some clips in the podcast, but also on Instagram as well as you guys can see what I'm talking about. And so again, like end of the day, what does that mean? So that might mean that depending on who I'm working with, if I'm working with a really, really good shooter, chances are we might spend, you know, 75% of the shooting portion of our workout working on these kind of weird looking drills where they're just going to miss a lot of shots because I'm forcing them to do something that's really uncomfortable. And then maybe only 25% of our workout is spent actually drilling game shots. And a lot of times that's, that's like the reverse approach that a lot of players or trainers will take is okay, you know what, 75, 80, 85, 90% of the time we're working on game shots, 10% of the time we'll work on some aspect of shooting. Me, I would rather make my players better when it comes to being able to adapt and then put them in game situations as opposed to throwing it the opposite way. Okay. And that's ultimately what it comes down to, guys, is we want to train to become experts. And when you do that, that's where those results come and where you can become a great shooter. So gotta hope that guys, that helps you guys out. Like I said before the beginning of the video, guys, if you want to have my free elite shooter workout, that's gonna be linked in the description below. So check that out. There's gonna be some stuff that we talked about that we're gonna hit, like some footwork stuff, some balance stuff that will hit in that workout. So again, highly recommend you guys grab that completely free. Just click the link. I'll send that right to you. If you guys enjoyed this video, drop a like and you're on YouTube. Like I said, subscribe. And then if you guys don't Apple podcast, do me a favor, leave that review for me as well. I will talk to you guys soon. Peace.