Youth Basketball Shooting Tips: Upper Body Position

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson and we're talking right now about the proper mechanics of having a good shot. And what we talk about right now is after you get your good base and after you get setup for the shot and your shoulders are facing the basket, now you're ready to make a good shot. Its very, very important to get your upper body ready to make that shot. I've seen all types of shooting forms. Some work, some don't. But if you start with a good fundamental shooting form, then you can kind of manipulate it the way you want as long as you're still a good shooter. But the main thing is, first of all you want to have your elbow at a 90 degree angle. You don't want to hold the ball up above your head. You don't want to have the ball held out too far in front of you. You want to have it right here. This is what we call the shooting pocket. You want to be able to catch and be right in this shooting pocket all the time and have that ball there. So first of all, we're going to place the ball in the shooting pocket. Second thing is with that off hand, you just want to use this off hand as a balance. Right now, he's pretty much got the ball. You don't shoot with this off hand. All this is used for is to help hold that ball there. Then when you make your shot, you're going to go ahead and take that hand off as you shoot. So before we can ever get a good shot, we have to be in our base and we have to be set in the shooting pocket, not with the ball up above our head, not with the ball down here by our hip, but right here in front or actually to the side of our face ready to make that shot."