Remember how in a previous email we talked about the ball always going in the opposite direction of the force applied to the ball? I explained how if the hand is on the back of the ball, the ball will go forward, or flat. And if the hand is on the right side of the ball, the ball is go left.
Well, keep this part of it in mind. The ball isn’t smart. It doesn’t know what you “meant” to do, it only knows the force applied to it. It doesn’t know that part of the force was applied by the guide hand, and it certainly doesn’t think “I should ignore the guide hand”. It just goes.
So since we put the guide hand (I’ll also call it the non-shooting hand or NSH) on the side of the ball, if we push with that hand at all, we will be pushing the ball off line. I’ll say that a different way. Since a right hander has their guide hand on the left side of the ball, if it pushes at all it will push the ball to the right.
But if you are dialled in like a shooting coach, you’ve noticed that most young shooters use their guide hand at least a little. And they might miss a fair amount, but they don’t miss every shot to the right. In fact, they miss in all directions. So does that mean what I just said isn’t true?
Now we are starting to understand the relationship between the guide hand and the shooting hand.
Every young player starts shooting the ball with two hands because they lack the power to shoot with one hand, plus their hands are small and don’t control the ball well. As they grow and get stronger, they slowly evolve towards a one-handed shot, but it doesn’t happen in one day. So most players get 90% of the way to a one-handed shot, but never get 100% of the way there because the last 10% is so scary. Now they have the shooting hand mostly under the middle of the ball, but not quite FULLY under the middle. This means the ball will go left (assuming right handed shooter) if they shoot a one-handed shot. And that means they need to push with their guide hand to keep the ball on line.
So you’re are starting to see that guide hand issues aren’t always just about the guide hand. In fact, many times they are actually caused by the shooting hand being slightly out of position.
If a coach tries to fix a guide hand issue without addressing the shooting hand position first, they run the risk of the player exposing another bad habit and getting worse. We need to fix both habits.
Even when you get to the NBA level, these habits still happen. So I work on them with players. And in many cases, players make massive improvements because I’ve worked out a proven system of drills.
We relearn habits, and apply the new habits in progressively more challenging drills as the skills improve.
You are probably thinking something like “I wish I could get my hands on those drills so that I can make a serious improvement too. Well… YOU CAN!
