The Influence Of Shooting A Basketball

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A simple task when looked at on a different level gives us an idea of how the body and mind works to produce an action and a result. For instance, there are perceptive processes within the vital steps during a jump shot. Shooting a basketball whilst may seem like a trivial task, requires hand-eye co-ordination as well as visual, depth and touch perception. This essay will focus specifically on one fluid motion; the moment the player bends his knees through to when the ball is released from his fingertips.
Perception is how the brain takes in information before it is processed to produce an action. When shooting a basketball, visual perception, touch perception and depth perception all play their part to produce the result: a jump shot.
Visual perception is what aids a human analyze their surrounds, recognize what is around them and is crucial to help the brain make decisions based on what they see. When a basketball player faces the hoop before he shoots the jump shot, he must first identify where the backboard is. Visual perception all starts with visible light. A band of energy within the electromagnetic spectrum is created by electric charges and is radiated as waves, known as Wavelengths. “The energy in this spectrum can be described by its wavelength—the distance between the peaks of the electromagnetic waves“(Goldstein, 2013).
The electromagnetic waves range from extremely short gamma rays, to long radio waves. Within that continuum is visible light which is the only light humans are able to perceive. As humans, we associate colour with the different wavelengths – blue being on the shorter side of the spectrum and yellow and red being on the longer side, while green sits in the middle. For humans to see anything, visible li...

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...n game. When training a novice, coaches will put more time and effort into focusing on a players fundamental and form before focusing on game plans and more advanced drills and plays. A novice learning the fundamentals of shooting will take a longer amount of time getting form right and learning to adjust their shot and calculating their shot in an instance because their muscle memory hasn’t stored the action. A professional player can adjust and calculate their shot in an instance without any though due to long term memory, each movement is a swift motion, and because their bodies know exactly how to perform an action, it gives their brains time to make proper decisions in game, like how to get around a defender, or how to score a basket. A novice has to concentrate on their fundamentals before they can think about harder and higher level decisions within a game.

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