Shooters are made not born, the question always comes up from young aspiring basketball players, my shot isn’t consistent, I can shoot in practice but not in-game. How do I get better at shooting, how many shots should I be taking? This can be confusing, but hopefully, I shed some light on how many shots you should be taking a day.
How many shots should I be taking every day? Shooting 300 shots a day while being able to maintain good form and consistently each day, this number of shots is a great start to becoming an effective shooter who is a threat on the court. If you want to be an elite shooter, shooting 500 shots a day is necessary, mixing it up with form shooting, spot-up shooting, catch and shoot with some pull-up jumpers, one, two, and three dribble pull-ups.
Today we will look at how many shots you should be shooting daily, and the mind frame you should have when working on maximizing your shooting workouts. I will provide you a simple but super effective workout that from experience has work wonders for myself and still use to this day.
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How many shots should you be taking a day?
There really is no set answer to how many shots you should be taking a day, obviously more would be better but you also don’t want to sacrifice form in the process of putting up a ton of reps just to say you shot 1000 shots today. Form can be an issue down the road if you don’t fix some of the shooting flaws in your shot mechanics right now. Putting up 1000’s of shots then having to change your shot completely would feel like a total waste. I had to do it, but in doing so I became a much more effective and consistent shooter.
This is why it is important to start off with form shooting before every game, workout or practice. In golf, golfers are constantly working on their golf swing and perfecting it. Shot mechanics should be treated no different.
After doing form shooting, you start your workout. I found the best success for myself is to shoot in the morning before playing basketball or attending practice and then do another shooting workout in the evening. It helps to have a basketball hoop of your own or a nearby park to do the workouts. You could easily get in a few hundred shots a day.
That’s a lot of basketball isn’t it, but realistically this is not uncommon for most basketball players to have 3 workouts a day. You really have to love the game in order to spend a ton of time improving. It’s not for everyone, players who are elite basketball players have put in a ton of practice time. Think of a video game, the more you play the better you are. No different in basketball. You honestly have to be obsessed with improving to see the results you dream of.
If you want an answer of how many shots you should be taking, I would say if I had to go back in time to practice my shot as a teenager trying to improve, I would do no less than 500 shots a day minimum.
Everyone is different, people have different priorities and more time on their hands than others. But the only way to get better is to put in the work. Do the things that the majority of others are not doing.
Measuring progress and beating your own personal best?
A great and easy way that keeps you engaged while improving your game is simply recording your makes and misses on a piece of paper or using a notes application on your phone. Charting makes and misses helps you see the progress you are making, it is a great motivator to beat yesterday’s YOU! What this means is from whichever spot you are shooting from, and you made 10 out of 20 shots you want to beat yesterday’s record today by making 11 out of 20 or more.
When you are able to challenge yourself while shooting, you will find you are focused and dialed into the small goal of beating your current best or yesterday’s best. This type of focus and concentration transitions well on the court as opposed to just shooting shots aimlessly when you are practicing on your own.
The goal is to simply get better every workout, you will find yourself getting upset that you missed a single shot. You will start to analyze every miss and zero in on what you need to do on the next shot after you missed in order to make the basket.
This is what you want, and how you need to train. There is pressure to simply making a set number of shots and your having fun in the process both makes it beneficial to your game.
Goals – Short Term and Long Term with Workout
Are you ready to challenge yourself? How many shots will you challenge yourself to shoot this month or next? If you say ten thousand That’s 333 shots a day for thirty days? I think that’s attainable for most athletes and should be the bare minimum if you want to be an offensive threat on the court. That might be an easy goal for some but maybe consistency is the hardest obstacle you have to overcome. I know it was and still is for me as a human being on any goal I set.
The Goals:
Long Term Goal: Become an Elite Shooter
Short Term Goal: Attempt 15000 shots a month
Mini Short Term Goal: Shoot 500 shots a day and beat yesterday’s record.
You can choose any amount of shots for the week, month, summer, or year. and divide it by the number of days.
The workout below is something very similar that I did that gave me excellent results and made me a great shooter and a scorer in my senior year of high school. During the offseason, I would do shoot around 250 shots in the morning when I woke up, play pickup basketball in the afternoon and then finish the rest of the shooting workout in the evening.
Tip: I would also include shots that I would take and missed in my pick up that afternoon.
If this workout doesn’t intrigue you, check out THE VAULT where there are shooting workouts and more updated weekly.
How long does it take to become a good shooter in basketball?
Like anything in life if it were easy, then everyone would be doing it. This is why shooters are made not born, taking thousands of shots a month, year after year with no guarantee that you will see the results you want.
But with that being said, success never travels in a straight line from point A to point B, along the way there is disappointment, thoughts of quitting, and giving up, especially failing over and over again.
The hardest part of the whole process is staying consistent long enough to see a little bit of success, even if it’s small it can be enough to carry you along the way and keep you going through the most difficult times.
So How Long?
How long do you want it to take? If I told you that in one month’s time you have a basketball game and in this game, you must take 20 shots and you must shoot at least 42 percent from the field or you’re never going to see your family again. What would you do? [A little extreme, I know].
But I bet you would be outside right now shooting until your arm was numb every day leading up to the game. The point is, you need to be taking a lot of shots, to the point your absolutely sick of shooting, and then shoot some more. My next question is do you love to train and if not do you love to see your game improve? If you answered yes to either question, this can carry you through the times in which you just don’t feel like working on your game.
How many shots a day do NBA players shoot?
Elite shooters in the NBA will shoot up to one thousand shots a day, granted they have the equipment and trainers to do so. When someone or something is passing you the basketball you could easily shoot 500 shots in an hour. Do that 2 times a day and you’re looking at 1000 shots, which isn’t easy but achievable.
Kobe Bryant was said to be one of the hardest working basketball players the NBA has ever seen, part of his vigorous workout regimen was to shoot and make 700 to 1000 shots a day. It is obvious that Kobe would be missing shots, so he was shooting 1000 plus shots every day.
Steph Curry is the best shooter the NBA has ever seen and was recently seen making one hundred threes in a row. This is after coming back from an injury. Based on how happy he was, it’s very well possible that he beat his own personal best. Check out the video below.
I did a little more research on Steph and was surprised to see he didn’t shoot as many shots as I thought he did, but who knows if the reports on this are accurate. Saying that he shoots around 500 makes a day, I think this number is closer to 700 to 1000 shots, but again who knows.
Jeremey Linn in a video of his NBA come back is heard saying he is shooting 700 shots first thing in the morning, he can be seen in a small gym with a shooting machine. It just goes to show what these athletes are doing every day in the off-season to be competitive.
How long does it take to shoot 1000 shots?
If you have a rebounder, you could shot 1000 shots in three to four hours, but I think anyone who went three hours straight would be sacrificing form and injury. Remember you would also want to be working on game shots going at least 75 percent speed. Quality is much more important than quantity.
It would be much better to break down the shooting workouts of 2 or 3 a day of say 300 shots or you could do 250 makes. This would get you close to that 1000 shot mark.
If you are attempting to shoot a thousand shots a day, this could be very difficult without the right equipment. If you are planning to do this with a partner, it may take longer than you realize. Shooting that many shots with your partner rebounding the ball for you and taking turns shooting you will probably be able to put up to 250 shots an hour each if you can move quickly.
Ball Returners & Shooting Machines
We all know that ball returners and shooting machines would be an excellent tool to use for our shooting workouts and would cut the time in half but what if you don’t have the money for it or have access to one. Most people don’t so your not alone. Although if you have your own hoop at home there are some ball returners on the market some good, some not so good, I do believe though they are worth the investment. Had I had one growing up I know I probably would have shot much more as I don’t have to chase my basketball after every shot I take.
You can check out your options by clicking here and the link will take you to Amazon..
More on shooting machines in a future article.