Youth Basketball Free Throws: Mental Preparation

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson and what we're talking about is the proper mechanics to making you a good shooter. And now we're going to kind of concentrate on the aspect of free throw shooting. Free throw shooting is huge; it?s probably the most important thing that happens in a game. Every game is decided at the free throw line. You either win games or you lose games by free throws. Almost every game you can go back and you can count how many free throws were missed and that's usually a factor in the outcome of the game. So free throws are very important. You've got to be able to approach a free throw with the proper mindset. That's the first step of a free throw. You are never going to walk up to a free throw line and just walk up, grab the ball and just throw it up there without thinking about it. You want to come to the line with a good approach. You want to take a deep breath. You want to concentrate and one of the things that I challenge my players to do is to visualize the shot. You want to be thinking about the shot. You want to see it go up and come down. You want to see every part of the shot. You want to visualize that before you actually make the shot. Then you want to clear your head, get yourself properly ready for the shot and then you go ahead and make the free throw. But the first part of being a good free throw shooter and the first part of starting the free throw shot is to visualize it and approach the shot mentally before you do it physically."