Basketball Training Tips: The Power of Repetition Shooting

Like Learning How to Write

Remember when you first learned how to write? When you started, chances are you could barely make coherent looking letters. Your d’s might have looked like b’s, your u’s like v’s. With time, you started to be able to differentiate each letter, even making your uppercase letters distinct from your lowercase letters.

The more you practiced, the more it became second nature to write correct and fluid sentences. How did you get better at writing? You repeated, repeated and repeated how to do it over and over and over again.

While this is essential to learn any skill, this is especially true for shooting. You don’t start shooting for the first time and are all of a sudden able to hit three pointers. In fact, most younger players we see shooting deeper shots for the first time will airball or be way off. This is because they have not yet developed the strength and experience to be able to hit those shots yet.

Whether you’re just learning to shoot or have been for some time - if you want to be a great shooter, here’s why you need to add repetition shooting to your workout routine.

What is Repetition Shooting

Repetition is the act of repeating something. Repetition shooting isn't just the act of shooting, but the act of repeating your shot the same exact way. Any drill that requires you to shoot from the same spot doing the same motion multiple times in a row is a repetition shooting drill.

In the Swish Hoop Player App, we have Repetition shooting drills from 8 feet, 15 feet and three-point range. You can practice any move from anywhere on the court and consider yourself doing repetition shooting, so let’s talk about why it’s so important.

Builds Your Form

When you are repeating how to write each letter, you want to make sure these letters look the same every time. It’s the same thing with your shooting. You want to make sure that when you shoot, it is the same shot every time.

This consistency in shooting the ball the same way over time trains your body to do this subconsciously, so that you no longer have to think about it.

Do you still think about how you’re writing now? No, because you’ve written so much that it is now a habit. When your shooting correctly has become a subconscious habit, you’re opening up opportunities to expand your game by adding more range and new skills.

Foundation to Add Layers to Your Game

At some point, you start to be able to write in cursive, putting together long paragraphs and even essays. If you didn’t master how to write your letters, this would be awfully hard to do. Think of adding dribble moves and expanding your range the same way.

You need to master the mechanics of your jump shot so that adding more skills builds off of this one skill, not feel completely new. The habits you build in mastering your form from 8 feet translate to when you back up to 15 feet and then to the three-point line.

When you start shooting off the dribble and even adding a step back to your game, you still gather yourself into the same shooting position that you work on when doing the repetition shooting drill. If you don't work on mastering your form, it’s likely that when you do that step back, your form will be different from shot to shot and therefore be inconsistent.

No Secret to Becoming a Great Shooter

There’s really no secret as to how you can become a great shooter. You need to master your mechanics and practice. When you started by learning the letters, making sentences, writing paragraphs, and then essays, you were building more complex skills based off of the very first and most important skill you learned - writing letters.

It’s the same with shooting. How to shoot the ball properly is like learning the letters. Moving a little further back is like building sentences. Shooting off the dribble, hitting three pointers and doing dribble moves before your shots are like writing paragraphs and essays.

Practice Makes Progress

And you didn’t learn by practicing your handwriting one day a week. You practiced every day and repeated the same motion for each letter. Practice your shot every day and repeat the same form every single shot. Getting better at any skill is all about repetition, repetition, repetition.

I’ve been playing basketball for about 20 years and I still start every workout making 50-100 repetition shots from in close before moving on to other drills in my workout. It helps you to:

1. build confidence by seeing the ball go in the hoop
2. reinforce your form

By the time you get on with your workout, you are confident. That’s the power of repetition shooting.