Contemporary Form Shooting

Welcome to the Coach Dave Love Podcast with MBA shooting coach Dave Love and your host, Matt Robertson. Exploring the cutting edge of evidence-based shooting development in basketball today, from shooting form to skill acquisition to shot metrics. This is the Coach Dave Love Podcast. Welcome to the Coach Dave Love Podcast. I am your host, Matt Robertson. With me, as always, MBA shooting coach Dave Love. Dave, I didn't forget the intro. What's going on? Yeah, muscle memory kind of takes over, but we haven't done this in a while, and we should probably talk about that. But I need to start by saying I missed you. Hey, back at you buddy. Yeah, so yeah, update me what's going on? How long until the season begins for the comeback to some professional basketball? That the train camp is two weeks away. So the countdown is on. My body is almost ready. My jumper is almost ready. I feel pretty good, which is definitely the departure from where we were last touch base about five weeks ago or so. So that's where we are. The team of coaching is rumbling to playoffs. That's kind of getting started. And man, it's been a wild little run here. How about yourself? What's going on in your basketball world? What's going on? I had a really busy January where I did I did three days of clinics in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada through Edmonton Youth Basketball, which have been a great sponsor. And then connected with the executive director of Alberta basketball. And we're going to start to do some stuff together, which I'm very excited about. Then I had a little trip to Orlando to see one of my friends from from down there, which resulted in my first round of golf in a while. And it was exactly what you expect where like it I would hit some really good shots. I was very happy with. But then I also had a hole where I chip from both sides of the green because the first chip did not go well. Then similar cab experience the next day playing tennis. Then I had clinics in Ottawa, Canada and Toronto, Canada. And then I had three days at home and then I was traveling to work with the NBA team that I'm with this season. And that's like I can't talk about it a lot. But Matt, I love this group of people like they are. And I'm spending most of my time with the young assistant coaches, the player development coaches and the video guys. And they all just are open minded and want to get better as coaches. And so like there are things that we talk about that. And so I don't necessarily get or even believe in yet, but then like you can see, you can see the gears turning and they start to come around to oh yeah, wait a second, I don't have to do the same thing over and over again. And so I've been talking a lot about just adding variability and. It's been really, really fun. And I have seven questions. Keep with what you're talking about. The level of openness. Is this a usual thing or is this sort of like a special group in terms of the willingness to receive new information and kind of consider it. I feel like they're, they're a little bit unique in this way where with every team you'll get you'll get a few guys who are very open minded and just want to get better and can appreciate that. That I might have a skill set that is different from theirs that they can learn from me and I can also learn from them. But then you'll also get coaches that don't believe that they they necessarily need any help and and that that's really just dependent on the person that could be a young coach or that could be the older coach. And that those are all fine like cool. If you if you don't need support, great. I'm happy for you then, but I'll I'm here to support the people that do want it and unfortunately with this group, there isn't a single person that isn't open minded. There's there's some people that like they don't need my skills set because they're they're the offensive or defensive coordinator. And they're not in the weeds repairing a jump shot, but even though still those people are are curious and open minded and collaborative and it's just been wonderful. I love that you're just whisper in the woods ecological dynamics theory in the years and all times, right? That's the. Yeah, well, and ultimately that's that's kind of it as what I love is that I was where they are just a few years ago, where it's like, OK, everybody saying this is the direction that we need to go and I can see the validity in a lot of it, but I also have questions like it does this part doesn't seem to make sense and and some of the coaches are saying like I don't. I don't I don't agree with this this part of it like you can't just throw them out in a game and expect them to figure it out in a different way. I'm like, let's not what this is like I get that's how it's sometimes presented by the theory and by the papers that we want to keep it in the game dynamic, but that doesn't mean that it's that the practice of it is actually that way. And so let me show you how like we can keep elements of the game within the things that you were currently doing to to adjust the the environment and and not necessarily prescribe a single outcome, but guide exploration around that outcome in a game like setting and how game like well that depends on how good they are at the skill. It's so fun to just say like I've been there I know exactly how you feel I would I was there just a few years ago and I'm certainly not the expert now, but we've got a friend joining us again. Explain that. I have a two cats one of which keeps himself and is lovely and the other of which is an attention who are of the highest order. And if you're not paying attention to him, he will make his presence know and apologize that you just got flashed with a little backside action on the way upside about that. So yeah, okay, so super interesting and just in terms of adding variability in my own workout, Steve, I've been I've been getting to my own spots and knocking the ball out of my hands catching it and it just doing that little thing I look so stupid. So however, is a much more game like situation and for an established coach has been doing this who's been developing players for 25 years or 10 years or five years or whatever the number is. It's a weird thing to do however. Like you're like you're saying it is the best way to prepare for the game is to make things more game like on a regular basis and workout. You know, I just, Dave, I believe wholeheartedly in what you're doing. I love the able to not only share with the podcast with the audience with our, with our community, but also with these other like high level professional coaches. I think it's a really cool thing that you're able to have an impact there. Well, I think Chris Oliver said it really well in the last time that he came out with his podcast, which is like. I'm not moving in this direction. You're going to get left behind. And, and we're in a highly competitive work environment for obviously trying to win games, but then for the select few jobs that are available. And, and everybody's getting smarter about about how they do everything. And if you want to stay around, I feel like as Chris said, you've got to be moving in this direction. Otherwise, you're going to get left behind and it's not to say you need to be an expert. And then we're right at that hockey stick action of the, the exponential curve where it's, we're starting to, we're starting to really go here. And you've got, you've got plenty of time to catch up or even get ahead of the curve. I would have said, I was said five years ago that not very many people were exploring this and I had no idea. I feel like in five years, I've caught up and, and maybe even might, might be slightly ahead. And, and you can absolutely do the same, but you can't bury your head in the sand and say, no, I'll just keep doing what I've always done because it works. There might be better ways. It's the most fire the five most expensive words in business is we've always done it that way. That would be six words, actually, but so this is really good segue here Dave and I'm going to find it a promise. That kind of leads us to today's point. podcast because we have a little bit of explaining to do. It's been four or five weeks since our last episode came out. And part of the reason is because you've been at hard at work in learning mode. And for the coaches out there that are trying to catch up and this is fairly new whether it's in the last year or this is the first time you're hearing their voices, there is a time to work to be done and don't mistake it. It is work to do it. And so the learning piece you have to actually buckle in and do that. It's not enough to say, yeah, I'm really interested in then not do anything with that. You actually have to do the work and do the reading and watch the, you know, watch the videos and look into the creators and the people that are doing this kind of work. So Dave, the last four weeks we have been, you have had a crazy busy stretch your back in learning mode, things would be busy for me. So to the people, Dave and I are playing a little bit with the format of what this podcast is going to be. And we don't know what it's going to look like yet. You might hear from us two or three weeks at a time. But we'll do our best to keep pumping out a little bit of content here and there for you while maintaining our, your insane travel schedule and my insane home my schedule and everything else. But it is going to be a challenge, but we're committed to the people. Yeah, we don't, we don't want to put out fluff just for the sake of fluff. We've always tried to make what, what this podcast is purposeful. And, and so when we have something purposeful, then we're going to share it. And we're not going to, we're going to fall into the trap of like, all right, let's talk about like the five greatest jump shooters of all time and rank them accordingly and turn into that. That's, that's not, I have no interest in that. That was one of my suggestions, right? No. And feel like you talked about like I'm back in learning mode. There's a whole bunch of research around the shot metric stuff that I'm doing now to try and take that to the next level. And then I've got, I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks of research paper that will be accepted around the periodization of skill training. And then we're working on a, how do you, how do you periodize that training for a week shooter? differently than you would a, an average or a capable shooter. And then constantly as we go through that process, finding, oh, here's the next research paper. And so I'll be, I'll continue to share all those things. The shot metric book told you off, air, I'll tell the, the people, I think were a matter of days away. I almost, I almost want to discourage people for getting it because it's for like 30 times five, we'll call it 150 people in the world. And I'm probably going to give them copies like it's for NBA analytics people and assistant GMs. And if you're a basketball science nerd, then okay, this might be for you. If you're a basketball fan or a, I don't want to say the lower level, but just like a, a, a youth coach, it's not for you. Listening to the podcast, you'll get what you need. You don't need to read this book that will have formulas in it that make my head spin. So I will say just as somebody who knows you, the book is written in your voice, which I love. And there are some great stories in there that for the NBA nerds out there, there is some, there isn't content beyond just the math. So just to give yourself a little fairness, I've read the book maybe seven times at this point. And there's, there's some nuggets in there for whoever you are as long as you love the NBA. But you know, I understand what you're saying. All right, I changed my mind. Everybody go by the point comes. It's $150. And we're literally going to make dozens of dollars off of this. Yeah, big fan, big fan. Okay, Dave, let's take a quick break and then we'll get into the meat of the episode. We do have a point for kind of laying that out because this is a new era of the Coach Dave Love podcast. And we're going to talk about what that looks like. See after this. Hey, they're basketball fans. I'm NBA shooting coach Dave Love and I've got exciting news just for you. Introducing my exclusive free basketball shooting news letter is packed with insights and techniques straight from the hardwood. Have you ever wondered how NBA players improve their shots or how you could get to the next level, whether you're a college player, a coach or a budding youth player? My news letter brings all this and more directly to your inbox. Each addition is a deep dive into the world of basketball shooting. I'll share some of the tips and ideas that I use with my NBA clients tailored for every level of the game. But wait, there's more subscribers receive exclusive monthly discounts on my online products from training videos to personalize coaching sessions. You'll get it all for fraction of the price. And the best part of all is absolutely free to join. So what are you waiting for? Elevate your game and join a community of passionate players and coaches from around the globe, signing up as easy. Just visit coach Dave Love dot com. Hey, welcome back. So generally at this point in the episode, we put 24 up on the thought clock in my office and we executed after timeout or an ATO Dave. Not really anything important that we talked about for the first 10 minutes of this episode, 15 minutes of this episode. So I'm not going to make you do that. However, it is great to see you. Great to hear your voice. Dave, let's jump into the meat of the episode. What is your idea for today's episode? Give me a top. I want to kind of go back and say, okay, one of our more popular episodes is the form shooting drills, the three form shooting drills that I outlined. Isolation drill ABC slow to quick and kind of descriptions of those. Knowing how I evolved over the last year, even as we presented that episode, I was I was already kind of thinking. I'm going to be changing the way that I use these and and that's evolution has certainly happened over the last year. And so I was talking with one of my research partners who will be on the the podcast here eventually. And I and I said to him like something about contemporary form shooting. And and he said, oh, I like that. That's a good little phrase that that the adjustments to the form shooting drills and how I use them, why I use them. To get them to fit within sort of the ecological dynamics approach a little bit more. So I want to kind of outline how those have evolved over time. Would you like to give a little bit of an overview of ecological dynamics as kind of a baseline for why you're sort of changing the way you're doing what you're doing? Yeah. So ecological dynamics approach, we don't want to necessarily prescribe a certain ideal. Shooting form or action, like in a pick and roll that there is no one solution that applies. And that what we need to do as coaches is not prescribe the ideal and repeat it over and over and over again. Forcing the players to theoretically learn through repetition. But we want to adjust the environment to allow exploration of other solutions. And so shooting falls into this unique little niche where there are more optimal habits. And there's no one ideal that applies to everybody, but there are certainly habits that make things more effective and habits that make shooting for more challenging and less effective. And so we want to adjust the environment to guide towards exploring the more effective habits rather than prescribing them in the ecological dynamics approach. Okay, so you gave me the definition of the textbook. Let's talk about impracticality, what that looks like. So for a little average shooter, you're working on them with the ecological dynamics approach. What does that look like? Well, here, let me start by going through the three form shooting drills again. Cool. And and how I might have done them in the past so that people can see this is a little bit more prescriptive and explicit teaching. So isolation drills, a first drill where I'll have a player kind of hold the set point, which I believe is the most important position in shooting where most people make a mistake. They get out of position and they're fighting the physics of their own shot. And they have to make complicated moves to try and keep the ball online. Whereas if we can get to a more optimal set point, then we have the physics working for us. And we're able to make a more efficient movement. So the idea is hold that set point for three seconds with your guide hand beside the basketball. And in the past, I would have said I want your index finger right on the bottom of the basketball parallel to the target line and I still believe that's the middle of the sandbox when we go back to that analogy But the way that I approach it you'll see will be a little bit different the next form shooting drills What I call ABC where we now start at triple threat position and in the past I would prescribe I want the pointer finger of your shooting hand now on the top top of the ball pointed at the hoop lifting only the ball in our arms Removing our guide hand being at the set point that we just rehearsed in isolation drill shooting the ball with one hand from there Then the third version would have been or is slow to quick where we again started that triple threat position I would have said still hand on the top of the basketball I want you to lift the ball very slowly taking three seconds to get to your set point And then as soon as you get there removed your guide hand and flow through the set point accelerating out of it And so isolation drill was learning where the set point is the more optimal set point where it is ABC is learning how to find it from triple threat and slow to quick is learning how to find it without stopping in it So that's where they were all and I would have been very prescriptive about what the little tiny details within those those in the past For every player it should be done almost exactly the same depending on their physical limitations or whatever But a very kind of block practice approach to this kind of work is that would you say that? Not necessarily because even over the last few years I got better at introducing the variability so I wouldn't I would I would be moving them to different spots on the floor And I would be different distances and adding movement to it and so I would have had slightly variable practice as opposed to strictly block And that's this kind of goes back to that challenge of in shooting yeah we do kind of want to get to you know a repeatable motion But with the understanding that the game is not repeatable and and so balancing those two things is is the the challenge and so I still use those those three drills And quite a bit but in a completely different way than I would have and so let me start by just saying now with contemporary form shooting The point is not to learn to repeat the perfect motion the point of contemporary form shooting is to identify and attune to the feeling of the new motion and and to move away from the less effective movement pattern that you used to have or the bad habit that you used to have This is really interesting so you're trying to control the way the player not control but you're trying to introduce a way that is proper by using internal or sorry external cues how it feels as opposed to have your elbow in have your finger under the ball and a way you go Yeah so in the past I would say that let's start with isolation drill I want you to put the ball up above your eyes or want your index finger to be on the bottom of the ball and then have your guide hand beside the ball but not touching and hold that for three seconds and then lift and try and push through the middle of the ball and now I'll say do a player put the ball up high enough that you can control the ball with the one hand and then I'll add the constraint of you have to remove your guide hand which then forces the self organization of the shooting hand to where does it need to be I won't prescribe where it needs to be I'll let them kind of define that and then I might add in different little constraints that okay I want you to hold the ball is far away from your body as you possibly can so push the balls far in front okay if you lose control over the ball then you've gone too far but if you can have the ball in front of you and still be in control that's a workable solution and often that's the other side of the sandbox from the players that bring the ball back over top of their head and so I'm showing them how much wiggle room that they have and so the the constraint of taking the guide hand off the ball forces the organized self organization of the shooting hand but then I'll almost play with like differential learning to say like okay push the ball further in front okay bring this one back a little bit further feel like bring it over on to your to right shoulder put over on your your left where where does where do you feel like you can get the ball to spin purely and that almost has up being the cue that I give is okay from this position now we've got the one hand in control of the ball we've added the constraint make the ball spin purely super interesting however they do that if they can get the ball that's been purely they've made an efficient motion at the target and whether they came off their index finger or came out their middle finger which one is on the bottom I'm no longer really prescribing that the way that I used to so for an up to you it's so fascinating that the piece of data and research that you started with has really truly informed the way that you're coaching this is a really cool like so often a lot of academic work is just purely theory and academic and there is that the first club application to be found but sort of departed from the research and literature you've taken your research and it literally is the cue that you use that is very cool yeah and it I think it's such a great cue because it's an external cue that actually matters like and if you're not sure what we're talking about go back and listen to the episode on release quality which is all about the axis of rotation of a spinning basketball and why that matters and and so just by saying make the ball spin purely I'm giving an external cue that brings attention away from a certain part of their body but forces them to to coordinate the entire movement to get the most important result which is not fighting the physics get the ball in a simple motion pushing along the target line you can also read about it in the new hit book shot metrics my coach table of coming out to an Amazon near you soon thank you for the plug my pleasure I'm here I'm here to be right man all these all these these drills I in the past I would have I would have done them add nauseate like I would have done weeks well that maybe not weeks days of just isolation drill where I'm prescribing I want this exact movement to happen and repeating it over and over and over again with hardly any variability and now I'm adding variability right away where every shot comes from a different distance difference spot on the the floor and my goal within it is okay feel like that's the whole point feel what this movement feels like and as soon as you start to show that you're you're learning the feeling and getting good then I'm moving on to to ABC and challenging you to find that position now from the from triple threat so using ecological dynamics approach as sort of an umbrella is the difference you're learning piece is the main portion of ecological dynamics that has led to your change or help me understand the connect between what you're doing and that approach in a more simple manner as I am not an academic ask me again Matt I so I'm not thought as you're asking that and didn't pay enough attention to the question no problem so you're taught you've given us the sort of academic version of ecological dynamics approach you've given us how you're how you're currently using that can you describe the part of what you're doing that is the ecological dynamics approach is the differential learning is that the the point because I'm trying to understand what ecological the approach is from practical perspective it would be like the variability would be part of the very very small part probably the ecological dynamics approach the differential learning is is an idea that fits within that that model and then the fact that I don't do it stationary that as soon as possible I am adding movement and this is usually within 15 minutes of the of it on the first day of somebody rebuilding their shot I'll be adding movement to it and I'll be adding a pass to it and I'll be at it. to figure out how much can we keep this like the game. And so the game is variable. We need to have variability in there. The game has movement. We've got to try and get movement in there and I only take away the movement now if that's the only way that a player can get a habit right to discover the feeling. And as soon as they get the feeling then I'm adding more to it. And before I forget, because I think this will be really, really important, I am challenging myself now to completely move away, like entirely move away from these prescriptive drills, like the traditional forum shooting drills with younger players, that like going back to Chris Oliver's whole whole whole part only if you need to, I'm trying to keep the entire motion one piece with young players because they have a decade to figure it out. I don't need to decompose it so that they can learn an ideal. I can use the whole movement and use task constraints and use differential learning to guide exploration towards more effective patterns as they grow and get more experience. And what I think a lot of people do and I certainly did in the past is they break down those drills for the young people who aren't strong enough. And so they add the constraint of remove your guide hand when the power from the guide hand was necessary and so then the player ends up compensating in a different way because the decomposed drill was too challenging for their physical strength rather than just saying like, all right, right now you're nine or you're 11, you need the power from your guide hand, but just play with the next 20 shots really use your guide hand, like use it too much. Now see if you can get to like the guide hand comes off the basketball. Now over exaggerated, go back to the one where like and using differential learning in that way to guide exploration and as they get stronger, slowly introducing the idea like okay, you no longer need the strength of the second hand. So let's get comfortable with one variable at the target more so than the two variables away from the target. Just in case we have some listeners who are fairly new day just before we go to break, can you give just a very quick synopsis of task decomposition and what a decomposed drill looks like? Yeah, task decomposing, like I would argue now that isolation drill is a task decomposed drill that we've taken the entire movement and we've broken it up into pieces. And so this can go, you, the more you decompose a drill or a movement, the less game like you're making it. And so when you remove movement and do a drill stationary you're decomposing in a certain way. When you take the whole movement like in ABC and we break it up into two pieces, you can argue we're decomposing. I would argue that it's a constraint that I'm putting on the drill to a tune but I'm also very aware of the fact that I might need to do this a lot less and do I even need to do it at all. And then the extreme would be take away the rim and shoot it against the side of the backboard or worse, take away the rim and the basketball and imagine you've got a basketball on your hand and you're facing a wall and shooting the imaginary basketball at the imaginary hoop. You've now and broken it up into pieces and now we've got like what do you think the person is learning? There's no feedback being given and you're teaching the, what you think is the perfect movement breaking up into pieces and forcing the athlete to then have to put it all back together. Sorry, I'm starting to go on up here. This is great. I, when I was hoping you would reference this one time Dave sent me, angrily sent me an Instagram video of a child in triple-threat position with no ball going from triple-threat to set point and that was the entire drill, no ball. Just grind the no reps and you were just like, what are we doing? - He's learning the perfect shot pad. Well, number one that never occurs in a game. - Yeah. - Maybe on free throws and maybe an open three where you've got three seconds to cast at yourself and the defenders like, forget it, I can't get out there in time anyways. But like we're, and then you're given that player no fun, no enjoyment and no feedback to say did they find a solution that worked? Oh my God, then there's unfortunately a lot of those out there right now. And I've done them. Like not necessarily to that extreme, but I've made that mistake too. And I just keep, I'm gonna keep preaching for my soapbox. There is a better way. I know you feel like as a coach, you're accomplishing something by doing that. You're probably not and you might be doing more harm than good. - It is worth arguing that while isolation drill is technically a task decomposition drill, it is focused on the most important portion of the shot which maybe for some people is worth doing. - Yeah, and I would argue like if I'm gonna say, if I'm gonna argue why I still do it, I'm gonna say well, it's technically the beginning of the shot. So I haven't decomposed the entire shot. I've decomposed some of the lead up to that shot and still within that, I'm now doing that for 10 reps with a player rebuilding so that it's essentially acts as a multiple constraints to force them to find the feeling of a more optimal movement pattern. And so that's, and still I'm wondering, like do I need to do it this way? And the answer I'm moving towards is no, but I have my habits as a coach. It's hard to break our habits as well. And I think there is some value, but I can be moving on from it way faster than I have in the past. - One of the things Dave in watching you over the last year that differentiates you is you are constantly challenging what you've been doing, which is a really cool thing. Dave, let's take a quick break here. We're gonna come back with an ATO. I have one more question and then we'll kind of start to wrap up. - Hey, basketball fans, Coach Dave Love here with an exclusive offer just for you, my personalized video shot analysis. Imagine having an NBA shooting coach analyze your shooting form, just like I do for the pros. That's exactly what you'll get with my video shot analysis. Here's how it works. You send me a video of your shot and I'll break it down frame by frame. I'll pinpoint your strengths and identify the areas of improvement and give you tailored advice to take your shot to the next level. You'll receive a comprehensive analysis design just for you, whether you're a beginner or an aspiring pro, my feedback will help you shoot with confidence and precision. It isn't just feedback is a game changer with my video shot analysis. You're not just practicing, you're evolving and every single shot counts. Ready to transform your game? Visit coachdavelove.com/store to learn more and get started. That's coachdavelove.com/store and look for video shot analysis. All right, welcome back. Coach Dave, 24 up in the thought clock, first AKO of 2025. Dave, give us a short synopsis at something important that we talked about in the last segment. Contemporary form shooting is trying to take the reasons that we think that we're using form shooting drills and apply them into an ecological dynamics approach, whereas we add constraints to encourage exploration around a new movement pattern, as opposed to prescribing a certain idealized movement pattern. We got a good look. That was like fourth quarter kind of ATO. That's an important, really important. Can I redo that? Now, because what I'm trying not to-- I'm getting more comfortable with the textbook language. And I'm catching myself using it more. And now I worry I'm losing coaches. It's certainly players because they don't understand the textbook language. So now I want to see, can I do the same ATO in language? which that a 13 year old player might understand. - So we got a good look, but there was a shot clock malfunction, that blew the play down, run it back. - Okay, so contemporary form shooting, I want you to, this is harder than I thought it was gonna be. There's no shot clock on this. - It's okay, we're in the practice gym. - This is a scrimmage. - Contemporary form shooting, I want you to keep as many elements, as many things that happen in a game as you possibly can in your practice. And then rather than trying to chase perfect form, explore around better form by just giving yourself, how do I say constraints? - By adjusting different parts of your body to force you to do something a little bit differently. - Okay, that, you need to workshop that. That is not very good, but that's my starting point. - That's a starting point, we have a baseline. And that could be, it's, again, very cool. This is something you're working on. Dave, I do have a question in regards to this. When you're talking to your open-minded crew with the NBA team you're working with right now, what is the part of this they have the hardest time with? What is the part that they're like, ooh, okay, you've had me up to this point, but that is a bridge too far from you right now. - They feel like the, the adding the variability or applying it into a game-like setting means that they can't coach. - And that they have to let the game do the coaching and they're rightfully saying like, when I just give them a game-like setting to learn a new habit and they keep going back to their old habit. And I would say you're entirely right. So you just have the wrong definition of what you think this is. And oftentimes when I just say like, no, you can still give feedback and you can still guide towards like, guide towards more optimal habit. But just do it in a challenging and as game-like environment as you possibly can, don't strip it down to nothing just because you feel like you have to. - Okay. Thank you for sharing. Is there any part of this Dave that you're hoping you want to expand on before we start to wrap up the episode? Is there something you feel like we've missed in this discussion? - Yeah, within the, so within the form shooting drills, the contemporary form shooting drills, guiding towards a feeling, incorporating movement as much as we possibly can get them moving because a big part of shooting is learning how to stop the energy that we created just before the shot and get that working for us. In other words, big part of shooting is being able to be balanced in hard situations. So create a hard situation and incorporate form shooting within that hard situation, not in the ultra-simple situation. And then like constantly, I have my seven different layers and I'm constantly checking to see like, can I fit more of those in here? Can I get them making a reaction? Can I get them reacting to something that a defender is doing? Can I add a guided defense into this? That form shooting can occur off of a pick and roll with the ball handler making a read of how the defender fought through or went under the screen to where the shot is. I'm keeping that element of the game and then I do ABC at the end of it. And so I've got so much of what occurs in a game with a form shooting drill, that's contemporary form shooting. Don't do it stationary. - I also, two or three times in this episode and twice in our pre-show, you use the term or the phrase, don't fight the physics. And of course, I understand what you mean by that, but when you're talking about putting yourself in a challenging situation and creating balance, just as the baseline to your shot, gracious. I'm sorry. My cat is, this is his third time. Three strikes you wrote, buddy. Not fighting the physics, like if you are off balance in that first part of what you're talking about, you're fighting the physics because you're trying to make the ball go in a straight line while you are not going in the right direction. You're not going up and down, you're not creating positive power. As you go through the rest of that progression in that game-like piece, it becomes even more challenging to not fight the physics if you have bad habits. - Right. - So as you're going through that sort of progression, I'm looking at it through the lens of don't fight the physics on this one. And I really like the way you phrase that. And you can still teach as a coach, you can say, hey, here's what we're working on. We want to try and be balanced in this and get and not drift or float to our left because we're moving in the left. So in the past, I would have prescribed the solution. So I want you to get your feet wide and I want you to get and I want you to land with your feet back in the same spot. And now it's just like, here's the problem. I don't want you to be drifting left. Here's a situation where you might be drifting left, solve the problem. And how they do it, there might be multiple different ways that we solve it. And very often in a game, they're not going to solve it perfectly. They're going to solve it good enough. And so we've got to get good, or the players have to get good at getting good enough in hard environments, not getting, not dumbing down the math test so that they get 100%. But giving them a challenging test so that they learn. And not saying you have, okay, I'm just going to make the test one plus one, two plus two so they get 100%. But to say like, all right, I need you to learn this idea. And so figure out this problem, even if it results in you only getting a 65 this time. I also think that the layer of that is you're putting those math test problem in real world situations, which make them a little more relatable and translatable to what they're doing in a day to day life. Yeah, the players ask me all the time, especially on social media, because obviously young players, they don't have the comprehension of this. They see other people practicing. They see NBA players warming up for a game and think that's practice. And so they emulate that warm up as practice and then say, like, how come I shoot really well in practice and I don't shoot well in a game. I say, well, describe your practice environment. Like, what do you do at practice? Well, I just shoot and I get my own rebound and then I shoot another shot and I'm like, okay, so in your practice environment, you get to shoot at whatever speed is comfortable for you. You're not really moving quickly. Nobody is trying to stop you and there's no pressure to get a certain result. And then all of a sudden, and so you get away with little suboptimal habits, because that environment is so easy. And then you turn around and you play in a game where five people, and they might be more talented than you are trying to stop you. We almost had another cat appearance. They might be trying to stop you. You're cutting and moving as hard as you can. You don't know where you're going next. There's pressure in that moment. And you think that the habit that you built in the super easy environment is going to automatically just transfer to the super hard one. It doesn't. Oh, okay. Well, then they ask, well, so what do I do? You got to make your practice more like a game. Now in the ecological dynamics approach, the people that struggle with it will go like, well, if I do make a game like, then I'm going to go back to my old habit. Yeah. So I didn't say it needs to be exactly like a game. Just more keep as many of the elements that occur in a game in your practices you possibly can and increase the level of game representativeness as you get better at the skill. I don't think I think, as we talked about and then expected to transfer itself. I think about it all the time in my career, I've probably hit a hundred thousand threes in practice in games and in every gym situation or whatever the number is. I've probably only taken with a hard closeout. I probably only hit a thousand with a hard closeout. And so of course, that's a really big struggle for me because I just, that wasn't a part of my training every day. It was a lot of spot shooting. And so of course, when that comes to a really heavy he can test it close out, I'm gonna struggle in that because I really haven't spent all that much time working on it until my mid 30s, which is not an ideal time to be doing it. So I understand what you're saying and it makes sense when I think about skill progression in my own personal life and really cool to kind of see the way that you're teaching develop in that kind of way. Dave, this has been really interesting for me. I appreciate you saying that and then I just want to go back to Chris Oliver's whole, whole part only if you need to comment and say, okay, let's talk about the only if you need to. Well, if a player is struggling to make shots, then why do we break it up into a part because they need to? It doesn't do any good for a player that is shooting 50% from the free throw line and 18% from three to spend their time scrimmaging where they get one free throw or no free throws and one three point shot that they aren't getting enough of the whole that they need, which is working on their shootings. And so like we do need to break it up so that we get more time on task of the thing that's holding us back. But that doesn't mean that it has to be completely decomposed and finding that sweet spot. The challenge point as far as the functional and nominal task difficulty is part of it. But then the sweet spot of like, am I getting enough time on task of the thing that I struggle with in an environment that resembles a game as much as it possibly can? That sweet spot as well. Dave, I love it. Is there anything else you wanted to share before we wrap this up? That was excellent. Let's, we got it. Can't forget hammer action. So my hammer action, you describe hammer action because I can't believe that happened. 2025 baby. Okay, hammer action is segment of the podcast where we hammer home an actionable item from the episode for the coaches out there. Dave, what is your hammer action today? If you do form shooting drills, do them only so that you can feel a feeling and then make sure at the very least you're moving to different spots on the floor between each shot and ideally adding movement to each shot. It can just be a step. But add, add movement to get more gamer representatives into these decomposed form shooting drills. Oh, I don't prescribe. Sorry. Sorry, I'm sorry. We're out of routine and I was never a great partner on this anyway. No, you're telling it. Go for it. Shoot it now. I forgot what I was going to say. And then don't prescribe a particular add, figure out how to constrain the drills so that they explore around the thing that you want them to explore around as opposed to saying it has to be done this way. Awesome. Coach Dave, extra little pause. Thank you so much for your time today. It's always a pleasure to catch up Dave. I think there's some valuable stuff in here for the people out there, for the listeners. Thank you for sticking with us to the end. We appreciate the time. We appreciate how many of you have stuck around for this year plus of the experience. Coach Dave, if people have things they want to ask you, things they want to tell you experiences, things they've learned from the podcast, where can the people find you? Best ways right now are through my newsletter coach Dave love com or on Twitter slash X coach Dave love. I'm also on Instagram. You can hit me up there, but the first two are probably the best two right now. Awesome. As always, you can find me on link that at Matt Robertson on Twitter at Coach Maddie Robb. Please rate, review, subscribe, tell a friend that all really helps and you'll see us soon. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Coach Dave Love Podcast. To stay up to date with our future episodes, please remember to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform. 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