Shooting Newsletter Vol. #5, Issue 12, December '03

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THE SHOOTING NEWSLETTER - DECEMBER 2003
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By Tom Nordland, Shooting Coach
Volume 5, Issue Number 12, December 2003
Editor: Tom Nordland
E-mail Tom
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ATTENTION: You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to it. If you'd like to remove yourself from this mailing list, please see the instructions at the end of this newsletter. Our subscriber list is NOT made available to other companies or individuals. We value every subscriber and respect your privacy.

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IN THIS ISSUE
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1. Welcome from the Coach
2. Purpose of this Newsletter
3. You Will Be Asked to Register to Continue Receiving My Newsletter
4. What I'm Up For In 2004!
5. An Indexed Directory of Previous Newsletters
6. KIDS' KORNER
7. Please Bookmark this Website
8. Shooting Clinics / Private Coaching
9. How to Subscribe / Unsubscribe
10. Contact Information

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1. Welcome from the Coach
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Welcome to my free Monthly Basketball Shooting Newsletter. Each month I write about the skill of shooting in the game today and how it can be more effectively learned and coached. If you like what I'm saying, please tell others about it and suggest they subscribe, too. Remember: Great Shooting CAN be taught!

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2. Purpose of this Newsletter
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This newsletter is a vehicle for communicating what I know about shooting and for a conversation on how shooting can be improved. With your help, I intend to shift the game and help players and coaches everywhere re-discover the Lost Art of Shooting. Thank you for reading this and subscribing to it and sharing it with your friends.
-- Tom Nordland

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3. You Will Be Asked to "Register" to Continue Receiving My Newsletter
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The company that hosts this free email list for me, Topica, told me recently that they'll soon be requiring everyone who subscribes to "register" once a year to continue receiving the service. I'm not sure of the process, but I think everyone who's been a subscriber over a year will be so required. I'm checking to see how the process works, but in the meantime here's a "heads up."

If you get an email from Topica regarding this Newsletter and it's about "registering" to keep getting it, please take the few moments to do that. They will ask for your name and ask you to make up a "password." I don't think you'll need to remember it. They can always send it to you on request.

Then they'll ask four generic questions, on gender, birthdate, zip code and country, and ask you to read their "Terms of Service" and agree to them. This is standard stuff. This is a reputable company, so I do not suspect their motives except to expand their services. After you enter the information and click to agree to the Terms, you'll be given a screen that has many business and personal services you can sign up for. They make their money by offering these services to you. You might find something that interests you. If not, just click "Continue" and you're done. If you click on a service, I imagine they share the generic marketing information about you (age, sex, etc.), which many companies try to do. After you register, they'll send you an email asking you to confirm your subscription. One last click on a link in thand you're done.

This is "business as usual" in this culture. I hope you will do this and choose to stay connected to my Newsletters. I'll shop around for another mail list service that isn't so intrusive and hope I can find one. Thankfully they do this just once a year.

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4. What I'm Up For In 2004!
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Here is a snapshot of what has been accomplished to-date and a look at the things I'm working for in the coming year.

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To-Date:
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MY VISION
My vision is to help inspire and lead a Renaissance (revival, rebirth) in shooting in the great game of basketball. Shooting is still at a very low ebb. I've come a long way on this vision and have a long way to go. More and more people are reading my writings and telling me they make sense. When they "try" my suggestions, they shoot better and more easily. They work with kids with the ideas and they get better.

I still get some pushback from coaches that say, "Oh, you HAVE to square up!" Or, "The elbow HAS to be directly under the ball!" Or, "You MUST flip your wrist!" One coach said that the elbow just HAS to form a 90 degree angle as you go to shoot. When I looked at my own elbow after that comment, I can see that there's an approx. 90 degree angle only at one Set Point, that where the ball is just above my shooting eye. But what about weaker kids who have to have the ball below the eye? Then the elbow forms more like a 45 degree or 50 degree angle. Is that wrong? How about if you're a very strong player and have the ball above the head a few inches. Now the angle is about 100-120 degrees. Again, is that wrong? I don't think so.

I know from teaching golf that forcing a "formula" on people never works in the long run. It creates "mechanical" people. You have to let the body experiment and play and find its own way of doing things, though as a coach you can guide students into the areas of behavior and "discovery" that have proven to work.

So, shifting the culture is not an easy thing and will take time. We all have habits and patterns of behavior that are difficult to change. But if something can be proven to be effective, simple, natural and coachable, most people will want it and do whatever it takes to learn and coach it. My intention is that my Method is one of those.

Orders for videos are accelerating. Requests for coaching are up. I spoke at my first "major" basketball clinic, at the Iowa Basketball Coaches' Clinic, this November in Des Moines.

If you agree with my vision, help me get this approach out to your friends and fellow coaches/ parents/players. The easiest way is to refer them to my website (www.swish22.com) and recommend they purchases the Swish video.

TRAINING COACHES
I've done a number of Coaches' Trainings as I travel and locally this past year, and close to 700 coaches have joined my Coaches' Mailing List and started on the path to improved shooting coaching.

PUBLISHED NEWSLETTERS AND ARTICLES
My free monthly Shooting Newsletter is now subscribed to by over 3,000 people from around the world. With this issue, there are now 56 back issues on the archives. A terrific article was written about me in the Oct. 23rd San Francisco Chronicle by a major sports journalist. Here's a link directly to the article:
Scott Ostler Article

WORKING ON SECOND VIDEO
I'm hard at work now on my second video, Swish II, due out by June I'm saying now. The script is taking shape and I'm pleased with what's flowing. I'm assembling video clips and have a couple more shoots planned. The video will very clearly show how to coach the various aspects of shooting jump shots and free throws with this Method. It will discuss how we learn and the idea of coaching by awareness, what an educator from New Zealand calls "Discovery Learning." Step-by-step it will show you how to coach a group of kids (or yourself) to extraordinary, always-on shooting.

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Coming up in 2004:
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VIDEO SALES AND SWISH II
SWISH I: I will continue to market the first video, of course, and will put it out in DVD form as soon as the second video is in the can. Foreign language versions will also be forthcoming.

SWISH II: I will finish this important project by the summer and make it available on DVD like the first video. Like Swish I, it will be also be translated into other languages.

CLINICS AND COACHES' TRAININGS / TRAVEL
I will travel as much as I can to teach players of all ages how to learn the great skill of shooting. The new video will make that less necessary, I hope, as I intend it to express clearly what can be done to coach shooting. I will be putting in more and more effort to train coaches. Besides the second video, due out by June, I hope, I expect to have some kind of on-line training course available, plus occasional mailings and updates. I will be training more and more people here locally in California and maybe set up a Shooting School. I'm committed to making the "For Coaches" page more content-rich with interesting and useful information and practical coaching advice for all levels.

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5. An Indexed Directory of Previous Newsletters
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Here is the Index of Subjects, alphabetically organized, for all previous Newsletters, 55 of them in all. Please note that the on-line version of this Dec. 2003 Newsletter on my website is easier to work with than this email version -- it's more readable and the links are more obvious. It can be viewed at: December 2003 Newsletter

INDEX OF SUBJECTS
(Click on Subject to go to that section)

ARTICLES, VIDEO REVIEWS, SWISH WEBSITE
COACHING
COLLEGE GAME
CONCENTRATION, CONFIDENCE, THE "MENTAL" STUFF
GENERAL SHOOTING/BASKETBALL
HIGH SCHOOL GAME
KIDS - COACHING
KIDS - LEARNING
KIDS - PERFORMING
KIDS - SUGGESTIONS
LEARNING
NBA/WNBA GAME
OLYMPICS
PERFORMANCE, DOING YOUR BEST
PETE NEWELL'S BIG MAN CAMP
POOR SHOOTING
PURE SHOOTING
Q&A's
SHIFT IN THE NEWSLETTER
START OF A NEW SEASON
SUMMER PRACTICE
SWISH VIDEO
SWISH VIDEO SEQUEL- SWISH II
TESTIMONIALS
WHAT'S NEW

Here are the items, with direct links to each Newsletter so you can quickly go there and then scroll to the specific # (the item # in the Newsletter appears first):

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ARTICLES, VIDEO REVIEWS, SWISH WEBSITE
7. Reviews of my "Swish" Video [June '01]
8. Links to My Site [July '01]
5. Video Clips now on my Website [Aug. '01]
6. Links to Four Major Articles on Shooting [Nov. '01]
7. New "For Coaches" section on the site [March '02]
4. Wonderful New Review! [April '02]
8. Mention in Article in the Cincinnati Enquirer [Jan. '03]
4. Article on my "Calling" in the San Francisco Chronicle [Oct. '03]