I hadn't had the chance to research new techniques or drills. But I went to the court this morning and started working on two skills: shooting from the "top of the key" (about 20 feet from the basket) and dribbling and shooting with my left hand.
I took 30 shots from the top of the key and made 20 of them. That's way higher than I expected. I'll keep practicing this shot, over and over and keep track of my percentage over time.
And here's my practicing dribbling and finishing left:
Watching this video made me very concerned about the discrepancy between how fast I think I'm moving and how fast I'm really moving (in other words, it made me feel old). I'll keep practicing this until I can go faster and score with my left-hand at a higher percentage.
9/22
I found this video on one of the main goals I set myself, improving my pull-up jump shot (going quickly from dribbling to shooting):
This reminded me of an important aspect of skill learning that I didn't mention in my previous post: scaffolding, or in ordinary terms, learning small, simple things first and gradually adding complexity. Dribbling around full-speed before shooting is much harder and more complex than standing still and doing the one dribble then shooting, as in this video. Even this was really hard, though! I kept trying and trying and eventually improved a bit. This is like how, in our course, we learn one small thing at a time before adding on to it (reasons, co-premises, inference rules, independent arguments, sub-contentions, inference arguments).
There's another concept this drill illustrates: a zone of proximal development. The dribble-shot drill was hard for me but not too hard. So in practicing it, I was able to get better and learn.
The teacher in this video says Kobe Bryant used to do 45 minutes of shooting drills at each spot on the court; in other words, doing simple drills over and over and over is effective for developing skills. That's like our course: I recommend doing all 30 exercises at the end of each chapter.
I forgot to mention time management in my previous post. For the last few years, I've been trying (emphasis on trying) to do three strenuous workouts per week (and non-strenuous workouts, like a long walk, the other days). I'll mostly use that time for basketball for the duration of this project.
Finally, I did 30 jump shots from the top of the key again. This time, I only made 9/30. That's down from over 20/30 last time. I'm not sure what caused this; could just be random variation.
I asked my students to pick a skill for me to learn this semester and the people have spoken: I'll be learning basketball! (I'm a big basketball fan, so I'm looking forward to this.) My idea for this is to illustrate the different aspects of learning a skill. We've identified three main aspects: coaching/teaching, community, and deliberate practice . My students will see me learn basketball through these aspects and they learn critical thinking and philosophy through the same aspects. Learning critical thinking is similar to learning any other skill. So to get started, I need coaching/teaching, that is, someone to explain to me how to get better at basketball. There are a lot of YouTube channels on this. Here are a bunch of channels that people have recommended. If there's one you recommend, let me know in the comments. I'm planning to try a few out and see what I like best. I'll get drills to deliberately practice from my coach/teacher. Community is a toug...
This is my first update in a while. I've been practicing, but not as much or as consistently as I'd like, and I haven't kept track of my progress as well as I'd like. (I lost one week because of a cold.) So have I progressed since my last post? I've been keeping track of my shooting percentages informally. I've had some good outings and bad outings. Without the exact numbers, it's too hard to say whether my shooting accuracy has increased. This is on me. I should have kept track better. Solution : I'll start bringing a notebook with me to write down how many shots of each kind I make. Up to now, I've been just remembering my percentage until I wrote a blog post. My impression is that, if I've improved at all, it's been a very slight improvement. Solution : For this reason, I'm going to increase the number of practice shots I take during each practice session. I was doing 30 of each kind (off a single dribble, from the top of the key). I...
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