23 September 2015

Well, it’s been over a year since my last post on this subject, and while I’d like to say I’ve made great strides, In reality progress  has been somewhat spotty.  From November of last year  until about two months ago  I had been practicing my shot almost every day, and was seeing slow but steady improvement.  I even got to the point where I was making the occasional 3-point shot ‘in competition’ (at my age, the ‘in competition’ is  definitely in quotes!).  However, while my shooting prowess was increasing, so was pain in both my knees, and sometime in July  it got to be too much to bear anymore.  When a doctor’s visit and a set of X-rays ruled out skeletal damage as the culprit, I tried some massage therapy to see if that would help; it did, but not significantly enough to get me back on the court.  At the recommendation of the massage therapist,    I started a  physical therapy course, and although I haven’t quite finished the PT sessions, my knee pain has gone from ‘cant-stand-it-anymore’ agony to ‘mild-old-age-annoyance’ stiffness.  I’m not sure how much of this is just abstinence from shooting and how much is due to the exercises, but at this point I’m not sure I care! 😉

So, yesterday I went back to some mild practice shooting for the first time in a couple of months.  Instead of just shooting 3’s, I’m limiting my practices to short-range, foul-line, and what I call ‘2-1/2’ range (halfway between the foul line and the 3-point arc).  I was encouraged to find that the break had not erased all my skill gains (such as they were), and I was still able to shoot with a reasonable amount of good form for an ‘almost-septuagenarian’ ;-).  The following short videos show side and front views of my ‘2-1/2’ point range shooting form.   Hopefully I will be able to increase the frequency and duration of my practice sessions without re-injuring my knees.