The Shooting Correction Machine: An Honest Review After Three Years

I've been using the Shooting Correction Machine personally for three years. I've also sold a few hundred of them, watched coaches use them, watched parents buy them, and watched some of those parents email back asking for refunds.

Here's the honest version of what this thing does, what it doesn't, and who should be buying it.

What it does well - three things, all real

1. It locks the elbow at exactly 90 degrees.

The single biggest mechanical flaw in amateur shooting is the elbow flaring out or collapsing in on the release. A kid who learned to shoot in their driveway with no coaching will have their elbow drift by 10-20 degrees on every shot - and they won't know it. They feel like they're shooting straight. The ball wobbles. They miss.

The Shooting Correction Machine doesn't ask them to think about their elbow. It physically holds the arm in the 90-degree position. The shooter takes 30 reps. The next 30 they take without the machine, and the body remembers where the elbow was supposed to be. Repeat for four weeks and the muscle memory is built.

This is the single highest-ROI mechanical drill in basketball training. If you can fix the elbow, you fix 60% of bad shots automatically.

2. It forces a consistent release path.

With the elbow locked, the only variable left is the wrist snap. The machine effectively isolates the wrist - which means a shooter can drill the same release path 100 times in a row and feel exactly what consistent shooting feels like.

Most shooters have never experienced what it feels like to release the same way three times in a row. The machine makes that experience possible - and then it becomes the baseline they're trying to recreate without the device.

3. It survives gym abuse.

Mine has been bumped, dropped, sweat-on, stored in a cold gym closet through three winters, and used by probably 200 kids. The frame is dented in two places. The mechanism still works exactly as designed.

What it doesn't do - also three things, also real

1. It does not fix your base or footwork.

A shooter with a perfect elbow position and terrible footwork is still a bad shooter. The machine fixes upper-body mechanics. Lower-body mechanics - pivot, base, shoulder alignment - that's still on you and your coach.

If you buy the SCM and expect your kid to suddenly become a shooter, you'll be disappointed. The machine is one tool in a larger development plan, not a complete training system.

2. It does not make somebody a shooter.

It makes their form repeatable. That's different. Two players can have identical elbow position and identical release path - and one shoots 38% and the other shoots 52%. The difference is volume, base mechanics, shot selection, court awareness, and a hundred other things the machine doesn't touch.

3. It is not portable.

The machine weighs about 45 pounds and lives where you put it. It's not a travel device. Don't buy it expecting to bring it to tournaments. Buy it expecting to install it in one location - a gym, a basement training space, a school weight room - and have it stay there.

Who it's perfect for

• Shooting coaches running clinics. Five kids in a session, each taking 30 minutes of focused form work on the SCM, you can fix more in one session than three weeks of unstructured drills.
• AAU and high-school programs. One machine, $1,199, used by 15 players, used twice a week - the cost per use is about $1.30 in year one and zero in years 2-5.
• Players grooved into bad form. Anyone who has shot for 5+ years with elbow flare. The machine breaks the pattern faster than verbal coaching does.
• Parents of serious players (10+ hours/week). If your kid is playing year-round and you have a basement or driveway gym, the SCM is one of the best investments you can make for skill development.

Who it's wrong for

• Parents who want a shortcut. "I'll buy this and my kid will become Steph Curry." No. Shooting is the cumulative result of thousands of correct reps. The machine accelerates form fixes, but it doesn't replace the work.
• Teams that travel constantly. No place to install it. Look at portable shooting aids instead - the Shot Cube basketball shooting aid and the Pure Shot shooting aid are travel-friendly form fixers.
• Players who already shoot 45%+. At that level, the form isn't broken - your gains come from volume and shot selection, not mechanical correction.

My take, three years in

The Shooting Correction Machine is the best $1,199 piece of equipment I've ever bought for a basketball training space. I've sold dozens, used one personally for years, and recommended it to coaches at every level from middle school to a couple of NCAA D-II programs.

It's not magic. It's a mechanical fix for a mechanical problem. Use it for what it's good at - fixing the elbow and grooving the release path - and don't expect it to do things it can't do.

If you're a shooting coach, a program director, or a serious player looking for the right tool to drill form correction systematically, this is the buy. Ships from our US facility with tracking. Pair it with the rest of our training equipment collection for a complete form-and-finish setup.

The kids whose elbows I've fixed with this machine are now in college. Some are starting. The machine is still in the gym, still doing its job.

Related reading

• Master basketball shooting form
• Small forward skill development
• Michael Jordan's final shot mechanics

Images: Pixabay. Used under the Pixabay Content License.