I Trained like Steph Curry for 50 Days to Improve my Basketball Shooting
Being a great basketball shooter creates space and leverage for your drives, dimes, and teammates. You or your teammates can make the defense pay for sagging off you by improving your shooting efficiency off the catch or the dribble.
The problem with becoming a better shooter is that sometimes our bad habits hold us back more than we know, which is why I loved this video on how an amateur content creator who loves hoops used Steph Curry’s Masterclass to improve his shooting.
Many youth and adult basketball players I work with always want to improve their shooting. Shooting is the art and science of putting a 9.43-9.51-inch (diameter) leather ball into a metal rim 18 inches in diameter.
Theoretically, a rim can fit two basketballs inside simultaneously since the ball is circular, and two basketballs and their total diameter don’t touch the rim until it's halfway inside.
But what’s the point of knowing you can fit two basketballs inside the rim if basketball shooting remains so hard?
During this video, I noticed many similarities between the kids and adults I work with who are also trying to create a more efficient shot.
Here’s what I learned: A. Get coaching feedback immediately B. Start a daily habit of shooting with better mechanics C. Keep going when you get frustrated and angry
Step Curry’s Masterclass in Basketball Shooting
Start with routine and fundamentals up close. Measure your made shots versus missed shots from the spots in the video, too.
Shoot from the ground up (flow from the ground up into your upper mechanics in one fluid motion) and lead with your lower body first. Klay Thompson calls this the reverse waterfall technique: your shot begins in your toes and flows up to your release.
Hand and arm positioning (create solid hand contact and off-hand that doesn’t impede or create a non-linear trajectory as you release). Ensure your elbow, wrist, and index/middle finger create a straight line from the L pre-shot to the elbow lock post-shot, and snap your wrist at release at the middle of the rim as the ball flows to its final release point.
Steph likes to aim at the front or middle of the rim at the net attachments he can see, depending on the angle he is shooting from on the court.
Your gooseneck wrist release should have a shooting arm above your eye and a wrist that snaps in one motion as your shot releases out of your shooting hand. The gooseneck wrist snap should happen simultaneously as the ball touches your last two fingertips, and a backspin should be created on the ball as it leaves your hands. For optimal results, most shots should have a 45 to 55-degree trajectory.
What I love about this basketball shooting video is that this guy practiced Steph’s shooting routine two hours a day, tracking his starting point on day one and his finishing point 50 days later. He also took a video of his shot weekly to pinpoint what was going wrong and how he could start fixing it in his practice sessions. Luckily about halfway through his 50 days, he noticed something I saw immediately: his gooseneck wrist snap was delayed after the ball left his fingertips, his elbow flared out when he caught the ball in his pocket, and his shot didn’t flow from the ground up in one motion.
His progress was tremendous to watch, but so was his frustration and mental suffering as he tried to figure it out. His pain is something that I relate to.
I’ve found myself as a young high schooler wondering:
Why isn’t shooting progress happening?
What’s stopping me from being an elite shooter? Why can’t I make more shots when moving off the catch or dribble?
Well, our suffering and frustration are almost always signs we are on the right path to our growth.
But to get to the next level, you must constantly get honest feedback on what you’re practicing and doing wrong. What’s holding you back might be invisible to an untrained eye. This is where pro coaches and trainers who can point out mistakes quickly and give you practical advice on fixing movement patterns can help you.
There are a few ways you can get honest shooting feedback from HB. You can come to training sessions, try out for one of our HB Elite teams, or try Tandem, a new app that allows you to upload your shooting videos (or basketball moves, footwork, gameplay, etc.) to the app so we can go in and send you feedback on how to improve.
If you ever want to try, click the button below and upload your video for some HB coaching feedback.
Want HB coaching feedback on your shot?
This is what makes Huffman Basketball’s 30 years of pro-playing, coaching, and training experience worthwhile—because you get evaluated and analyzed from the perspective of what works at the highest levels of hoops.
With HB, our first goal is to get youth players to practice daily and string together 21, 50, and 100 days of daily practice. Building a daily habit of playing, training, and working hard at improving is the minimum entry fee for getting better at whatever you’re trying to improve.
So whether it’s shooting like Steph Curry or making shooting progress like an amateur basketball lover, this video is for you.