Body Position

Johntownsend@lvcm.com

The body position of a basketball player is all relative to the player’s footwork. A player’s footwork will square the player to the basket. And it will give a shooter his/her balance. However, even with the proper footwork a player can still do things to cause them to be off balance.  When teaching and working with a shooter on body position you must make sure that his/her “top is over their bottom”.  Top over bottom simply means your head is over your butt.  Most players, especially really good drivers, have a tendency to bend at their waist. (Drivers usually bend over at their waist to stay low to the ground.) Bending over at the waist causes the top to be in front of the bottom. This makes the player off balance. It is difficult to jump up and shoot this way because the player has to straighten up his/her body while jumping and lifting the ball up into their shot. Bending at the waist and straightening up it to a jump shot is entirely too much movement. If a player is doing this I simply tell them to “bend at your knees and not so much at your waist.” Besides bending too much at the waist another common mistake players make in regards to their body position is keeping their head level. Some players exaggerate following the flight of the basketball with their eyes. Some so much that they raise their chin and tilt their head back. Others heads go back so far that it also takes their shoulders back. This turns every jump shot into a “fade away”. This can easily be remedied by “keeping chin level”. More often than not, the saying that works is: “Keep your head level and look up with your eyes.”