Building a Culture of Shooters

This blog is in response to the response that I got about the tweet to the right. There were a lot of questions and I hope that this blog can answer them. Tonight we started teaching shooting in our workouts. We use some things from the "Pro Shot" shooting method. If you have not seen any Pro-Shot stuff, it's as good as it gets for shooting. Below are some of their resources. Their YouTube channel is first class. If you have the money I would strongly suggest having them in to do a shooting clinic. It will be well worth your time.
Pro Shot's Youtube Channel
Pro Shot's Website

Now about this board. At last week's round table Zak Boisvert (@ZakBoisvert) gave a phenomenal presentation. One of the things he talked about was developing a "culture of shooters". An aspect of developing that culture was having a few competitive games that players compete at for the high score. This keeps their interest and lights a competitive fire to get better at these games - and thus hopefully their shooting. So I picked 4 shooting games that fit the following criteria:
1. Could do them on your own or with a partner.
2. Were total shot based, not time based.

Then I got my wife to make me a nice leader board. It's just a dry-erase board with permanent marker written on it. I write the players' names in dry erase so I can change the names and scores, but the other parts of the chart are in permanent marker so they won't smudge. Every time we do these games in workouts, or players do them before/after, I'll change the list and update the high scores. Hopefully we can see our scores improve as the summer goes.

As a reward, the leader at the end of each week gets a Gatorade. I'm also giving out something to the winner's for the summer - not sure what that is yet. The goal here is to try to make this as fun and competitive as I can. I've also told players they can do these outside of workouts for the high score - but they have to have a teammate present to verify their scores. So the hope is that they are constantly working to improve their shooting.

As for the drills, they are nothing special or out of the ordinary. They are simply 4 mini-games that we can track. I will list them below but I would encourage you to just pick 4 competitive shooting drills you like.

Celtic In-A-Rows
Pretty simple concept. You use the 5 perimeter spots - corner, wing, top, wing, corner. You start in a corner. You get two shots to make your first one. If you miss 2 to start you move to the next spot. If you make one then you shoot till you miss and count how many you make in a row (that's why it's called in a rows). Once you miss you move to the next spot. You add up all your points for each of the 5 spots and that is your score - how many shots you made in the drill.

Oklahoma V-Cut
You can do this in groups of 2-3. Shooter goes elbow to elbow touching the top of the key each time. He catches and shoots at the elbows. Take 30 shots and count how many you make.

Spurs 40
Divide the court into quarters. Take 10 shots in each quarter (we shoot 3s). Count up your total out of 40.

BYU Shooting
Ball and a partner. Shooter spots up on the three. Passer gives the pass then runs out with hands up and distracts the shooter (don't run them over, either stop short or run by). Shooter catches and shoots then rebounds and becomes the passer. The passer becomes the shooter. Shoot from different spots on the 3pt line. Each player shoots 40 shots and keep track of your makes.



Again, none of these shooting drills are anything you haven't heard of. They secret is to really get your players to buy into the competitiveness of it - I'm selling it hard early. We want them to be relentless about doing these and trying to get that top spot. Because if you start to get competitive and obsess, you are more likely to dial in and learn how to shoot more effectively. Hopefully the above explained it, if not then let me know!