TYLER COSTON – FOUNDER OF SAVI PERFORMANCE ON IMPROVING YOUR SHOOTING & THE 10 SHOOTING MYTHS (REBROADCAST) – EPISODE 1134

Website – https://savi.tylercoston.com/

Email  – coachtylercoston@gmail.com

Twitter – @tylercoston

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Tyler Coston is the Founder of Savi Performance.  He is known as a thought leader in player development, curriculum creation and teaching methodology.  Tyler spent the last 13 years providing leadership as Director of Basketball Development for PGC Basketball. Tyler coached the women’s basketball team at Trinity Western University from 2005-2007, while simultaneously running a skills-development program that produced five Division I (USA) athletes. In 2007, he accepted a position as Assistant Coach at Portland State University. During his first year at Portland State, the Vikings won the Big Sky Conference with an overall record of 23-8. After Portland State captured the Big Sky Conference tournament, they went on to the NCAA Tournament where they lost to the eventual 2008 champions, the Kansas Jayhawks.

As a player Tyler led Lynden Christian High School to the Washington State Championship and earned first-team All-State honors. He went on to play university basketball at Trinity Western University, where he was named to the Canada West All-Rookie team. He transferred to the University of Alberta and led the Golden Bears to Canada West Gold, earning a spot in the national tournament in 2004.

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What We Discuss with Tyler Coston

• Tyler’s 10 Shooting Myths
  1. Ten toes to the rim
  2. Don’t dip the ball
  3. High platter
  4. Use your legs
  5. Shoot in close
  6. Ball in fingertips
  7. Freeze your finish
  8. Game speed
  9. Ball in triple threat – tight to your body
  10. Don’t watch the ball
• Leaving PGC to start Savi so he could have a bigger influence on the coaching profession
• “Can you generate power and shoot the ball in a straight line?”
• “You don’t fix a player’s shot, you discover a player’s shot”
• Why players and coaches shouldn’t focus on form
• Being in rhythm means great sequencing and easily generating power
• The only goal for a youth player is to be able to generate power on the basketball
• The difference between working with a high school player and a pro when it comes to shooting
• Everything on the catch should be about load
• Female players loading the ball at shoulder level
• The majority of what he says in a shooting workout is no or yes
• The Observe, Connect, Correct teaching method for shooting
• Helping players to “feel” their shot
• “I think honestly, most stationary shooting is an absolute colossal waste of time. It just doesn’t transfer.”
• “If you can get loaded and still get your shot off, you shoot it. If you can’t get loaded, you already know you’re not shooting it.”
• Tune, Train, Test
• “A test is the best way to try to imitate the pressure that you’re going to feel in a game. There has to be some stakes.”
• “If you can’t do it slow, you can’t do it.”
• “Training should be outside the pocket, both above and below.”
• “Your pocket grows by training outside the pocket.”
• “When a parent in the stands yells, use your legs at the free throw line, What they actually mean is, I really want you to make it and I don’t know how to help.”
• “I have rarely seen a player that can’t improve their shooting performance by improving their load.”
• “Most players aren’t willing to continue to consistently do the work without seeing the results.”
• Why most shooters who watch the ball in the air have better arc
• “Any player shooting under 60% from the free throw line should shoot under hand. Immediately.”
• “The greatest distance in the world is the distance between knowing and doing.”

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THANKS TYLER COSTON

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TRANSCRIPT FOR TYLER COSTON – FOUNDER OF SAVI PERFORMANCE ON IMPROVING YOUR SHOOTING & THE 10 SHOOTING MYTHS (REBROADCAST) – EPISODE 1134

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here tonight without my co-host Jason Sunkle, but I am pleased to be joined for the second time by Tyler Coston, now from Savi Performance. Tyler, welcome to the Hooped

[00:00:12] Tyler Coston: Hey, I appreciate it. You know, hopefully we can make the sequel better than the original.

That doesn’t happen often but I think we’re going for like a top gun sequel situation here.

[00:00:21] Mike Klinzing: I think so, man. We’re going to put this thing in IMAX and we’ll see what we can call. We’ll see. We’ll see what we come up with. See if we can’t pull a maverick out of our hat here. That’s good. Hey, want to start off by just talking a little bit about the transition that you’ve made in your professional career and just what you have in mind with Starting Savvy.

[00:00:39] Tyler Coston: I appreciate that. You know, it was honestly one of the biggest honors and growing experiences of my. Getting to direct camps for PGC basketball and then create the curriculum and train all of our directors and staff at PGC for many years. And it was beautiful because we got to build a coaching tree that impacted the game at pgc.

And I just felt a tug on my heart to transition a little bit from coaching athletes at. And training staff to really coaching coaches to revolutionize the way that the game is taught and played. And so I didn’t know exactly how to do it except that was a tug on my heart.

And over the past year of teaching coaches to be more Savi, to look through these four lenses of simplicity and adversity and defining their own victory and having an unshakable identity as, as I’ve done that I really just feel like it’s my mission now. It’s impact the game through building a vast coaching tree of coaches that teach the game in such a way that it’s a joy to play and that that players just can have a lifelong love affair at the game of basketball.

So yeah, that’s Savi. That’s me. And we’re just trying to impact the way that people do what they do.

[00:01:51] Mike Klinzing: All right. I want to ask you a question that is maybe kind of an oddball question, but it’s one that always interests me When you think about what you’ve started to build, What’s been the most interesting part of it?

Aside from the basketball, the consulting with coaches, all the things that are basketball related, just on the business side of it, maybe it’s building the website, maybe it’s the marketing. What’s the piece of it that you’ve maybe enjoyed more than you thought you would? That’s not directly basketball related, but that’s more related to building the actual business of Savi.

[00:02:26] Tyler Coston: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I’ll answer it three ways in the first way will be very brief. I’ve loved how much it has humbled me. You know when, when you aren’t the head coach of a team or the owner of the company, When the buck doesn’t stop with you, there’s, there’s always like a, a certain level of freedom and you believe that it’s actually easy, But, but when you, when you, when you own everything, you’re like, Oh my gosh, this is hard and there’s no one to turn to.

You just have to figure it out. So I love that it’s humbled me and stretch me. You know, first off I think, I think second is I have learned how much I have yet to learn and I’ve loved that as well. I love learning and this journey has forced me to grow and I love that about it.

And I think the last thing that it’s taught me is, if you’re not okay with 80%, don’t go start a business. You know, like if, if you can’t say, Okay, we got this 80% of the way there, good enough, then you’re never going to get anything done, especially when you’re starting from scratch. So I’ve learned to be okay with 80% when you’re trying to build something.

[00:03:39] Mike Klinzing: That’s really good advice. And I think it’s one that, especially if you want to grow that, if you are relying upon, hey, this has to be a hundred percent exactly what I envision and what I want it to be, it’s really hard to get there. And as you grow too, I think one of the things that I’ve talked to different people who have started businesses in all different walks of life is you have to be okay once you start to have somebody that works for you.

And they might only be 80% of what you want ’em to be, but maybe they bring an extra 20% of stuff that you never would’ve thought of. And that’s where it really gets interesting when you start to hire people and, and put people in positions and they bring their own personality and way of doing things that might be different from yours, but a lot of times they bring interesting ideas and just thoughts that maybe you didn’t have.

So it’s a challenge, as you said, when you’re the boss and you have to make those decisions. Kind of like going from an assistant coach to a head coach. Right. It’s the same idea. Absolutely. As an assistant coach. Man, it’s easy to sit in that second chair and have lots of suggestions and think, Oh, I’d do it this way.

Or How come he or she’s not doing it that way? And then once you sit in that chair you realize, oh yeah, there’s, It’s not just that one clear cut definition, it’s, there’s a whole bunch of nuance that goes into making these decisions because there’s a whole lot of things that are tugging you different directions.

So I completely get it. Those are really good answers and I think as you continue to go through the process, you’re going to find that there’s always, always new things to learn. I know with the podcast, we’re always just trying to figure out, Hey, how can we do things? Just a little bit better, or how can we reach out to more people?

Or how do we get more sponsors on the show? Or how can we just improve the audio just a teeny bit or whatever it might be. There’s always something that you can do to tweak to, to try to make it better. And if you love what you do, that’s ultimately what you end up doing is trying to, Trying to figure it out.

[00:05:27] Tyler Coston: Yes. Well said.

[00:05:30] Mike Klinzing: All right, let’s go into shooting, which is why we’re here to talk tonight, and we’re going to kind of use the 10 shooting myths that you’ve come up with to guide our discussion on how we can improve shooting. And if you look at shooting over the past 15 years, for sure, the level of shot making and shooting has definitely, I think, improved.

When you look at whether it’s high school players, whether you look at college, whether you look at the NBA, the shooting across the board has gotten better, and yet there’s still, I think a lot of misconceptions about what makes somebody a good shooter and how do you make a player. A good shooter, whether you’re a coach and you’re trying to, Hey, how do I get my team to shoot the ball better?

Whether you’re an individual player saying, Hey, how do I improve my shot? There’s things that I think are still being taught that are out there that maybe are the things that we need to let go of. So I’m just going to kind of randomly kind of jump off on your 10 your 10 things here. You’re 10 shooting this, and just grab a couple that really, I think we should dive into a little bit deeper.

So one of them is freeze your finish. So talk a little bit about what that means to you and then why you think that it’s a shooting myth that you should freeze your finish.

[00:06:41] Tyler Coston: Perfect. And I do this intentionally, Mike, and I’m going to zoom out quick and then zoom back in. And I do this intentionally because I think we as coaches need to do this and have a principle based approach to what we teach, what we believe, and how we execute. So if I zoom out on the principle right here, the principle of all 10 shooting myths is this form doesn’t matter nearly as much as coaches think it does. We coaches equate in their mind, and you and I have both been around thousands upon thousands of coaches, coaches equate in their mind good shooting with good form.

And my intent with attacking these 10 shooting myths is to help players and coaches unlearn things that they take as absolute facts that this form means you are a good shooter. The intent of shooting. It’s to be able to make shots in real games. That’s it. And so too many coaches think that function follows form like a subservient to it.

And my intent with these shooting this, which we will zoom into, is no, no, no. Form follows function. Function means can you generate power and shoot the ball in a straight line. That’s it. Nothing else matters. And so like when coaches or players say that’s an ugly shot it’s actually, it, it causes me to tend to dismiss them as a beginner coach or a beginner basketball mind.

And I’ll say one more thing, sorry. And then I’ll go, probably respond. Then we can dive into not freezing your finish. Nearly every player that I’ve trained, I’ve trained thousands of players in shooting and have seen significant, significant improvement in very short periods of time. In season, out of season, whatever the number one barrier to success that players have is the too much focus on form.

So most coaches, most shooting coaches, when they think they’re going to be a shot doctor, they’re going to fix someone’s shot, which is a misnomer in and of itself. You never fix someone’s shot. You discover their shot you mine for their shot. When coaches try to fix shots, they try to fix their form, and I believe that that is actually doing more harm than good because no players ever shot better.

In a game by focusing on their form and a focus on form actually leads to most deficiencies in generating power on a straight line. So that’s the, the why behind it. Before I dive into freezer finish, I didn’t know if you wanted to dig in on any of that stuff.

[00:09:36] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. So let’s dive into that because it’s interesting to me.

So my son is a high school junior and he’s a kid who’s always played basketball. He’s a kid who was not necessarily someone who worked at the game when he was younger. Loved going to practice, loved playing on the team, but was not a kid who was picking up the ball and going and shooting on his own and doing those kinds of things when he was younger and now he’s a junior.

And probably I’d guess two and a half, three years ago, he caught that bug and became a kid who wanted to work at the game. And I would say his shot is, I’m just going to use a polite term here and say it’s, it’s non-traditional. Okay. It’s not a, it’s not a shot where nobody’s going to put it in a textbook and say, Wow, that that kid is a coach’s son.

He shoots just like a textbook. That’s just not the way that he shoots the ball. And so when he started getting ready to work at it and put some time in, he and I spent probably, I don’t know, I would say we probably spent six weeks trying to tweak just what we talk, just what you talked about. Like, I’m going to try to fix his form and make his form a little bit better.

He puts the ball behind his head and he, at that time, he had his guide hand kind of all involved in his shot. And so the one thing we were able to quote unquote fix was we got his guide hand out of the shot. So he was shooting the ball. Straight just with his shooting hand. But the ball still, even to this day, is behind his head.

And what I looked at after, after four weeks of frustration from dad and from son, we just said, Hey, we’re doubling down on this version of your shot. Cuz we could spend who knows how long trying to do form shooting over and over and over again. And it’s, that’s just not the way you shoot. And at that point just wasn’t the way that he shot it.

And so it’s interesting to hear you say, What do we need to do? We need to generate power and we need to shoot the ball straight. And when I look at my son shot, he does both of those things and he’s still got a ways to go. He’s have to put more reps in and all those things. But where he was in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, he took.

Not shot, not made, but took one jump shot in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade as a player. And now we’ve gotten to the point where he can shoot the ball and it looks, again, not traditional, but the ball goes in the basket. So it’s interesting to hear you talk about some of those things because I experienced that myself, of somebody who, as a dad and also as a coach, that, okay, I’m going to try to fix this kid’s shot.

And it was frustrating for me and it was frustrating for him. And we really weren’t making a whole ton of progress. And so we just decided, hey, we have to figure out how to make progress a different way. So to your point, we can make shots in games, and that’s kind of what we’ve done is said, Okay, how can we go about doing what we do?

How can we work on your shot and do it within the confines of what you already do so we’re not having to completely break down your mechanics and make it look like the traditional, Hey, this is a textbook jump shot. It’s not. But we’re going to figure out a way to make it so that you can make shots in games.

So I, I hear exactly what you’re saying and I get the points that you’re making. And I’m interested as we go through each one of the myths to kind of talk about how those play into somebody who doesn’t have the traditional, Okay, wow. That’s the most beautiful jump shot I’ve ever seen. But yet they can still make shots.

[00:12:54] Tyler Coston: For sure.  And you know what’s interesting is when a coach says, Shoot in rhythm, What they’re actually saying is great sequence, like rhythm just means it looks like an easy ball, right? Right. Like you, you very efficiently generated power. The most efficient way to generate power is to have everything moving in sequence, like ball body moving up and down together when it looks like a hard ball or when it, you think like it’s an ugly shot, Really what all you’re saying is things are out of sequence.

You didn’t efficiently generate power. So of course the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And so like any sort of negative energy, like in your son’s case where you know he’s, he’s actually doing he’s dipping the ball behind his. It’s going to look a little bit funky because in reality it’s not the most efficient way to generate power, but it’s the way that his body has solved the problem to date, and, and what you said is what I would encourage every coach and every parent of a youth basketball player do, is do not teach form to youth players.

Do not do form shots with youth players. Don’t go do one handed shots with youth players. The only goal for a youth player is can they generate power on the basketball? That’s the biggest obstacle because what, a lot of times what we do, and don’t worry, we’re going to talk about the myth a lot of times, but these myths are all related to this.

We build the myths because we want a shot that looks traditional and goes in, starting in close to the basket. that’s the least valuable shot in the game of basketball. is shooting from three to five feet away from the rim. Okay. That’s the least the most valuable. Go ahead coach.

[00:14:38] Mike Klinzing: No you’re right. You’re a hundred percent right.

[00:14:39] Tyler Coston: Yeah. So why are we training that? I try to do as little as possible close to the rim. I think shooting close to the rim is an absolute waste because what we do at these young players is, okay, get your elbow under the basketball, get your hand placement. Just so get your feet just so right. Get, get the ball to a platter or a higher, a higher set point or pocket, whatever you want to call it.

All we’re doing is stealing their power, and they think that the goal of shooting is to have a shot that looks pretty or looks traditional. And so that’s what they focus on. And so their body finds all these other inefficient ways to generate power. Leaning back, piping your legs, twisting the body, two hands on the ball, whatever.

Because we’ve handicapped them with form, we’ve handicapped them to make them think that freezing your finish is the goal of a shot. Nah, freezing your finish isn’t the goal of a shot. Generating power on a straight line is the goal of your shot. And then once you get these reps like your son is building now, cuz based on your story is your son needs a lot more reps before he really even has enough knowledge of his body in his shot before we could even make tweaks.

Like, I mean that’s the biggest difference I found in working with high school players and pros. Like a pro knows their shot so well that you give them feedback and they can implement immediately. A high school player, and you found this with yourself, high school player, you give them feedback and they can’t do it.

You’re saying the same thing to ’em. Like, I hate training players that don’t know their shot. Cause all I do is say the same thing to ’em for an hour straight while chasing their rebounds. Like they just need, they need the reps, they can’t even implement yet. And I think that is a product of form being elevated over function.

[00:16:20] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think it’s, when you look at how you traditionally see a coach in a gym, whether it’s working with somebody one on one as a trainer or whether you’re looking at coaches, they’re always constantly talking about, Hey, I have to have form and I’ve have to make sure that my player is shooting the ball correctly.

And you look at, it’s interesting because I think you could go back in time, right? And the way that players shoot today, there’s many, many more players today who shoot again sort of that traditional textbook style of shooting. Not that there still aren’t variations, cuz there certainly are. But you go back and you look at the history of the game, you think about guys that had different types of shots.

You think about Larry Bird’s shot,

[00:17:04] Tyler Coston: Reggie Miller, you’re right.

[00:17:05] Mike Klinzing: You think about Magic Johnson’s Shot, you think about World B Free, you think about Jamal Wilkes, you think about all these different guys who had just ways that. No coach would ever sit down and go, Okay, we’re going to design your shot to look exactly like Larry Bird’s shot.

Or exactly like Reggie Miller’s shot. Like, We want you to shoot like Ray Allen. We don’t want you to shoot like Reggie Miller. And yet again, the results ultimately does the ball go in the basket, is what you’re really looking at? I think so. So much of what we do today is just focused on, we’ve have to get the shot to be perfect looking and sometimes forgetting that everybody goes about it a little bit differently.

I think that’s what you’re saying.

[00:17:42] Tyler Coston: Yeah, absolutely. So  if we zoom into freeze your finish, freezing one’s finish is, in my opinion, more of an evaluative tool, then a production of power or line. So an evaluative tool allows for, in most cases a coach, because very rarely for a shooter, in most cases, a coach to be able to basically point to a reason or evaluate why a shot missed short, flat.

Long left. Right, right. Or a way to evaluate balance. If you look at some of the best shooters in real games, especially when contested and shooting quickly off the move, it’s very rare that they’re actually going to freeze their finish. What’s more important is directing a player’s focus to what’s actually going to help ’em generate power More freezing one’s finish doesn’t generate power.

I think that freezing one’s finish is just an inefficient way to say shoot with positive energy. Positive energy means that our energy is going up and towards the rim with our entire. Right. It it doesn’t really, if you freeze your finish, but you have negative energy, meaning you’re rocking back to your heels you’re actually inefficient.

Whereas a lot of times allowing more freedom of movement and having a relaxed, kind of like a Steph Curry, a tray, young type of a finish that’s actually going to generate more power of the ball and have a much easier ball. I want all of players focus to be in one place prior to the catch or rather on the catch in another place throughout their shot.

And I don’t want their focus anywhere else in a game. And, and this will go down to like what I think would, would actually improve your sun shot the most. I haven’t seen him shoot, but I know that type of a shot, everything on the catch should be about load. L O A D should be about loading if we can’t load.

We will not generate power efficiently and everything else is broken and we’re playing catch up. Whether we’re shooting off the move, whether we’re shooting stationary, whether we’re shooting catch, or shooting off the dribble, we can simplify and make a shot repeatable if we hit the same load point every single time.

That’s, that’s the key to shooting. All of the inefficiencies come from not hitting that load point in sequence. And so we get out of sequence. So where is this load point? I would encourage every shooting coach, every parent, every player. You must video your shot at least once a week. And the only thing you’re looking for is where is your body ball and eyes when your hips are at their lowest point?

Where is your body ball and eyes when your hips are at the lowest point? So, Players that can’t generate power. And I would guess that your son is one of these because he generates power with a dip behind his head. Yep. Is most players are actually lifting the ball as their hips are still going down into load.

That’s two things, working in opposition. So what that’s telling me about your son is he’s out of sequence. The ball’s getting a little bit ahead of himself and my guess is for him, he’s generating his power as his hips start to go up. He’s actually generating his power from behind his head as his hips go up.

So that’s how he’s, he’s found the solution, right? Which inevitably is going to make it a little bit of a slower release, but if we can just get the ball going to its lowest point, what traditionally is called a dip, right? It’s, I just call it a load. What if we can get the ball going to its lowest point?

At the same time, our hips are their lowest point, but then everything else is going to be relaxed and we’re going to shoot an easy ball. If, if that’s all we focus on, on the catch, we’re going to be good from the moment we hit our load, which is, which is the first of three steps of the shop, from the moment we hit our load.

I want a player’s focus to only beyond their target. That’s it. They’re focused on this target. If they’re focusing on their follow through, that is taking focus away from their target. That’s why I think it’s a, it’s a hurtful myth. I never want a player to think about their follow. I want a player only to be thinking about their target.

And then on the third step when we’re actually firing the ball, when we’re shooting it, then I want it just to be on feel, feeling an easy ball. So, so that, that would be I know you probably have a lot of questions, responses to that, but that’s why I hate freeze your finish. It directs attention to something that’s formed in their body, pos body position when I want all of their focus to be on target.

[00:22:26] Mike Klinzing: Okay. So two things. First of all, I think the diagnosis of, when I think about my son’s shot, it’s a hundred percent spot on in terms of getting that sequence correct and making it so the shot becomes smoother and easier. And that goes back to something that you said earlier where it’s about the reps. And when we first started the process, the reps were disjointed and.

You could just see his bodies going all different kinds of directions, and therefore, as you said, you’re generating all that power from putting the ball behind your head. Mm-hmm. . And now as we’ve gotten more and more and more reps and we’ve got two and a half years worth of reps in almost every day now that shot is far, far smoother than what it was before.

It’s still, when I think about, okay, what makes it so that his shot from 15 feet now is pretty smooth, but when we step back out behind the three point line, now you go back to, it’s almost like you regress back years. Yes. Because you just can’t generate that same power with the same type of motion. And so to your point, and I think it’s a really good one, is you have to be able to have those reps in so that you start to get a feel for your own shot.

When you don’t have a feel for your own shot. I can give you directions. Like he’ll ask What? What do you see? And I’m always like, Well, Look, the balls going further back behind your head and when it goes further back behind your head, then you’re out of, I would say you’re out of rhythm because your legs are going one way and your ball is going the other way.

And it’s just your body parts are working against each other, but the more you shoot, and again, for him it’s at about a 15 foot range that he’s now got that motion down pretty well. He just hasn’t been able to extend that range. Like that’s the next, that’s the next phase. And being able to extend and, and get all those pieces of it that you’re talking about.

So I think that to me really resonated. And then the second thing that you said, and when it comes to freeze, your finishes, your shot, you want it to be about at the end, you want it to be about how it feels. And I think anybody who’s been a shooter knows what your shot feels like when it’s going in. Like there’s things, to your point, when I was shooting that, , I knew that if I was coming up short a lot, I knew what the adjustment was.

Mm-hmm. that I needed to make, and I could make that fairly quickly. Now that didn’t mean I always made it perfectly, but I knew kind of what I was doing because I could feel, okay, something’s off a little bit. I’m coming up short. Here’s what I need to do in order to make that shot, get back to where it needs to be.

And the only way you get that is by lots of reps, and as you said, by just developing a feel. Cause when somebody hasn’t shot the ball very much, you ask them, Hey, what did that feel like? Or mean they look at you so, Right. They just, yeah, they make something up or they just stare at you. Like, I, I don’t even know.

I don’t even know what I’m supposed to, what I’m supposed to say to that. Mm-hmm. . So I think it’s a, I think it’s a great point again to say that if you develop that feel now you can start to. Self-adjust or you can react to or take advantage of something that a coach might say to you.

[00:25:48] Tyler Coston: Absolutely. And for your son, for anyone listening, like when I work with a player on their shot, 90% of what we do is getting loaded.

Just getting loaded. 90% basketball’s a game of opposites. And it holds true for shooting as well. If we want to generate efficient power upwards on the ball, cause we’ve have to shoot it up, there are a lot of 10 footers out there. We need to go opposite first. We’ve have to load downwards and nearly every problem I’ve ever seen can be solved at what we call the load point where our feet, body and ball are at the load.

And we could spend an hour talking about it, but every shot is different. And the best shooting coaches I know that I’ve learned from assess each individual. And then we say, Okay, here’s one thing that we’ll try to do with our load point. And then let your natural and authentic mechanism go from there.

Your musculature, your joints, your limb length, your flexibility, like your natural, your, your dominant eye for targeting. Like let it go from there. And we put all of our braces on the load point and you know, I can give two or three of the most common things that I do at the load point to even it out.

But even with your son, I guarantee it if all of his focus on the catch was on loading. And then from there, letting it fly, it’s going to naturally generate more power. And when he doesn’t have to generate power otherwise other ways, like cocking it behind his head, he just won’t do it as much. Right. So, so yeah, I think that that that’s really of all the myths and there’s a couple more that I’d love to cherry pick on, but of all the, like, it just brings players focus to something different.

And the don’t dip myth, right, It actually removes the, especially for girls, like nearly every female player that I work with they tend to load at their shoulder height with the ball, and that’s what’s hindering their ability to generate power, right? We’re, if we’re lifting really, really heavy, It’s harder to shoulder press that weight than to clean that weight.

Right. We have, we have more power lower, and so with, especially with all the, the ladies that I work with, when we can actually teach, free them up to load, which is perceived as a dip by a lot of traditional coaches. When we, when I say forget the don’t dip and we allow them to dip, it’s unbelievable how we’re able to generate power and their, their shooting effectively from three, four feet behind the three point line.

[00:28:30] Mike Klinzing: It’s interesting that you say that because I don’t know that I’ve ever necessarily processed that with female players, but as you were saying that, I started picturing my own two daughters, and then I started picturing high school girls games that I’ve watched and the millions of travel girls basketball games that I’ve watched, and I think about how girls shoot and you’re, you’re almost, I mean, I’m just picturing again, the girl bringing the ball to her shoulder and then.

Taking that shot. Like, I don’t see, I can’t picture in my head very many girls that are loading that ball down by their waist level and taking that dip that you traditionally see more with guys. I can see, I can almost see this like, rhythmic girl stepping into the, stepping into her shot and boom, bringing that ball right to her shoulder.

Yep. And then, and then shooting it from there. So what’s the process when you’re working with a female player who has that habit? What do you, what’s, what are your talking points with trying to get a player to break that particular habit?

[00:29:31] Tyler Coston: Okay, I’m going to get there. But here is just the crazy thing.

Everyone in the world would recognize that WNBA players are stronger than high school female players. And to a t nearly every great shooter in the WNBA. Loads or what others would say is a dip. I mean, if we’re on video right now, I’ve got it queued up. I’ve got, I’ve got everybody from Sue Bird to Diana Taurasi.

I got everybody just loading, loading, loading. So it’s ludicrous to think that these stronger players would not need to generate power in this way, and yet a weaker player, right. Should be able to go from their shoulders. So that being said, now your question, what are, so what, what do I, what are teaching points?

Okay. The vast majority of what you would hear me say in a shooting workout, which I do love to do, but I won’t ever do a one off shooting workout. I will only work with someone if they’re committed to the process for a period of three months or more. I’m not going to mess around unless someone’s committed because you can’t really make a change otherwise you’re just throwing darts at a board, for sure.

The vast majority of what you’ll hear me say is this, Yes. No. Yes, no. That’s 90% of what you’re going to hear me say during a workout because they’re trying to discover the feeling of their authentic shot. Like I’ve, I’ve trained my eye and my lens to know if they’re shooting an easy ball in sequence. So, we’ll, here’s how we would start.

Okay? If I was working with your son with a high school girl, it doesn’t matter. It just matters. What are we going to hone in on? We’re going to do the same stuff with everybody. We’re going to go from 10 to 15 feet, and I’m just going to watch him shoot 10 to 15 shots, just going to observe saying nothing, Right? After they’re done, I’m going to ask ’em how it felt like.

Did that feel like an easy ball, Yes or no? Okay. What did it feel like when you made it okay? What did it feel like when you missed badly? Okay. And so I’m going to start to try to get some words that are associated with their feeling. So for the rest of their workout, when I coach them, I’m using their words, right?

So the phrase that I would use with coaches or shooting trainer, just observe, connect. Correct. You have to observe first. Okay? You have to observe first. Cause every shooter’s different. If you go on, if you go on with like, here is what we’re going to work on, and you’ve never worked that player before, like you’re, you’ve already messed up, right?

Then you have to connect whatever you’re going to tell them to what they feel. If you’re going to teach shooting in this discovery based way, okay? And then we’re going to correct. So my guess is with your son or, or one of these, one of these high school female players that’s sitting at their shoulder.

The solution is going to be the same for both of them. We’re going to improve their load position. So we’re going to stay at 10 to 12 to 15 feet, whatever, based on their age and stage. We’re not going to be close to the room, but we’re not going to be outside the three yet. And all we’re going to do is we are going to get them to catch the ball off the catch and go to load and freeze.

Right. And we’re going to get them to feel what a proper load position is. Proper meaning we have a still and tall posture. Proper meaning that their hips and ball are hitting the lowest point at the exact same time. Proper meaning that the ball’s closer and tighter to our body. Okay. That is just an athletic stance.

We all know it. Okay? And then once we get there and they freeze as they go, they shoot it, right? And so we’re going to shoot however many, 10 to 15 more shots where they actually have to pause at their load to feel it before they shoot it. They’re just working on their sequence, right? And during those 15 shots, the only thing that they’re going to hear me say is yes.

No, that’s it. That’s good. Feel that. Not it, try again. That’s it. So they’re, they’re just trying to discover their load position. So what we’re then, what we’re going to do is we’re going to build up and maybe we’ll do, and I’ve got a couple of different little prescriptive kind of like drills, but everything is about their load position.

There’s nothing about at this point we’re not working about hand placement. We’re not working on like how we’re lifting. I don’t care about where the ball goes to as the pocket or the set point. I don’t care about freezing your finish, nothing. We’re just working on load position. And so from there we might kind of branch out a little bit and we might, okay, go to load position off of some sort of a bounce.

Or we might go to load position off of some sort of a footwork. We might go to load position off of some sort of a pivot or it might go to load position off of some sort of movement. Or we might go to load position off of some sort of a rocking motion, whatever. But we’re just trying to get their body to discover how to load out of dynamic circumstances.

That’s the difference between how most trainers and coaches teach, shooting in practice versus a game. In practice, you stay in one spot doing the same thing over and over and over again with perfect passes from underneath the basket. That’s not what happens in the game. There’s speed, there’s pressure, there’s movement, there’s balances, all these other variables.

And that’s why most, why I think honestly, most stationary shooting is an absolute colossal waste of time. It just doesn’t transfer. We want to practice something that transfers to an actual game, so we’re going to try to imitate these scenarios of bad passes, strange angles weird body positions, different types of movements, but to then eliminate variables by loading.

And that’s what means to shoot in rhythm for us. Like if you can get loaded and still get your shot off, you shoot it. If you can’t get loaded, you already know you’re not shooting it. And so you don’t decide whether or not you’re shooting it. As you start to lift the basketball, you’ve decided whether or not you’re shooting it on your load.

Am I balanced and cannot get it off and not blocked. Okay. I talked for a long time there. I’m sure you have some thoughts.

[00:35:27] Mike Klinzing: Okay, so let me ask you this. This is, I think, an interesting one and it goes to one of the myths and what we can talk about. We’ve actually talked about our, probably already about five or six of ’em, right as we’ve gone, as we’ve gone through and talked.

But when I hear you talking about getting those shots with passes that aren’t coming from directly underneath the basket, which with passes that are not perfect, obviously anybody who’s played in a basketball game knows that that is true. You are not getting very many passes being spit out to you from under the basket, although you are getting more than you would have 15 or 20 years ago when that pass of somebody driving to the basket and kicking it back out to the three, that plate didn’t even exist 15 or 20 years ago.

So now every once in a while you might get one of those, but you don’t get very many and you don’t get very many passes that are thrown perfectly. That goes to somebody who is getting lots and lots of reps on a shooting machine versus somebody who is maybe getting less reps with out a shooting machine, maybe with somebody rebounding for them, or them throwing themselves, spinning the ball out to they’re, they’re running out and shooting from different angles and spinning the ball to themselves.

And thinking about, again, as a player, working, working on your game. And so, in your mind, how do you balance or how do you think of the value of getting a lot of reps on the shooting machine versus getting reps that are theoretically more game like? And obviously on a shooting machine you can make things mm-hmm.

far more game like by what kind of movements you put in. You know, you could have the thing feed you 50 shots in a row from the same spot and you’re just standing there. Or you can add movement and do all kinds of different things. But just talk a little bit about shooting machine. Non shooting machine.

[00:37:10] Tyler Coston: Yeah. You know, There’s a place and a time for everything. I think that the, the principle that I would try to communicate is quality over quantity. You know, when someone’s like, Yeah, I got up 2000 shots today. I’m like, chances are most of those weren’t very quality, honestly. And like, quality can be stationary if there’s intent to it, right?

Like, my intent is like, I’m going to get a bunch, I’m going to be stationary, I’m going to use the shooting machine, and every single time I, from wherever I catch the ball, I’m going to load check and fire, right? And then my next one I’m going to load and fire without any sort of a check, right? And then my next one, I’m going to load one, two step into it and fire.

Like, you can still be intentional, right? Where, where you have some variance and, and you’re intentional with what you’re working on using a shooting machine. Absolutely. You know, but I think that as often as possible when I’m training someone, We’re going to split our session up into three stages. Our tune, our train and our test, right?

Like everything that I’ve talked about to this point is all tune. We’re tuning up our engine. Our engine generates power. The more you drive a gas power car, right, the more the bolts loosen and things get out of alignment. You have to constantly tighten it and tune it. That’s what we’re doing there, right?

So we’re intentional with our tune. We tune everything we can on our load. You know, we, we haven’t talked about footprint yet. We haven’t talked about hand print yet. We haven’t talked about any of this stuff. Then train. Okay? What we train is we train gets and mindset. So now when we train, that’s be a little bit different.

The vast majority of training. I would love to actually have some sort of a read on the catch involved that would involve a defender, that would involve an action or a situation. Even if the situation is as simple as a one step slide down to the corner to space out on a drive, whatever. But let’s, let’s train something game-like, because a lot of times while players don’t make shots in real games is because they haven’t created a moment for the moment, right?

They, they haven’t actually trained how they want to think, feel their mindset of, of confidence, of commitment to they’re shooting before they catch the basketball. So we’re training our mindset as much as we’re training a skill set, right? And then we always want to. And a test is really the best way.

Like, I don’t believe in training game speed. A test is the best way to try to imitate the pressure that you’re going to feel in a game. There has to be some stakes. There has to be something on it, whether it’s just for a personal record, your name’s going up on a board. There’s a consequence if you don’t hit a certain benchmark, whatever.

And it’s a way for you to try to beat you yesterday. So you give a little bit more focus, a little bit more energy, a little bit more whatever to the training. So like, I think there’s, there’s stages to a training session as well. That could be done with without a shooting machine. It’s not about the shooting machine, it’s about having intent.

[00:40:07] Mike Klinzing: So what I hear you saying, and I think this is to me, one of the most critical pieces of it, is that whatever it is that you’re doing, you have to be tracking it. Whether you’re shooting out a machine and the machine is tracking for you, or whether you’re shooting on your own and you’re keeping tracking your head and then writing it down, or whether you have a trainer or a coach who’s.

Tracking for the player. To me, that seems like a critical piece of one, if I’m trying to reach a particular benchmark, so I’m working on a particular drill and I’m like, I want to shoot 70%, then there’s pressure on me to be able to make X number of shots to make sure that I’m going to get 70%, or I need to make 85 shots today and I want to try to do it in the least amount of attempts that I possibly can.

So then maybe my record is 140 and then I’m trying to get to the next day. I’m trying to get to 139 and I know what my personal best is. So to me that’s always been a critical piece of improving at anything. But, but clearly with shooting, if you’re just going out and you’re shooting. You can I test it all you want?

But let’s face it, our I test usually is very accurate, right? So you have to be, you have to be writing things down or keeping track of it. What again, on a shooting machine or however it is that you’re, you’re going about tracking it because that’s what you’re saying. And I know one of the myths that you have is game speed, is there has to be, there has to be stakes when you’re shooting the ball because that’s what puts game like pressure on it.

As opposed to, I think when people hear game speed, I think what they think is somebody running 9 million miles an hour into their shot. At least that’s what, that’s what, that’s the first thing, honestly, that pops into my head. Mm-hmm. , when someone says game speed is like, I’m doing a VCU into the lane and then I’m popping out off the screen, I’m going as fast as I possibly can and then I’m taking the shot.

That’s what I picture when I picture game speed. So talk a little bit about that aspect of, as opposed to the stakes aspect of it, which is kind of why I think you were describing.

[00:42:01] Tyler Coston: Yeah. Yep. So when training. I actually think very few, if any of your reps should be at game speed. If we’re going to be literal they should be much slower than game speed If we’re trying to actually tune something, like we’re trying to tune our load point or we’re trying to tune our footprint, or we’re trying to tune our posture.

If you can’t do it slow, you can’t do it. And so there’s incredible value to doing things in training sessions more slowly or breaking them down into their parts. Absolutely. So that’s, that’s a distinction between game speed, but there’s also a time to train in a challenge way or in an adverse way where it would actually be much more difficult.

Game speed is like a difficulty thing, I think, right? Where it’s like, okay, we’re going to we’re going to throw a defender out here that’s flying at you and trying to block every single shot. What that actually is doing is forcing you to shoot faster than you would be comfortable doing. We’re going to add some movement or add some stakes, right?

So like, I think we want to actually train outside the pocket. The pocket is what we want to constrain a player to be able to do within a game, but training should be outside the pocket, both above and below. And so I think that that’s kind of the myth is like, let’s try to imitate a game. Completely disagree.

I think we actually want to train well outside the pocket and train range then constrain ourselves to the middle of the pocket in games. All right, So give me

[00:43:37] Mike Klinzing: All right, So give me that. I understand exactly what you’re saying when you say, Below the pocket and above the pocket. But just dive into that a little bit deeper.

I think you’ve explained both concepts but just lay it out. Yeah. Step by step though, what those two things actually mean.

[00:43:51] Tyler Coston: Perfect. One of the things that your son should do below the pocket, or much slower than game speed not something that would be identical to a game, is he should do rockers from about 10 to 12 feet.

A rocker where he is going to get to his load position, everything low loaded. We don’t need a deep squat, just knees kind of broken, and he’s going to have the ball around his belly button. as tight the body as we can. He’s going to rock two times from his heels to his toes. He wants to keep his posture still.

He wants to primarily just rock on his ankles and his knees and he wants to stay balanced. As he rocks onto his toes for the third time as he feels his toes dig into the hardwood or the pavement or wherever he’s shooting. As his toes dig into the pavement, he wants to feel the ball coming off his fingertips as his toes dig into the pavement, wants to feel the ball come off his fingertips.

Now this rocker is training below the pocket. It’s slower. It’s not very game like, but it’s tuning his sequence. What it’s actually going to do is it’s going to eliminate his ability to cock the ball back behind his head because he doesn’t have time. Rocking from your heels to your toes is so quick that it doesn’t have time for anything but a straight line movement up and then out to the rim.

So that would be train below the pocket. It’s something that I would love for your son to do and you can, you can text me if you want the video of rockers. Train it above the pocket for your son would also generate similar outcomes of eliminating the cock behind his head because he doesn’t have time.

We would put a defender straddling the free throw line. We would put your son at the top of the key. We’d have a passer. And a rebounder pass is coming from the wing. Right? As soon as the ball leaves the passer’s hands, the defender straddling the free throw line is blocking his. Is blocking a shot your son cannot dribble and cannot fake and must shoot it.

Now, that is probably a shot We’d never want your son to actually take in a real game, . But as a training mechanism, it’s actually going to force him to get the ball off uncomfortably fast, faster than game speed. Like that’s not game speed. Because if you ever had to shoot that fast real game, he should just pass it, right?

So it’s training above the pocket and by training that range above and below the pocket, his pocket or what he can execute with success, with an acceptable amount of success in a game, his pocket progresses. His pocket grows by training outside the pocket.

[00:46:16] Mike Klinzing: That’s well said, and I think that it clarified what I understood it to be, but I just wanted to make sure that everybody in the audience,

[00:46:22] Tyler Coston: That’s why you’re a great, that’s why a great interviewer like you recognize, Okay, we need to simplify this a little bit more.

So that was really good. Thank you.

[00:46:28] Mike Klinzing: Well, thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah, no, I think it, I think that was a really good explanation of what you can do that is. something that is slower than what you do in a game and something that you do that’s faster in a game. And then that allows you, when you come to the middle point where you’re actually going to shoot it.

And I love the point that you just made there where you said, Hey, he’s probably never going to shoot that shot in a game. That’s, that should be a situation where you pass. But in training situations, you can put them somebody in an uncomfortable position and that can allow them to improve in in many different ways.

All right. Next myth I want to talk about, and I know we’ve talked about it already. But the reason why I want to ask it is because if you sit in the stands at any game, there’s probably two things that you hear people yell the most. The first is just shoot it. Yeah. So again, depending on the level now, the younger you go, the more you hear, shoot it.

But the older you get, one of the things that you hear most often being yelled from the stands, especially when someone’s at the free throw line, is use your legs. Use your legs. I knew you were going to that one. Now we’ve talked about use your legs, and we’ve talked about the load point, and we’ve talked about all the things I think that already kind of cover this, but just because.

I know as a coach, I’ve probably said it, I know I’ve heard parents around me in stands. Say it. I know. I’ve heard it yelled from the bleachers all over the place. Use your legs. So let’s break it down this way. What do people mean if they mean anything when they say that? And then what would be a better way to phrase, Use your legs.

If I’m a dad and I want my kid to use their legs, what’s a better thing that I can say to ’em while I’m working with them? Hopefully not while they’re actually shooting free throws in the game. Because if I’m yelling something to ’em, I’m probably not helping ’em at that point. But if I want to work with my kid, or I’m a coach, I want to work with my player, and I think they need to have more legs in their shot or use their legs, what does that actually mean?

And what can I, What advice can I really give ’em that can help?

[00:48:18] Tyler Coston: Well, in my opinion, when a parent in the stands sounds, use your legs at the free throw line, What they actually mean. I really want you to make it and I don’t know how to help .

[00:48:28] Mike Klinzing: That’s right. Exactly. That’s perfect.

[00:48:31] Tyler Coston: But I think, how I’m interpreting that as like a coaching technique is you want a deep knee bend, like to really get into a deep squat position, and the lower you squat your hits down, the more power you’re going to get.

That’s the assumption that I associate with, use your legs. Oh, you don’t have, you’re missing short. You obviously didn’t squat low enough, or you didn’t push hard enough with your legs. So that’s the myth. And the reason I believe that it’s a myth is because you don’t actually generate speed from a squat position.

And speed equals power in shooting, not how much weight you can move. So when you think about trying to move quickly, Like, if you think about in tennis, you think about a tennis player that is returning to serve. They’re not in a deep squat position, right? They’re just in like I call it having your knees just broken, right?

They’re just broken a little bit. It’s how you might like skip rope quickly. Like you’re like, that’s the position. When you think about any sort of a, a speed movement, it’s never done from a deep squat, even like defense. Like, that’s why I also really dislike like get low on defense. No, no. Like if you’re in a deep, low, low position, you’re actually slow.

You might be strong, but you’re slow. Like we actually want to be in our most athletic position. And so if you look at the players that can generate power from very, very deep, they’re not actually shooting what is a historic jump shot where you’re elevating as high as you can, and then as a second part they’re generating power by a smooth, continuous motion. And most power for shooting from distance or shooting from behind the three point line is actually generated by your ankles and your wrists. So what a better thing to correct afterwards would be use your ankles in wrists, and generate more speed.

The deeper you squat and the more you use your legs, the more variables you’re entering into your shot, the more time and things that can go wrong, which is the same thing with your son. And by long term, it’d be good for him to try to eliminate some of that backwards, dip up the ball. He’s just introducing more variables into the shot, more things that can go wrong.

When he feels tired or under pressure, he has to hit his sequence perfect. In order for him to generate power effectively on the ball. And so the more you use your legs during a deep squat, the harder it is to hit your perfect sequence.

[00:51:11] Mike Klinzing: That’s a really good point about the variables in your shot. And I think that’s one of the things that when I’m talking to players about shooting, you try to get them to do things that are repeatable and repeatable in an easy fashion.

And the more things, the more movement you have, the more things going on. The more, again, I guess your words out of sequence, which I like. That makes your shot that much more difficult to become repeatable. Mm-hmm. . And look, you can make a shot that looks nontraditional. You can make it repeatable. But sometimes it takes more reps.

It takes more effort than it would with a more traditional shot in the way that somebody’s loading the ball and making sure that they’re getting themselves into the proper position. Having the proper sequence. Now you’re able to do that and repeat it, as you said, when you’re tired, when you’re fatigued, when you’re under pressure, all those little variables that can come out, the less movement you have in your.

The better. So I like the idea of wrist and ankles. I don’t think anybody’s going to start yelling that. I’m pretty sure there’s still, I’m pretty sure they’re going to keep yelling, Use your, use your legs.

[00:52:23] Tyler Coston: But maybe now I can lean, it’s going to be a little bit more authentic and be like,

[00:52:26] Mike Klinzing: Please make it, just make the shot.

Right, Exactly. Exactly. That, that, that would be honest. Right. That would be honest. That’s, that’s what, that’s what dad’s what dad really wants to have happen. Just make that shot. I don’t care if you’re throwing it in the basket. Let’s, let’s shoot at Rick Barry style, whatever.

[00:52:41] Tyler Coston: Let’s just get that thing.

Okay. We, we need to come back to the Rick Barry style at the end, if we may. But I want to give you anyone listening cause like simplicity wins. Like, you don’t need like all these, you don’t need all these implements, you don’t need all these crazy drills. You don’t whatever. Like can you just simplify your shot and get your load position right.

And then there’s some little things from there. But like, I have rarely seen a player that can’t improve their shooting performance by improving their load. Like we all talk about fight for faster feet, catch shot radio, it’s all load position. That’s all it is. Right? Right. But can you get there under duress?

So for, use your legs to fight against, use your legs and if you have a player, cause there are players, they get way too low with their, with their knee. So I would do, I would just go, I would go three drops and three drops. Again, like I really like our tuning portion to be somewhere between 15 to 18 feet.

And then when a player shows that they can generate power, which it sounds like that’s where your son is, then I would start to actually tune them outside the three point line. And once they can generate power from there, I’d actually tuned them outside the four point line or the NBA three point line.

Because all we’re trying to do is efficiently generate power and more and more and more power. So three drops to you. This, I put him 15 to 18 feet. You can try this with him. I’d love your feedback. I’d love you to send me video of it. Absolutely. You got me fired up right now about what we can do with your shooting in the next two days.

There we go. He gets to his load. And three times he’s going to just kind of hop onto his toes, like if he was skipping rope speed, skipping, right. Hop on and come right back to his load position. 1, 2, 3, just three drops. Right? He’s not going lower, lower and lower. He’s hitting his load position each time just off little hops.

Think of these as what’s called as a hop catch or an airborne receiver. We’re both your hitting the ground at the same time, you’re just receiving the ball three times in a row, but the ball stays in your hands on the third load. On the third drop, he’s dropping and going right up into a shot. What we’re doing here is we’re teaching our body how to generate power without a deep knee end.

We’re training our body how to actually use that elastic force from like how you would kind of hop to jump to generate that elastic quick force and put it right onto the basketball. I would do that with him for 10 to 15 reps doing the same thing. Yes, No, yes. No. And just direct his focus to one thing.

[00:55:06] Mike Klinzing: That’s good. And I think that it’s funny because a lot of the versions of some of the things that you’ve been talking about are things that at various points that we’ve tried, we’ve attempted, we’ve done some variations of it. And it’s just a matter of, again, I think one of the things, this has always been something that me as a coach, I’m always like, I’m going to try this.

And we try it and then I’m like, Oh, what about this? Let’s try, let’s try this over here. I think you said simplicity, Simplicity wins. And sometimes I get caught up in, Oh, let’s try this. That’d be cool. Let’s try that. And sometimes we don’t always stick with it as long as we should in order to be able to make it work.

And it’s funny because what honestly has to this point generated, I’d say the most improvement is just reps and talking through it and that feel piece of it, which that’s, that’s a hard thing to. Be able to, I think as a coach it’s a hard thing to be able to teach because it does require that constant conversation.

Obviously I have an advantage with my son cuz I can have a conversation with him all the time, right? And so that makes it a lot easier to be able to talk about, Hey, how’d that feel or what, what’s going on today with your shot? Or how’s that three pointer feeling today versus how it felt yesterday? And why do you think you struggled today?

And those kinds of questions that you can talk about and then have a dialogue and then you can come back and, and try to put those, put those pieces in place. But I like that idea of being able to hit that load 0.3 times and, and getting to that spot where, okay, here’s where the ball needs to be now, how do we get it up into that shooting position as efficiently as possible?

And then start to move the ball from back over the top of the head or behind the head and starting to move it forward as much as possible. And then that’s also going to make his release point a little bit higher. And there’s a whole bunch of advantages that go along with being able to, being able to fix that.

I think. Really good advice that you’re sharing there.

[00:56:58] Tyler Coston: Nice. And you know, I threw this out. This is why I somebody did want to work with me on shooting, which I’m very I don’t do it very often anymore. I need like a three month commitment or we’re not doing this thing. And shooting more than any other skill in basketball obeys the law of compound interest.

So I ask players this question all the time, Would you rather have a million dollar check right now? Or one penny doubled daily for 30 days? Right. And you’ve heard this one before. Yeah, for sure. Players haven’t, right? And they’re like giving the million man . And then I walk ’em through it and how a penny doubled every day for 30 days will actually result on day 30 over 5 million.

And like what? But what’s crazy is after like 26, 27 days, it’s still only a couple hundred bucks. Right. If you have, if, if the million dollar person’s laughing at the penny person after 27 days, but can you stay consistent? because that breakthrough’s going to happen at some point if you can just go through the pain of not seeing any results for a significant period of time, and then compound interest kicks in and it just blows up.

And I mean, I saw that in my own shooting career and in the thousands of other players that I’ve worked with and the hundreds of other players that I’ve worked with over years. Just most players aren’t willing to continue to consistently do the work without seeing the results.

[00:58:26] Mike Klinzing: It’s a long game.

That’s the words that I always use with my son. I’m like it’s a long game. It was a long game when. You started putting in work three years ago and it’s a long game to when you’re a sophomore. It’s a long game to now when you’re going to be a junior. It’s a long game to your senior year. It’s a long game to next season’s, a next season’s AAU season.

And so it’s just all those things that it may not happen today and you may not feel any different than you did yesterday, but I guarantee what you looked like three months ago is nothing like what you look today. Cause it’s those incremental gains. And as you said, a lot of that payoff comes. At the very end when you’ve put in all that time and it’s just work built upon work.

And I think any, But look, anybody who’s become a great shooter, you, you understand the amount of time that you have to put in shooting the ball. Like it doesn’t, it’s not an accident. Mm-hmm. , I don’t know if I told you this story and I’ve told that on the podcast before, but I’m going to tell it cause I think you’re going to, I think you’re going to enjoy it.

So there was a guy that, when I played at Kent State, there’s a guy who was From Ohio. His name’s Dave Jamerson. And when I played against him, I was, I think, I think it was my sophomore year, maybe he was a senior and we were playing him at our place and he put up, I think he had. I want to say he had 56 points maybe against me, with me, draped all over him.

But anyway, this guy, just unbelievable shooter, he ended up being drafted by the rockets. He was a 14th pick in the draft and had some knee problems prior to in college that he had a torn, had it repaired. And then when he got to the nba, he just had some, had some knee issues.

And if he was playing it, today’s game probably would’ve been able to stick around despite despite the knee problems. But anyway, when Dave was at ou, this was a story that was relayed to me by TK Griffith, who’s a high school coach here at Archbishop Hoban in Akron. And so there was a guy named Steve Barnes who also played at OU.

And one time Steve was walking through the gym and Jameson was in there shooting. And Steve, the story goes, Steve, stand there watching. Dave shoot, and he’s just banging home shot after shot after shot after shot. Dave takes a break and walks over and Steve says to him, Dave, man what, what do I have to do to what do I have to do to shoot like you, man?

You’re unbelievable. I want to shoot like you do. And Dave turned to him and said, You’re a million shots behind, dude. A million a, a million shots behind. And it’s, I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot of obviously detail that you and I have already talked about tonight that goes into that, but the reality is, it’s true. I mean, if you’re going to put up, if you’re going to put up way more shots than other people, . That’s how you get to be. That’s how you get to be a great shooter. And again, the more shots you put up, the more you get a feel for your own shot. And the more you tweak it and the better it gets, and the more you understand how you shoot and what your fundamentals are and what it feels like.

And it’s just the funny story. I crack up. I wish I would’ve had that line in my back pocket back when I was a kid, back when I was a player, as I could have pulled that line out on some people that used to ask me that same, that same sort of question. Cause it’s a great line.

[01:01:46] Tyler Coston: No,  I love it.  Thank you for sharing that. You know, and I think all we’re trying to do as coaches, as a shooting coach is collapse the timeframe from a million shots to 900,000. Right. You know, that’s, that’s all we’re trying to do. Yeah. Just get you there a little bit quicker.

[01:02:02] Mike Klinzing: Right. You put up 10 million shots at the worst form you probably end up being pretty good at, You probably can, You could probably chuck it in the ocean somehow.

Exactly. With whatever form you put. All right. I want to hit one more before we jump back to Rick Barry and the other one that leaps out at me here, The 10 shooting this. And it’s not really something that we’ve talked. Is, don’t have your eyes on the ball because that’s something that I know when I was a kid that I remember lots of coaches telling me, Hey, don’t watch the ball.

You have to keep your eyes on the target. And yet you can watch lots of shooters that do have their eyes on the target and don’t follow the ball. And you can watch lots of great shooters who follow the ball with their eyes. So just talk a little bit about why sometimes as coaches we continue to say, keep your eyes on the target even though there’s lots of different ways, again, that shooters can look.

[01:02:51] Tyler Coston: Yeah. I don’t know why coaches continue to say it. I, again, I just think these things are distractions that have no impact on shooting success. Once the ball out of your is out of your hands, right.

[01:03:07] Mike Klinzing: It’s done. The work impact, The work is done.

[01:03:11] Tyler Coston: Like let it fly. And here’s why I actually In talking to a lot of great shooters that do watch the ball here’s what I found.

Most shooters would benefit from more arc, not less. Most shooters would benefit from more arc, not less. In my experience, I’ve observed that players that do watch the ball have better arc, and I think they have better arc because they tend to be taken more data than the shooters that just keep staring at their target.

I mean, we’re not shooting at a target. We’re actually trying to shoot and drop the ball into a ring. It’s very, very different, right? So like keeping our eye fixed on a target would be like how you might aim a rifle. We’re actually trying to shoot over an obstacle the front of the rim and drop it into a ring.

And so I think that observing the arc while it’s being shot and then. Having the data come in of the outcome. Okay, that trajectory resulted in whatever, short, long, whatever. And so I think players would really, really benefit from adjusting trajectory, not just power. And so I think that there’s actually a benefit to watching the ball, like not early, like after the ball’s released.

Right? But especially when you shoot from further and further away, the ball’s in there a long time.

[01:04:34] Mike Klinzing: It’s hard to stare down the rim for four seconds when you’re shooting from 30 feet.

[01:04:37] Tyler Coston: Exactly, so that’s an argument for not only why I don’t think it matters, but why I might even I might even teach it to certain players that are having trouble with their trajectory.

[01:04:49] Mike Klinzing: I like the idea of thinking about the arc. I know one of the things when I’ve watched players shoot, I think one of the things. I’ve observed or I noticed is sometimes when you have a player that watches the ball, they tend to have their head back a little bit more, which I think also leads to what you just described, which is that player shooting with more arc.

I don’t know how they’re directly related putting your head back. I’ve observed that as well and I don’t know yet either . Yeah. I’m not sure if there’s a direct connection between just the fact that okay, you’re putting your head back. Is that causing you to, is that causing you to get more arc on the ball just because of sort of the body position or your spine or something, how that’s related, but I have noticed that players who watch the ball, I think it’s a great point that they do have better arc. And like I said, I think the one thing that I noticed with players who watch the ball is that their head tends to go back a little bit more because again, they’re seeing the ball go up that the trajectory of the ball and the arc.

[01:05:40] Tyler Coston: You just triggered something for me that I think are, are just little cues that I have found really, I don’t even exactly know why yet, but over a lot of experience, I have found this help players. Make more shots from further when they do this. When I start having players train at the four point line, their body naturally does these three things.

And so these are three things that I think you’ll find when players shoot further. And if you want them to shoot further, maybe experiment. These three things. The, the first one is this. They tilt their footprint. The further a player shoots from the rim, generally, the more they’ll tilt their footprint and allow a little bit of freedom of motion as they fire the ball.

That would be more of a twisting motion around their spine, like a punching motion to generate power. Just something that I found and something that I’ve experimented with the freedom of movement. Secondly, their lift point where they lift the ball to, before they start actually pushing the ball to the rim, their lift point gets lower the further they get from the rim.

And I think what we noticed that with the players that traditionally shoot further, Steph Curry, Tre Young, right? They have a much lower lift point. It tends to migrate down even below their eyes as they get further out. So a lower lift point tends to generate a little bit more power. And here’s the last one.

The further out a player shoots, the less they freeze their finish. A lot. Like think about like even when you’re shooting like half court shots at the end of a practice or something, like, very rarely. I mean, it’s, it’s like a, it’s like a flick and free Yeah. You know, to generate that quick power. Right.

And so that’s kind of part of what is leading into this. Like if you’re really trying to give people freezer finish, you’re actually not allowing that freedom of the angles and the wrist for the flick. So just three things to experiment with.

[01:07:29] Mike Klinzing: Or if you’re Steph you’re turning around and running the other direction.

[01:07:32] Tyler Coston: Exactly. We don’t need to make the exception, the rule or anything here, but yeah, there’s some clues we can look at.

[01:07:38] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. All right, Rick Barry talk about it

[01:07:41] Tyler Coston: Any player shooting under 60% from the free throw line should shoot under hand. Immediately.

[01:07:46] Mike Klinzing: Do you think we’ll ever see an NBA player shoot under hand?

[01:07:48] Tyler Coston: I don’t know, man, but like, there’s a lot of ’em that should have tried. There’s a lot that should have tried. I mean, I can go out and I don’t practice this regularly at all, but I have messed around with it. I’ve watched Rick Barry’s video on teaching it like, I can go out and make 70 to 80% underhand free, throws 7 or 8 out of 10 consistently, easily.

Any player that I’ve worked with doing it can get to 70, 80% within 10 minutes. I mean, it’s just so simple. It really is anatomically the easiest, most simple, repeatable way to get the ball to the basket on a straight line. You eliminate left, right misses, period. And so, yeah, I’m just a firm believer in it.

[01:08:28] Mike Klinzing: It’s amazing to me that as successful as Barry was with it, that nobody has tried. And obviously the things that you hear are. Oh, it’s players. Nobody wants to do it. It looks wimpy. It look wimpy. It looks like embarrassing. Yeah, it’s, And so, but, but you would just think that if you were a team, that you’ve got a guy who gets to the line a lot, just go back to Shaq, right?  So how many free throws a averaging a game? 10, 12, 14 free throws a game and he’s shooting 55%. If you could just turn that 55% into 70%, the dramatic impact that would’ve had on one, just his ability to be in the game and catch the ball in the last four minutes of a game, as opposed to having a hack of shack pulled on him all the time.

It’s kind of amazing that the threat of embarrassment. But to me, it’d be embarrassing to go up to the free throw line and shoot 55% . I mean, I’d much rather shoot underhand and shoot 70% and I’d be a lot less embarrassed by that. But it’s kind of amazing that with as much knowledge and analytics and just the way that we look at the game today, it’s hard to believe that at some point somebody’s not going to try it.

But man, the fact that it hasn’t happened in basically 40 years is kind of incredible.

[01:09:55] Tyler Coston: And how much money’s on the line, right, player? Absolutely. I mean, it’s just a bad business decision. Are you familiar with the under hand free throw and its relation to Wilt Chamberlain’s a hundred point game? Yeah, for sure.

Okay. I mean, unbelievable. I mean, briefly though, like what people don’t realize is Wilt Chamberlain historically terrible for you. Throw shooter 28 for 32. 28 for 32 shot underhand. Next game shot underhand, shot over 80%, 70 something points, never shot. Underhand again for fear of embarrassment, went back to being a poor free throw shooter.

[01:10:24] Mike Klinzing: It’s crazy. It makes no sense. I mean, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, how it could be more embarrassing to shoot under hand and make 90% your shots versus to shoot 40% or 45% or 50%. It’s, it’s incredible. It really is incredible.

[01:10:43] Tyler Coston: Well, you know what, Mike I can finish up with this point.

We’re amazed about how we have some data that goes against traditional beliefs and we’re amazed that people hold on traditional beliefs despite objective data. I believe that we’re at that same point now with a lot of traditional shooting myths. 10 toes to the rim, don’t dip the basketball. I mean, if, if you study film and you study the data, it’s just objectively a myth.

So we were talking about this, but I think that there are many, many things in the game of basketball that we still have blind spots on. And honestly, I think that’s what that’s really my mission with Savi is like to help apply wisdom and the greatest distance in the world is the distance between knowing and doing.

And I’m trying to shrink that distance. I know you are as well. That’s why I love talking to you and hopefully we did a little bit of that tonight.

[01:11:48] Mike Klinzing: I think we did. I think what’s interesting is theoretically, the way that the technology is today, the way that analytics is today, and just the information that we have access to, whether it’s a high school coach, whether it’s a college coach, NBA, whether it’s players, trainers, just the ability to just whip out your phone and film your own shot or film your kid’s shot or film one of your players shots, just that piece of it.

And then you combine it with the things that. might have previously been, Oh, the eye test. Like I just look, Oh, this is what I think I see. And then now it’s so easy to watch film. It’s so easy to analyze. It’s so easy to get information and data that I think it’s becoming harder and harder to defend those traditional positions just because there’s so much data out there.

Like I think from a shooting standpoint, right? Like you can watch, you can go on YouTube and find every shot that Steph Curry took last season and just look at it and observe it and watch what he’s doing. And when you do that, you’re going to come away with probably a different impression of what it means to be a great shooter.

Then you might have just like, Oh it’s the eye test. It’s what I was taught back in 1975. Mm-hmm. . And it’s just harder, I think, today to, Or it should be , let’s put it that way. Right? It should be harder to get away with some of the things that have maybe been traditional coaching points that just no longer valid.

[01:13:17] Tyler Coston: No. Well said. Very well said. All right, before we

[01:13:21] Mike Klinzing: All right, before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how people can reach out to you, how they can get in touch with you, find out more about what you’re doing with Savi, email, social media, website, whatever. And then I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:13:32] Tyler Coston: Cool. Thank you.

You know you can always get me @TylerCoston on Twitter, tylercoston.com to see how we’re supporting coaches. And you can get my email in there. Please sign up for the newsletter. I really put some of the best things I find in Discover in the game of basketball out weekly.

You can sign up for that at tylercoston.com. And if you do want to commit to a three month shooting journey anywhere in the world we’re going to be launching our athlete journey in the spring, once the season’s done, where I’m looking for a dedicated group of 24 athletes that want to go on a three month journey to become their best.

So that’s coming in the spring after the season. So keep an eye out for that. Get on the email list.

[01:14:18] Mike Klinzing: Cool. That’s good stuff. Tyler, can’t I thank you enough for jumping back on with us for a second time? Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

Thanks.