The “QWERTY Keyboard”. An obstacle course to human proficiency.

Q.W.E.R.T.Y.  are the top row of letters that start on the left-hand side of a typewriter keyboard. Placement of those letters and the arrangement of all of the other letters on the keyboard were designed with the sole objective of making it as difficult as possible for a typist to type quickly and easily. On early mechanical typewriters the typeface for each letter was at the end of long steel arm that was raised to hit the ribbon and leave an impression on a sheet of paper when the typewriter key was pushed down. Early typists were able to hit one letter, then a second, and then a third, before the arm of the first letter had fallen back from the paper, causing the keys to jam and damage the typewriter. To solve this problem all of the most commonly used letters were arranged to make them harder to reach, slow the typist down, and prevent key jams. Human speed, efficiency, and accuracy were sacrificed to meet the requirements of the machine.

Technology solved the “qwerty Keyboard” problem, but ‘tradition’ maintains it.
Electric ball typewriters and electronic keyboards do not have mechanical arms that can jam. Ergonomic (biology and mechanics, man and machine) key arrangements have been created that eliminate the unnecessarily difficult movements on the ‘traditional’ keyboard and replace them with efficient, streamlined movements that improve accuracy and are the unquestioned champion in speed competition. ’Traditional’ keyboard typists cannot compete with ergonomic typists because the traditional movements they employ prevent them from ever being able to reach a higher level of performance. All of the computer keyboards in the country could have been changed to be ergonomically correct with a simple program change and swapping the key caps on the keyboard to new positions, thus allowing everyone in the country to benefit from the increased speed, efficiency, and accuracy. The savings in costs to companies for the time spent typing and correcting would run into the billions. To transition to the new method, computers could contain programs for both types of keyboard and allow the user to select the keyboard type they wished to use. Schools could start teaching the new method and older users could continue to use the ‘traditional’ method. All of this, however, is wishful thinking. Tradition has won out over technology. Although a superior method has been available for many decades, teachers remain mired in the past, resistant to change, and continue to teach the same old, antiquated, ‘traditional’ method to generation after generation. The ‘traditional’ outdated and inefficient keyboard remains to this day
and the movements it mandates continue to undermine the proficiency of unsuspecting users.

Basketballs “qwerty Keyboard” style of shooting mechanics.
Much like the “qwerty Keyboard”, which was designed to make it as difficult as possible for a typist to type quickly and easily and achieve high levels of speed, efficiency, and accuracy, so to are the ‘traditional’ basketball shooting fundamentals being taught to players today. The unnecessary, unproductive steps they contain consume an inordinate amount of a player’s time that could be better spent in learning more effective techniques. Mastering those ‘traditional’ movements in order to achieve ‘repeatability’ is the quest for the ‘Holy Grail’ in basketball, or so players are told by their coaches. It is a long, hard, arduous journey. Some players and shooting coaches do achieve ‘repeatability’ after taking millions of trial and error practice shots and spending thousands and thousands of hours practicing. Practice, practice, practice is the anthem they chant out to those who would follow in their footsteps. Most of the pros have one or more serious flaws in their ‘form’, and yet they still manage to shoot with a fair degree of accuracy. Others trying vainly to copy them do not fare as well and after years of practice and despite all of their valiant efforts remain relegated to the sidelines. The dynamics of ‘traditional’ mechanics ‘handicaps’ players and prevents them from achieving higher levels of performance. Breaking up the flow of motion into all of these steps creates a whole host of problems. All of these complicated steps make the entire learning process unnecessarily cumbersome, long, difficult, and numbingly repetitive. The movements that are taught are awkward and cannot be executed precisely the same way each time. These awkward movements make it nearly impossible to achieve the fluidity and repeatability of form in execution required to develop and maintain accuracy. The time spent in making all of these unnecessary movements before taking the shot increases the risk of a player missing the shot or an opponent stealing the ball or blocking or altering the shot.  In short,
POOR FORM – PRODUCES POOR PERFORMANCE – AND POOR RESULTS!

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