Make More Free Throws - Tom Nordland's Third Video, Swish 3, Shows How

Now available is Tom Nordland's third basketball shooting video, Swish 3, "The Swish Free Throw." Based on the simple and effective shooting instruction from earlier Swish videos, Swish 3 presents new insights and distinctions for this elusive shot.

BOULDER CREEK, Calif. -Tom Nordland, one of the world's top basketball shooting coaches, this week announced the completion and availability of Swish 3, an 88-minute DVD focused totally on Free Throw shooting.

Free Throws are a mystery to a lot of players. The distance is not great and it never changes, there's no one in your face, and you have plenty of time. There's no excuse for the poor performance of one of the game's most repeatable and most important elements. The ability (or inability) to make Free Throws has become a major part of strategy in close games.

Nordland's first two videos, Swish and Swish 2, have sold in the tens of thousands and are staples in basketball shooting libraries. They are watched over and over due to the rich information and demonstrations they provide. This new video expands the Swish methodology, examining shooting in terms of big muscles vs. small muscles, minimizing variables, the importance of alignment of hand, ball and eye with the basket, and the generation and capture of "inertia" to make accuracy easier when combined with an automatic and repeatable release.

"This method is easily learned and has resulted in dramatic improvement in our students," Nordland said. "What's more, the method makes so much sense they tend to pick it up very quickly."

Nordland's approach to basketball's most important skill is different from the way shooting is normally taught, yet it can be proven to be the way of the great shooters. Tom was a high school star in Minnesota and then went to college and lost his shot for over 30 years. Getting his shots blocked sent him on a downward spiral as he tried to learn to shoot off the dribble, and too much analysis resulted in losing his shot and his confidence.

Fast forward 32 years: In 1989 it all came back to him, and he has spent more than 22 years studying and teaching (and "simplifying") the skill. As Dale Davis, a former NBA player, put it after working with Tom, "He teaches a combination of technique and the science of repeatability."

Nordland's explorations led him to discover how Newton's First Law of Motion, the Law of Inertia, applies to shooting a basketball. The Law says: "An object in motion tends to stay in motion and in the same direction until affected by an outside or unbalanced force." In basketball, if you can set the ball on line and get it accelerating before the Release, you're generating powerful Inertia which, if "caught" (by not pausing or stopping the action), will lead to much greater accuracy.

Nordland compares the Swish approach to the commonly taught instructions that got us in this mess in the first place. He shows how "Squaring Up," "Wrist-flipping," "Reach your hand into a Cookie Jar," "Elbow under the ball," etc., make shooting more difficult, not easier. They affect power and alignment and increase the possibility of variation. Swish is about minimizing variables, not increasing them.

In addition to the physical stroke, Nordland also examines the pre-shot routine and concludes it is "highly overrated." "You make shots," he says, "by your physical control of direction and distance, not by some psychology or mental mumbo jumbo." Imagining success isn't the same thing as feeling the physical moves that make up the shot.

For more information, visit Nordland's website (swish22.com). "Just reading the material there and watching the video clips is a shooting education in and of itself," he says, "but with the help of the videos with all the details and visual demonstrations, it all comes alive."
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