Stephen Curry’s balance and muscle memory exercises can be learned and followed at home.
Stephen Curry is the best long-range shooter in NBA history and an inspiration to the world. Stephen Curry’s beautiful shots are a combination of many elements, from shooting form, ball feel, innate genius and other factors. Therefore, to explain the entire art of Stephen Curry ’s shooting would require hundreds of pages of detailed analysis in many fields of science and sports.
It would be quite impossible for an amateur player to follow the same training regimen as Stephen Curry 100%. Limitations in stamina, finances, modern equipment and manpower will prevent an individual from becoming Curry 2.0 exactly like the original. However, learning some simple exercises from this player is worth referencing and brings surprising results to the pursuer, even if it can be practiced at home.
Here are some of Curry’s workouts that fans can follow at home.
Stephen Curry’s Balance Exercise
The importance of balance in shooting can be explained by a series of benefits: such as increasing the success rate of shooting, increasing concentration, reducing injuries, improving shooting speed and importantly, the accuracy rate of difficult shots, leading to and-1 situations. Stephen Curry with his unbelievable shooting has built a solid monument in the hearts of fans, and his basic exercises are also relatively easy to follow.
Curry’s Exercise 1: Stand on one leg, rotate the ball around your body
In the first exercise, the Warriors guard will bend one leg and perform a ball rotation around his stomach, similar to a warm-up (then switch legs). This position helps strengthen the core muscles (including the abdominal muscles, hip muscles, lower back muscles and glutes). It can be seen that Stephen Curry’s supporting leg is very stable, because this player focuses the strength on the thumb, pinky and heel (3 main contact points).
Curry’s Drill 2: Dribble the Ball Standing on One Leg
This simple exercise requires the player to stand on one leg with the other leg bent and facing backwards. Then, similar to Curry, the player will dribble the ball in a crossover motion (also known as a V-dribble). To increase the difficulty of this movement, the player can take off his shoes, which will help increase the power in the 3 main contact points as above. After a break of about 15-30 seconds between sets, the player should switch the bent leg to create balance on both sides.
Curry’s Workout 3: One-Leg Shooting
This is an advanced exercise compared to the previous two. Not only must the practitioner maintain good balance, but the practitioner must also balance the body’s center of gravity while performing the throwing motion. This exercise starts from standing with one leg bent, receiving the ball, performing basic movements to lift the ball up and release the ball. Therefore, the result that the practitioner will receive is the optimization of the throwing motion and the body’s balanced posture when throwing, even complementing the fade-away throw.
Regarding the distance of the shot, the practitioner needs to choose a distance that is suitable for the strength of the hand. According to the expert of Under Armour, Stephen Curry only performs this movement from the free throw line. He encourages practitioners to start from a close distance and gradually move to the free throw line. This exercise helps balance the posture and shooting motion, so practitioners should not throw from too far away because it will lose its effectiveness.
Curry’s Muscle Memory Workout
Muscle memory develops over time. A practiced shot is more likely to be accurate than an improvised one. The drill is called the 57 Drill, and was created by Stephen Curry’s personal trainer Brandon Payne.
Stephen Curry will have to shoot from 7 positions on the court, including two 0-degree angles, two wings, 90-degree angles and 2 positions called slots (located between 90-degree angles and 2 wings). According to Curry’s practice, the Warriors defender will need to shoot accurately 5 out of 7 long shots at each angle. If Curry fails to complete, he will have to return to the previous position. Practitioners can simplify this method by practicing shooting from 7 similar positions, without having to achieve the required accuracy rate.
After completing the long shots, the player will continue with the floater-medium-long shot combination. From a 0-degree angle, the player will perform the floater, then the medium shot, and finish with a 3-point shot. If the ball goes in on all 3 shots, the player will move to the next spot until all 7 positions are completed.
7 positions outside the 3-point circle according to Stephen Curry’s training plan
