The Sniper Story: Epiphany #3 - Powerlifting techniques

In 2018, my friend Brent had been powerlifting for over a year, and was able to squat nearly 400 pounds.

That might not seem like much if you're an experienced powerlifter, but to me having never attempted a serious powerlifting program, it seemed enormous at the time. When Brent moved to my town, he invited me to join him in his basement gym and recommended a book called "Starting Strength" by Mark Rippetoe.

Even though I knew the theory behind neuromuscular activation and its effect on weight training and other performance sports from my study of exercise science, experiencing the physical, tangible reality of starting at a baseline and trying to constantly increase weight (without injury) really brought it home.

Around the same time, I met Ethan. He was a strong 8th grader with a knack for rebounding, but only scoring 2 points per game. He desperately wanted to become a shooter and a scorer, and we set off on training.

That's when I found it...

The term neuromuscular activation is common in the fitness industry and simply means a warm-up of two very important systems:

Your nervous system, and the associated neurons that fire electrical signals from your brain and spinal cord to your muscles, and

Your muscular system, that is needed to synchronize and coordinate all the muscle groups in order to maximize the end result of moving heavy things - or sending a basketball farther down the court.

Building on the framework for form shooting that I initially learned from Noah LaRoche (starting in a lunge stance) this idea suddenly had a deeper significance that would cause me to completely alter my approach to shooting...

Most form shooting that coaches assign players to do, is what I call "shooting from the elbow up" - close to the basket, with one hand, and standing straight up.

No movement of the lower body, and no coordination between lower and upper body.

This is the way I taught shooting for 10 years until...

I began experimenting with the idea of challenging the player's body to generate the maximum power by optimizing all their muscle groups - without the advantage of jumping.

This is what eventually became "Activated" Form Shooting - intentionally coordinating our lower body leg muscles and synchronizing them with our upper body motion of shooting in order to translate power from our toes to our fingertips.

What I discovered was that whatever strength we already have, when properly coordinated, can produce massive amounts of power!

Over time, I further refined that to the framework I call "Power before Precision". If you look at the average form shooting drill that coaches assign to players - "shooting from the elbow up" - it does not allow the same form to translate to deep range.

Whatever soft touch and precision a player develops near the rim, disappears due to the lack of power when they back up!

They eventually throw their body behind the ball in whatever way necessary to generate power, and now it's a completely different shot (Or they give up because the coach is trying to demolish their shot and start over).

Activated Form Shooting allows players to maintain the same shot at all distances. When they practice Activated Form Shooting 6 feet from the basket they have the same power generation, coordination and touch as when they move back to 30 feet generating CONSISTENCY of power, coordination, and precision!

Oh, and Ethan? He went on to score 30 ppg in HS and AAU, but opted not to pursue college basketball so he could focus on studying (though he still cleans up in intramurals at school)... and he became a coach :-)

Tomorrow I will tell you the story of Epiphany #4, and why I started limiting my coaching instructions to only 5 words or less…

See you on the court,
Coach BJ

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