Practicing and Teaching Shooting - Notes from The Inner Game of Tennis
For Division II basketball I was relatively unathletic. Most of the other guards in the league were quicker, faster, and more explosive than I was. My ball handling skills were mediocre, and I wasn’t a strong defender. My ticket into NCAA basketball was my ability to shoot from outside. Modern basketball analytics prove how valuable the three-point shot is, and there’s a shortage of players around the country who can make a high percentage of threes. Such shooters spread the defense, making room for other players to operate successfully, so they earn full scholarships and lots of playing time, so long as the rest of their game is tolerable.
Throughout my college career the equation was simple - if I shot well, I played, and if I didn’t shoot well, I sat on the bench. I envied teammates who could make up for shooting slumps by ramping up their defense, rebounding or play-making skills and thereby stay on the court. It was as if my friends had diversified portfolios. If one of their stocks fell, their whole game wouldn’t collapse, while my portfolio depended on shooting alone.
Shooting isn’t a skill you can improve by trying harder. In fact, trying harder can lead to what athletes call “pressing” - increased frustration and worry leading to a choppier, less rhythmic release, and more misses than ever.
I lost confidence in my shot midway through my college career, which led to two miserable seasons sitting on the bench feeling guilty for not earning my scholarship. I recovered during my senior season and became a successful specialist. I shot 44% from three, and 96% of my made field goals were three-pointers, one of the highest three point ratios in America.
After graduating I became a graduate assistant for the Regis U. team I’d played for. Because shooting had been my specialty, trying to teach shooting made perfect sense - but I underestimated how difficult this would be.
When I watched players shoot, I saw things that they needed to change, and I made various suggestions: “Release before the top,” “Stick your hand in the basket,” “More legs,” “Shoot it, don’t throw it,” “Don’t miss short.” These small affirmations had helped me during my senior season, but they didn’t often work when I tried to pass them on to others. My suggestions often seemed to make their shooting worse than ever, and I left workouts fearing I’d done more harm than good..
As I spent more time with players, I realized that sometimes saying less worked best. I came to understand that things that had helped me, whether physically or mentally, didn’t necessarily work for others. Rather than trying to force players to adopt my mental model of shooting, I had them do drills and exercises that could help them discover what worked best for them.
After reading Tim Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis, I’ve come to better understand what was happening. Gallwey writes:
“I too admit to overteaching as a new pro, but one day when I was in a relaxed mood, I began saying less and noticing more. To my surprise, errors that I saw but didn’t mention were correcting themselves without the student ever knowing he had made them. How were the changes happening? Though I found this interesting, it was a little hard on my ego, which didn’t quite see how it was going to get its due credit for the improvements being made. It was an even greater blow when I realized that sometimes my verbal instructions seemed to decrease the probability of the desired correction occurring.”
Gallwey found a new way to train his students, by focusing on the inner game, rather than on specific skills or movements. He makes a crucial point about how ineffectual language can be when teaching skill development:
“In the interest of being able to repeat that way of hitting the ball again or to pass it on to another, the person attempts to describe that stroke in language. But words can only represent actions, ideas and experiences. Language is not the action, and at best can only hint at the subtlety and complexity contained in the stroke. Although the instruction thus conceived can now be stored in the part of the mind that remembers language, it must be acknowledged that remembering the instruction is not the same as remembering the stroke itself.”
This must have been why my instructions often felt so ineffectual. In my mind there was an image, or a feeling, of what a smooth and rhythmic jump shot felt like. When I tried to put that image and feeling into language and then pass it on to players, they had no such reference point to the feeling itself. They looked tense and rigid as they shot, and they became frustrated with the results. Gallwey again:
“When the verbal instruction is passed on to another person who does not have in his bank of experience the action being described in memory, it lives in the mind totally disconnected from experience.”
Teaching people to shoot by telling them how must be something like trying to tell someone how to salsa dance. There’s a rhythm and movement that can only be known by seeing and then feeling. So how should teachers teach, and how should students learn new skills, or improve old ones?
Gallwey draws a useful distinction between Self 1 and self 2. Self 1 is the ego mind - our expectations, judgments, worries, fears and pride. Self 2, he argues, is the part of us that is intrinsically wise and skilled - the quiet confidence that rests beneath Self 1. Gallwey recommends that the way to learn and practice new skills is to focus on non-judgmental awareness, and let Self 2 take over.
Rather than interpreting language about how you’re supposed to shoot, a player should instead create a clear image of the outcome (a made shot), and then let the body do it. Gallwey writes:
“Changes may occur while you are merely observing your stroke nonjudgmentally, but if you feel further correction is needed, then ‘create an image of the desired form.’ Show yourself exactly what you want Self 2 to do. Give it a clear visual image, moving your racket slowly in the desired path, and let yourself watch it very closely. Then repeat the process, but this time feel exactly what it’s like to move your racket in this new manner.”
This is harder to accomplish than it sounds, and it takes a lot of practice. Most athletes have trained themselves to be hyper self-critical, and to try as hard as they can to achieve a desired result. Most coaches want to dump their knowledge onto players, and produce correct actions and better results.
Developing the “outer game” is trying to improve your jump shot, your ball handling, your endurance, etc… Developing the inner game is the practice of letting the ego quiet, and dropping into a state of relaxed concentration without judgment, so your body can learn and perform at its best.
Players: The next time you work on your shot, focus on clear, non-judgmental awareness, rather than external results. Experiment with letting your judgmental mind rest, and let your body shoot the ball. Rather than external corrections, like tightening in your elbow, or getting a wider base underneath you, create a clear image in your mind of yourself swishing the shot, and then let your body shoot.
Coaches: Rather than using language exclusively to teach, experiment with using imagery. Have your players watch you shoot, and then ask them to simply pay attention to their shots as they shoot. Substantial improvements can occur on their own.