Here’s a quick how-to to hone your own skills and timing at clicker training.

Try this: put a bowl on the top of the TV, attach a treat bag to your waist with the bag behind you in the middle of your back, and turn on a basketball game (other sports will do, but basketball is perfect for this).

Every time someone on your team makes a basket, click your clicker. It has to be your team, and the ball has to go in. Try to click the precise moment when the ball is halfway in and halfway out of the hoop. Try not to click for any other movement except a successful shot.

Every time you click correctly, put a treat from your treat bag into the bowl on top of the TV quickly but calmly. You should get the treat into the bowl within three seconds, then step back away from the TV again.

You’ll find yourself clicking at missed shots; if this happens, look up at the ceiling for a second and try again. Do not put a treat into the bowl for missed shots.

You’ll find yourself wanting to move the treat bag to the front of your body. Keep it where it is. You’ll eventually get comfortable reaching around your body for a treat while you move closer to the bowl.

After you get good at all this, try switching hands. Click with the left and treat with the right, or vice versa. Then try clicking and treating with the same hand. Then try clicking with a hand that is also holding a leash.

The more you do this, the better you’ll become at the mechanics of clicking, and the easier it will be to click for your dog in a way that he or she will understand and respond to. Learn the mechanics with the TV, not with the dog, so you can be as awkward and frustrated and ridiculous as you need to be until it becomes natural.
If you don’t have a TV, go someplace with a lot of traffic and click every time a pickup passes a specific street sign, or every time a red car stops at the stoplight. You can also go to a park and click every time a bird lands on a specific tree. The idea is find find something frequent but random, and ideally with a little unpredictability in the behavior.