My biggest fault in fundamentals is staying down especially in tough situations. Besides having someone put a studded board above my head does anyone have any suggestions?
A studded board may or may not work. Get about 3 feet of fishline...put treble hooks on each end. Put fishline around your neck, and attach hooks to your nutsack! You will only raise up ONCE. LOL :grin-square:
All kidding aside, put more pressure on your bridge hand, and force your hand to stay on the cloth until after the OB goes in.
Scott Lee
http://poolknowledge.com
My biggest fault in fundamentals is staying down especially in tough situations. Besides having someone put a studded board above my head does anyone have any suggestions?
I agree with the above that without seeing you it is hard to say, but....My biggest fault in fundamentals is staying down especially in tough situations. Besides having someone put a studded board above my head does anyone have any suggestions?
Is front and back foot weight distribution a factor ?
Something I notice when some players focus on 'staying down', they actually make it worse because they just try to get their head and shoulders lower to the table, but they do this by slumping forward, not by bending at the hip. This makes the spine curve forward, and that's bad for staying still when you exert yourself.
This is why weight lifters focus on keeping good form, for controlled strength. If your spine is curved forward and you try to fire a hard shot, your back will back tend to snap straight when you exert yourself, making your head and shoulders lift up.
Things to try to make sure your back is in a strong and still position:
- Do not hang your head, this curves your upper spine.
- See if you can stand back from the table a little more so you are stretching just a little bit, bending at the hip, not your back. If you're shooting on the rail, grip the cue forward to shorten up your bridge, rather than standing closer or taller.
- Breastbone out, shoulders wide. No matter how far you turn towards/away from the table in your stance, rotate your shoulders around your spine, don't cock your shoulders when you reach forward to bridge or back to extend the cue, when you pull your shoulders out of plane you weaken your posture and will risk raising up.
- Pull in some deep breaths as you get down on the shot to expand your rib cage and lengthen your spine.
Other factors are more particular to your preferred form, some are mental. Instead of focusing on where your tip hits the ball, try thinking about where you want your tip to finish at the end of the stroke, that can help you stay down. How long do you bridge and how long is your backswing? Some players take a big fluid backswing, but my experience is this works better with a heavier rather than lighter cue, as when you shoot hard a heavier cue will want to continue traveling forward even if you move a little, whereas a lighter cue will want to lift up when you do. If you prefer a lighter cue (as I do) maybe try a shorter backswing and try to make up the speed from better form in your elbow, wrist.
Thorsten Hohmann, Niels Feijen, and Alex Pagulayan are good examples of three very different stances but in each case you see a level back and you can draw a perfectly straight line from their back elbow to the tip of the cue, and their head and both shoulders are in the same plane. Alex has a ltitle trouble getting down quite as low because of his height, but you still see his back straight and shoulders in plane. These guys never raise up because of solid posture and fundamentals, so while there might be players out there that can beat them on a good day if these guys lose focus, at least they never suffer a breakdown of their shooting fundamentals even on their worst day.
Then you have Stephen Hendry with one of the most rock steady postures imaginable, and he dominated one of the hardest games in the world for over a decade:
Then you have Earl who as he's aged has started slumping a lot, so he's now strapping weights to himself to stop him moving. If you haven't spent the majority of your life on a pool table and/or can't practice 8 hours a day, don't slump like this:
When Earl's not feeling it, he pops up on shots and gets frustrated. See the difference in how all the others hold their upper body, even though they all have different ways of placing their feet and turning to the table?
Earl is very physically fit. I don't think his issues are as much age as they are habit. I've had this discussion with him before. I told him I don't think he needs those weights. He seems to think he does but I think he's wrong.
I know he runs a lot, does he do anything for strength training? It's got to be hard being such a perfectionist and also having ruled competition for decades on natural and self-taught talent you've had since you were a kid, I'm sure he's reluctant to change the habits that used to work. Not that they don't still work,I play at Steinway every once in a while and have seen him shooting, it's still incredible shooting... but you're right, weights aren't the answer. I don't mean it disparagingly when I say that things have changed now that he's gotten older, even if we take care of ourselves carefully, our bodies change. I'm not even 40 and I definitely feel the effects of aches, pains, and stiffness affecting parts of my shot I never had to monitor at all.
Post of the year!!!Something I notice when some players focus on 'staying down', they actually make it worse because they just try to get their head and shoulders lower to the table, but they do this by slumping forward, not by bending at the hip. This makes the spine curve forward, and that's bad for staying still when you exert yourself.
This is why weight lifters focus on keeping good form, for controlled strength. If your spine is curved forward and you try to fire a hard shot, your back will back tend to snap straight when you exert yourself, making your head and shoulders lift up.
Things to try to make sure your back is in a strong and still position:
- Do not hang your head, this curves your upper spine.
- See if you can stand back from the table a little more so you are stretching just a little bit, bending at the hip, not your back. If you're shooting on the rail, grip the cue forward to shorten up your bridge, rather than standing closer or taller.
- Breastbone out, shoulders wide. No matter how far you turn towards/away from the table in your stance, rotate your shoulders around your spine, don't cock your shoulders when you reach forward to bridge or back to extend the cue, when you pull your shoulders out of plane you weaken your posture and will risk raising up.
- Pull in some deep breaths as you get down on the shot to expand your rib cage and lengthen your spine.
Other factors are more particular to your preferred form, some are mental. Instead of focusing on where your tip hits the ball, try thinking about where you want your tip to finish at the end of the stroke, that can help you stay down. How long do you bridge and how long is your backswing? Some players take a big fluid backswing, but my experience is this works better with a heavier rather than lighter cue, as when you shoot hard a heavier cue will want to continue traveling forward even if you move a little, whereas a lighter cue will want to lift up when you do. If you prefer a lighter cue (as I do) maybe try a shorter backswing and try to make up the speed from better form in your elbow, wrist.
Thorsten Hohmann, Niels Feijen, and Alex Pagulayan are good examples of three very different stances but in each case you see a level back and you can draw a perfectly straight line from their back elbow to the tip of the cue, and their head and both shoulders are in the same plane. Alex has a ltitle trouble getting down quite as low because of his height, but you still see his back straight and shoulders in plane. These guys never raise up because of solid posture and fundamentals, so while there might be players out there that can beat them on a good day if these guys lose focus, at least they never suffer a breakdown of their shooting fundamentals even on their worst day.
Then you have Stephen Hendry with one of the most rock steady postures imaginable, and he dominated one of the hardest games in the world for over a decade:
Then you have Earl who as he's aged has started slumping a lot, so he's now strapping weights to himself to stop him moving. If you haven't spent the majority of your life on a pool table and/or can't practice 8 hours a day, don't slump like this:
When Earl's not feeling it, he pops up on shots and gets frustrated. See the difference in how all the others hold their upper body, even though they all have different ways of placing their feet and turning to the table?
I know he runs a lot, does he do anything for strength training? It's got to be hard being such a perfectionist and also having ruled competition for decades on natural and self-taught talent you've had since you were a kid, I'm sure he's reluctant to change the habits that used to work. Not that they don't still work,I play at Steinway every once in a while and have seen him shooting, it's still incredible shooting... but you're right, weights aren't the answer. I don't mean it disparagingly when I say that things have changed now that he's gotten older, even if we take care of ourselves carefully, our bodies change. I'm not even 40 and I definitely feel the effects of aches, pains, and stiffness affecting parts of my shot I never had to monitor at all.
I have a different slant on fundamental flaws that I learned from Nic Barrow that might help you. Every fundamental flaw symptom is your body and mind trying to help you and telling you something.
Jumping up or looking at that shot might mean that you were never 100 per cent sure that your imagined stroke and line of aim will pocket the ball. Thus you jump up to see if it went in.
Visualize the shot going in, feel it in your body and see it in your mind, place a bit more weight on your bridge hand, develop a consistent optimal eye pattern and be still when you stroke.
Remember you can only improve if you freeze after the stroke and evaluate the results. Was it a cueing error, an aiming error, or table conditions? If you jump up you lose an opportunity to improve.
Hope that helps.