Practice+vs.+Efficiency

Title: Free Throw Excellence

Abstract: Our experiment is to see if making free throws can be increased by repititions. In our experiment we will be shooting initial, practice, and final free throw shots. We are hoping the practice will increase the percent out of 15 we shoot and prove our hypothesis right. At the end we compared our percentages.

Purpose: The purpose of this experiment is to see how much practice you need to perfect your free throw shot. We chose this because we play basketball and we wanted to know how much time and practice it would take to get it right everytime. The free throw line is 15 feet from the basket and the rim is 18 inches around, with nobody gaurding you, it is one of the easiest shots in the game. (Dimensions, 2011) Good free throw shooters do the same thing everytime, same routine, same shot,and same reactions. (Skill, 2011) The purpose of practice is to make your actions automatic; no thought required. (MentalAspect 2012) The best thing to do is practice the shot, release, form, and technique to improve your free throw. (Improvements, 2010) The invention of a free throw was made in 1924, just like today it counted as one point and was awarded to the player that got fouled while shooting. (Rules, 2008) Some studies show that it takes about 30-40 reps to make something a habit for most people, some get it quicker. (Habits, 2012) Max and I have had a good percentage this year because of repitition and the same routine everytime, others on our team don't repeat the same routine or take reps and it as showed. Most of the things we practice or do to get better have been mentioned in our research and by professionals. Because of the research we have, we will each shoot 15 free throws to see our starting percentage. Then we will practice and shoot 30-40 free throws. After that we will shoot another 15 and see how much our percentage has increased from the initial 15 before we took the 30-40 practice shots. This will help find the results we want to find out. (how many minutes of practice a day is a good practice-Brandon Bredeson) (How will you know if you are improving if you are only doing one repetition of thirty shots-Lucas Navas) ( You need to have more repitions- Sam Lee) (Explain why you personally want to do this experiment. Hannah Heinz) ( Why did you decide that number of repetitions?)

Hypothesis: If we practice our free throws and do a lot of repitions such as 0-40 shots, then our percentage will increase 5-10% out of 15.

Materials: -Max and I -Shooters -Somwhere to shoot -Basketball hoop -Someone observing -Basketballs -Calculator -Pape for results

Procedure: First, we will find a basketball hoop somewhere inside. Then we will get warmed up and go right into shooting our first set of 15 free thows. We each will shoot the 15 initial shots. After the first set we will find out the pecentage of how well we shot the initial 15 before the practice. The helper we elected to observe of will keep track of the free throws and right down our initial perceent before the practice. After that we will each have a chance to get 30-40 repititions in for our practice. We will not need to record the amount of made shots out of the practice shots. This is just going to get us the practice that was suggested in our research to help your shot and percentage. Then we will get ready to shoot the finishing or final 15 shots to find out how much our percentage increased from the initial to our final 15 free throws. At the end of this, we will calculate the final 15 into a percentage with how many we made out of 15 shots. Max and I projected a 10% increase in the final set. Lastly, we will calculate the difference of percentage between the initial and final set of 15 free throws. Max and I projected a 10% increase in the final set.

Data:
 * //__**Shooter**__// || __//**Initial 15-Shots**//__ || **//__40 Practice shots__//** || **//__Final 15-Shots__//** ||
 * Austin || 12 out of 15 || Shot all || 13 out of 15 ||
 * Max || 11 out of 15 || Shot all || 13 out of 15 ||
 * Jake || 9 out of 15 || Shot all || 12 out of 15 ||
 * Louis || 12 out of 15 || Shot all || 11 out of 15 ||
 * Luke || 8 out of 15 || Shot all || 11 out of 15 ||
 * Alec || 10 out of 15 || Shot all || 10 out of 15 ||
 * Eddie || 9 out of 15 || Shot all || 8 out of 15 ||

Analysis: First, we gathered everyone that would give us an accurate experiment. By that we mean that we gather the people that have played basketball or were in season at the time. We gathered people that played basketball, so our experiment could be as accurate as possible. We first started off by warming up and getting readt. Next, we shot our first 15. While shooting our first 15, we went through our routine and shot. After a few people shot we noticed that it would be hard to prove our hypothesis right, because people were making them and not missing. Then we started to shoot our practice shots as we finished up our intitial 15. As we went through a lot were missed and we thought no one would improve. Next, we moved on to the last 15 to find out if the ipercentages would increase and prove our hypothesis right. As we went through the same routine only with practice under our belt this time, our testers were improving slightly. Although two shooters did increase by one miss, majority of us improved our percentage. We calculated and gathered all of the shots made out of intitial, practice, and final. Most of us improved but some proved our experiment wrong. Lastly, we put everything together and gathered all the information together to complete our graph. This lead to the conclusion.

Conclusion: Our hypothesis of ''if we practice our free throws and do a lot of repitions such as 0-40 shots, then our percentage will increase 10% out of 15." was mostly correct through out the experiment. Most of us improved by a couple shots or more. One shooters percentage stayed exactly the same. And another shooter did not improve or stay the same, he decreased in percentage. If we could have a pro basketball player or college player shoot we believe our hypothesis would be even more correct with everyone increasing their ercentage. So at this point the experiement was successful and our hypothesis for the most part was correct.

Limitations: Our hypothesis still stands only with some problems, some things that could interact with our experiment could be shooters were tired or sore because some were in basketball season and could of been these things from a practice or game. Another possibility could be they were not used to the basketball hoops. Also they could have just not had a good day shooting or they have not picked up and shot a ball in awhile. All of these are possibilities that could affect our hypothesis and experiment.

Citations: 1. //Basketball Fundamentals//. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2012. []. 2. Nitty-Gritty Basketball Series by Sidney Goldstein." //How to Improve Basketball Free Throw Shooting//. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. . 3. "Rules of Basketball." //Wikipedia//. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Nov. 2012. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. . 4. "How Long Does It Take for Something to Become a Habit?" //WikiAnswers//. Answers, n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. . 5. "Basketball Court Dimensions." //Basketball Court Dimensions//. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. .