On the Role of Proprioception in Making Free Throws in Basketball

The aim of this article was to investigate the role that proprioception of the upper limb plays in making basketball free throws.

We designed an experiment to directly correlate the performance of basketball players in a free-throw task and an elbow- and wrist-joint position sense task.

We found a moderately high correlation between the free-throw success rate and wrist-joint position sense and a moderate correlation between the free-throw success rate and elbow-joint position sense. In both cases, the most successful shooters also had the best proprioceptive results.

The results indicate that free-throw success is, at least partly, determined by players' ability to sense the position of the distal joints of their throwing upper limb. From a motor-control point of view, this suggests that basketball players may organize the compensatory behavior between the joints of their free-throwing arm on the basis of proprioception. From a practical point of view, it points toward new training techniques to enhance free-throwing efficiency.