Originally published in Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter, Volume 4.
During the 2010 FIBA World Championships, many criticized Team USA’s skill level, especially the shooting of players not named Kevin Durant. A familiar theme of the last decade is to criticize the skill level and coaching, usually focused on fundamentals. Fundamental is typically synonymous with technical skills, especially shooting (although I feel that this short changes our concepts of fundamentals).
Ironically, over the last decade, young players have played more and more basketball, and more players have hired private coaches specifically to develop certain skills. To justify the private coaching, and the significant expense, coaches and trainers instruct more and break down skills more specifically.
Most assume that more instruction equals better skill execution, but is that the outcome that we have witnessed? There are many factors associated with skill development, but there is a simultaneous increase in instruction and the perceived lack of skill development.
When I was young, I do not remember any specific instructions until I went to a camp before sixth grade. That camp hurried through BEEF (Balance-Eyes-Elbow-Follow-through) and put us in shooting lines. It was not until 7th grade that I received individual shooting instruction, which was after I had won shooting contests in 5th and 6th grades and shot 80+% from the free throw line. Most 3rd graders know more specific instructions now!
According to the action-effect hypothesis (Prinz, 1997), more information is not necessarily a positive development. The hypothesis “proposes that actions are best planned and controlled by their intended effects.”
Breaking down the specifics of the skill does not improve performance. The effect says that players will shoot better when focused on the result of the action (making the shot) rather than each specific component. Parents and coaches often contradict this effect, as they tell a player to “bend his knees” or “follow-through” as he steps to the free throw line. This diverts his attention to the specific actions, not the effect, which is called the constrained-action hypothesis because the player “consciously attempts to control” the skill.
In 2003, the New Yorker published an article about the famous ballerina Suzanne Farrell who taught ballerinas in New York. “She emphasized that the dancers concentrate on the effect they want to create with movements rather than on the movements themselves.”
Imagine trying to control each movement of a shot: bending your knees, sitting your hips back, finding the right hand position, cocking the wrist, etc. First, it would take too long to shoot in a game, and second, it would lead to more mistakes.
If we do not want players to control each movement consciously, should we instruct in this manner? Should we teach each specific part of the shot? Would players shoot better if there was less explicit, conscious instruction and more implicit instruction through video, pictures and cue words (“shoot from a telephone booth” rather than “follow-through higher”)?
The action effect hypothesis argues for an emphasis on the effect. If a player misses short because he does not bend his knees, rather than telling him to bend his knees, you might come up with a cue word to designate the shot’s starting position. If the player needs to follow-through, maybe encourage the player to reach to the rim.
Most players need instruction. Few players watch someone else shoot and emulate the technique flawlessly. However, there should be a happy medium where an instructor or coach can reduce his explicit instructions and the piece-by-piece nature of the shot and focus more on the total shot and the result (which could be shooting the ball higher, shooting the ball so the apex is closer to the basket, etc, not just a made shot).