the longer the length/distance of the period of no acceleration/constant speed of tip, the easier to have the proper speed when you hit your target/object ball.
so acceleration through the stroke is wrong. and taught by most of the non knowledgeable teachers that just regurgitate what they heard in the past.
it is uneven deceleration that is catastrophic near the cueball that you cannot control. so you need to learn the balance.
Face to face I explain to people that you can't really accelerate through the cue ball, only try to. On the net rather than explain things for the umpteenth time I might simply say accelerate through the cue ball. Trying to coast or maintain a constant speed are both impractical. We have hundreds or in most of our cases thousands of hours practicing a smooth acceleration. Best to not tinker with that before striking the cue ball.
While accelerating we are getting support and guidance from our muscles and other soft tissue. The moment we back off of smooth acceleration it opens the door for bad things to happen. I know that we only need acceleration through the contact with the cue ball but if I tell people to quit accelerating at contact with the cue ball it would be like telling them to use a swipe stroke. Neither is impossible, but pretty damned close to!(grin) By telling people to accelerate through the cue ball we are telling people what we want them to try to do, not what is actually possible with typical cues. I wonder about with two to three pound cues. After enough weight is added to the cue stick there is zero feel of hitting the cue ball. Might be possible to maintain a very high percentage of the initial acceleration.
Coasting or even trying to maintain a constant speed still represents a transition from acceleration. I tried to master constant speed long ago. For all practical purposes it is impossible and speed of the cue ball will be more consistent trying to accelerate gently than trying to maintain a constant speed. A slowly accelerating speed was also more accurate in delivering tip to cue ball. I studied sports medicine for a few years long ago but as far as I know no real authority on sports medicine has ever focused on pool so we get theory and efforts to translate from other activities to pool.
Americans have a history of mystifying what is straightforward. Use your table knowledge to pick out a precise tip position, and then deliver the tip there. You only need to practice one stroke motion to hit anywhere on the cue ball, you don’t need to accumulate a variety of different vehicles to get there. Just figure out how to stroke in a straight line like all of the other cue sports.
I think maybe you need a high school diploma or a GED to believe this, from my observations. No offense.
There are situations where a particular stroke works better than others. The old players had multiple strokes in their bag of tricks, roughly the equivalent of the golfer's bag of clubs. Mosconi used at least three strokes, more if you broke them down precisely. Did he need a pendulum, a slipstroke, and a full arm stroke to be effective? Probably not but he used what he felt was best for a particular shot. I haven't found any stroke that works better for taking a cue ball off of a rail than a slipstroke. A pendulum or a full arm stroke works well for most other shots. A well practiced slipstroke does too.
Whichever stroke we devote ourselves to is best for ourself. Strokes work best with constant tuning, any of them. All have some flaws. It is impossible to truly lock our shoulders so getting low to the table where soft tissue is near the limits of range of motion works best for a pendulum. Those not able to get low to the table have difficulty with a pendulum. There will usually be some motion in the shoulder. How much is too much? Any means you are no longer executing a "pure" pendulum.
I think a stroke from the shoulder with motion in the entire arm is best. The reason is simple. This most closely mimics the same motion the arm makes in walking, an activity we do very often. The pendulum is rarely used for anything but pool. Fixing the shoulder while moving the elbow, wrist and fingers is an unnaturally motion compared to combining action in our shoulder and elbow. Smaller motions in large joints are generally more consistent than large motions in small joints.
Get up and walk naturally to the other end of your home. Now, lock your shoulders and try to use just your elbows and wrists to balance walking back to your computer. I rest my case!
Hu
