Slow Down – By Shooting Coach Dave Love

Coaches, and especially trainers, will tell you everything has to be done at game speed to be beneficial. I like and understand the idea, but it isn’t true. There is a time and place for slowing down and paying close attention to what your body is doing.

I’m not a trainer. It isn’t what I’m good at. Players can go weeks without even breaking a sweat in my workouts.

I’m a teacher. I take people who think they can’t shoot and teach them how. This takes time. A lot of it. It takes time to assess the players current habits, to teach them what the new habits should be, and it takes a VERY long time to learn the new habits.

It would be very egotistical and misinformed for me to assume that I could tell a player what to do and expect them to do it at game speed.

I start teaching a stationary shot, then very slowly build up the speed and range of the shot. This takes months. If a player is starting to find success at the stationary shot then we add the smallest bit of movement, making sure to technique is still as flawless as possible.

If they revert to old habits at the new speed then we have to slow down and strengthen those habits some more. Like I say at my clinics – “I wouldn’t teach you to ski by spending 5 minutes on the bunny hill, then going to a double black-diamond run next. We would spend time at each level, and if you weren’t comfortable, we would take a step backwards”.

So don’t assume you need to sweat through your shirt to be working hard. There are several types of hard work, and they don’t all involve “going game speed”.