Why do even top-tier basketball players sometimes miss free throws?
In basketball, when one team commits a foul or other error, the other team is sometimes awarded the right to shoot from near the basket without any obstruction.
Neurophysiological and Biomechanical Determinants of Successful Basketball Throws: Journal of Motor Behavior: Vol 57 , No 5 - Get Access
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00222895.2025.2532478
Why do basketball players miss shots they've made a thousand times before? Neuroscience has an answer
https://theconversation.com/why-do-basketball-players-miss-shots-theyve-made-a-thousand-times-before-neuroscience-has-an-answer-279040
Elite basketball players put in an unimaginable amount of practice and have made thousands of free throws by now. Yet, even in the NCAA men's basketball tournament and NBA games, the pinnacle of college basketball, we often see players missing free throws.
Decades of research on elite athletes have shown that top performers exhibit consistent, sport-specific movements, and their brains are optimized for those tasks. In other words, elite athletes have less unnecessary brain activity and more focused processing for specific movements.
Heber and his research team recorded the body movements and brain activity of beginner to intermediate basketball players while they shot, in order to investigate how people acquire basketball skills. Specifically, they used motion capture technology to analyze the mechanics of the players' movements and electroencephalography (EEG) to analyze neural activity during shooting. After a short practice session and time to get used to the measurement equipment, the players took 50 shots, and the difference between shots that went in and those that didn't was compared.
The analysis revealed that successful shots were associated with 'more consistent movement patterns' in all players. When a shot was successful, the player's legs and lower body were positioned in a stable, supportive location, overall body balance improved, and power transfer to the ball became more effective. In addition, the movement of each joint became more coordinated, and variability in movement was reduced, especially in key areas such as the wrists and elbows.
Furthermore, it was found that when the shot was successful, brain neural activity was more stable, and brain activity related to the integration of sensory information and motor control increased. The success of the shot depended not on whether brain activity was active or inactive, but on how consistently and stably the brain functioned.
On the other hand, the actions taken when a shot was missed were far more varied than those taken when it was successful, suggesting that the players were constantly making adjustments during the action. Similarly, brain activity was unstable, indicating that they were continuously trying to evaluate, adjust, and correct the situation.
These changes and adjustments that occur through trial and error are crucial in the initial stages of skill acquisition. Beginners consciously process linguistic, visual, and spatial information and actively think about actions in an attempt to acquire the correct skills as they learn to coordinate perception and movement.
And once you've mastered the skills, you no longer need to consciously control individual movements; you rely on a system refined through repetitive practice. Heber says, 'As your skills improve, consistency becomes more important than effort in performance. As your neural processing becomes more efficient, variability decreases.'
Elite athletes exhibit extremely stable movements and brain activity when performing actions like free throws, but this stability can break down under pressure. When pressure causes them to become preoccupied with their thoughts, they try to consciously monitor and control their movements, which can hinder the coordination they have cultivated and unintentionally lead to greater variability in their movements and thoughts.
Heber stated, 'Training that focuses not only on the technical aspects of sports but also on the mental aspects of performance can help athletes enter, maintain, or recover from a mental state that supports consistent performance even under pressure. If athletes can learn how their brain and body react under pressure and practice returning to a more stable state, it may pave the way to more consistent performance. The goal is not just to learn the correct movements, but also to learn when and how to stop trying to control the movements.'
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in Free Member, Science, Posted by log1h_ik