Evidence of compensatory variability preserving release parameters in basketball shooting

Successful basketball shooting is founded on the ability to replicate consistent release parameters, because it is ultimately the height, angle and speed of release that differentiate success from failure. Compensatory variability has been reported for dynamic throwing tasks (Button et al., 2003: Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 74, 257-269), with movement variability being higher at the more distal segments, with the purpose of maintaining consistent joint orientations and release parameters. The purpose of this study was to identify whether compensatory variability was used by the shooting arm to preserve the invariant properties of projectile motion. Six expert basketball players (age 21.83 [+ or -] 0.98 years, height 1.830 [+ or -] 0.07 m, body mass 76.5 [+ or -] 5.9 kg; mean [+ or -] s) provided their voluntary informed consent to participate