To Be a Better Player
- By SSP
- Main Forum
- 111 Replies
That negative self talk comes from thinking while down on the shot, once you get in your stance your ONLY thought should be moving your cue straight in the direction of the shot, don't even think about speed of stroke, your body already knows what to do, you have to allow it to, one of the things that clicked with me from the book was this....That kind of play was often knocked as "Free wheeling". It works good gambling but you do often make mistakes or miss balls. Playing like that in tournaments that are essentially sudden death is risky.
Earl had a free wheel that was off the charts but even he was a bit more controlled in tournament play. Mosconi, forget about it. I saw him play many times. When he got going he could hardly wait for the balls to stop rolling.
The wing shot in an example of how you can make balls without even aiming. You just do it by instinct. One of the hardest parts of pool is it is not at all reactive. Unlike hitting a baseball or tennis in pool nothing happens till you make it happen, like a golf putt.
Once your mind starts with the negative self talk, it gets hard no matter who you are.
You do thousands of things everyday you don't think of that require great skill and accuracy, you probably woke up this morning, got out of bed, walked to the bathroom, opened the door, turned on the light without a single thought, you didn't calculate how much pressure it would take to open the door or turn on the light, let alone the balance required to walk, how did you do it? You've done it thousands of times, you've done it so many times the subconscious part of your brain already knows how to do that, much like walking and talking, the problem comes when the conscious part of the brain tries to take over what the subconscious part of the brain already knows what to do, like thinking when I was down on the shot, for most people including me it takes a lot to learn to "let go" we are taught to think things through, when it comes to performing precise physical tasks, first calculate with your conscious brain and then free your subconscious brain to do what it does best.