Open Source Pool - The Hidden Dance of Stroke and Aim
- By Oliver
- Main Forum
- 35 Replies
The Role of Visual Perception
In order to understand how to ‘reset’ our vision, we have to understand what actually happened when our aim adapted to our stroke.
In cuesports, we use both eyes to aim because depth perception is very useful to assess the geometry of the table and estimate angles. Our brain essentially receives information from two points of reference (binocular vision) - calculating and showing us a composite image.
What this means is that neither of our eyes is actually aligned with the shot line or the cue. Each of our eyes sees the line from the side, at an angle. And our brain will translate these two angled views into a single visual that from a specific position will appear to us as “straight”. What this means is that there is no objective “straight” line as long as we use both eyes to aim - there is only our personal perception of it. And this perception can be tweaked and changed.
The amazing thing here is that in the scenario of the player with the arced stroke, their brain will over time start to interpret the angled cue as correct (straight), and the side of the cue ball as center (which is the only scenario for that player to achieve a consistent center ball hit). This happens, it appears, by effectively registering less information from one of our eyes. It's called eye suppression. Our brain still receives the picture from both eyes, but chooses to ignore part of it.
It is an effect similar to how our nose is always in our vision but our brain filters it out and we don’t actively see it. We only “notice” our nose if we consciously focus on it. You can try it now.
I’ve arrived at this conclusion through personal experimentation and research. I would love it if a professional in the field would share their expertise here.
The result is that once your brain has configured your vision and therefore your aim to your arced stroke, a straight shot will now look wrong! Center of the cue ball will look as either left or right and a perfectly straight cue will look angled.
How to learn to see “straight” again?
In my trials to understand what was going on with my vision, I saw an eye doctor and started reading about various vision and eye conditions. A breakthrough came when I stumbled on something called a “Brock string” - a vision therapy tool, used to train eye teaming and focusing abilities.
I had an idea to tweak the the traditional Brock string into a pool specific tool more out of curiosity than anything. When using it for the very first time, I immediately noticed something odd - when I placed the tool at the exact spot under my chin where the cue would normally be - the vision picture of the tool from one of my eyes became much fainter. The vision from my other eye almost completely took over.
Somehow I was seeing the string (cue) almost exclusively with my right eye. My left eye was somehow partially “switched” off. As a result, the string looked “straight” to me only if I moved it about half an inch further towards my right eye, which was very close to the same amount that my cue was always offline by!
There was a simple exercise to address this. I closed my right eye, “forcing” my brain to show me the sight picture only from the (previously suppressed) left eye only. When I then opened both eyes, the previously faint image from the left eye now appeared much stronger. It literally felt like a switch was flicked and the sight from my left eye got turned “on” again.
It only took a few minutes of this exercise and all of a sudden I could see the cue correctly in my peripheral vision with both eyes when I was playing, and for the very first time it became trivial to line up perfectly straight.
It no longer looked “wrong”.
At first, the effect wouldn't last very long, and I had to keep “reminding” my brain to show me the vision from my left eye. But as I kept doing the exercise for about 10 minutes every morning and night, it has now, after about 4 months, become pretty much permanent.
Once I was finally able to line up and aim “straight”, the straight delivery version of my stroke I had previously built finally had the right circumstances to start to work properly. And once the shots started going in with straight aim and a straight stroke, the whole thing became easier - it became a self reinforcing system.
I no longer have “terrible” days where I miss routine shots for no reason. I still have good days and bad days, sure, but my A game is much much closer to my B and C game. It is an incredible boost to your confidence when you can shoot under pressure, without having that “good” gut feeling about a shot and you still make it perfectly, purely focusing on good mechanics. I no longer rely fully on subconscious corrections to make the shot work.
Conclusion
This struggle revealed that the relationship between stroke and aim is much more complex than traditionally thought. Whether choosing to refine existing patterns or rebuild from foundation, success requires targeting both the mechanical and the perceptual, at the same time.
Thanks for reading
Once again, whoever has read this mammoth of a post to the very end, thank you. It has taken me months of work to put together. I hope it will help someone and I would love to hear from players working on similar issues.
In order to understand how to ‘reset’ our vision, we have to understand what actually happened when our aim adapted to our stroke.
In cuesports, we use both eyes to aim because depth perception is very useful to assess the geometry of the table and estimate angles. Our brain essentially receives information from two points of reference (binocular vision) - calculating and showing us a composite image.
What this means is that neither of our eyes is actually aligned with the shot line or the cue. Each of our eyes sees the line from the side, at an angle. And our brain will translate these two angled views into a single visual that from a specific position will appear to us as “straight”. What this means is that there is no objective “straight” line as long as we use both eyes to aim - there is only our personal perception of it. And this perception can be tweaked and changed.
The amazing thing here is that in the scenario of the player with the arced stroke, their brain will over time start to interpret the angled cue as correct (straight), and the side of the cue ball as center (which is the only scenario for that player to achieve a consistent center ball hit). This happens, it appears, by effectively registering less information from one of our eyes. It's called eye suppression. Our brain still receives the picture from both eyes, but chooses to ignore part of it.
It is an effect similar to how our nose is always in our vision but our brain filters it out and we don’t actively see it. We only “notice” our nose if we consciously focus on it. You can try it now.
I’ve arrived at this conclusion through personal experimentation and research. I would love it if a professional in the field would share their expertise here.
The result is that once your brain has configured your vision and therefore your aim to your arced stroke, a straight shot will now look wrong! Center of the cue ball will look as either left or right and a perfectly straight cue will look angled.
How to learn to see “straight” again?
In my trials to understand what was going on with my vision, I saw an eye doctor and started reading about various vision and eye conditions. A breakthrough came when I stumbled on something called a “Brock string” - a vision therapy tool, used to train eye teaming and focusing abilities.
I had an idea to tweak the the traditional Brock string into a pool specific tool more out of curiosity than anything. When using it for the very first time, I immediately noticed something odd - when I placed the tool at the exact spot under my chin where the cue would normally be - the vision picture of the tool from one of my eyes became much fainter. The vision from my other eye almost completely took over.
Somehow I was seeing the string (cue) almost exclusively with my right eye. My left eye was somehow partially “switched” off. As a result, the string looked “straight” to me only if I moved it about half an inch further towards my right eye, which was very close to the same amount that my cue was always offline by!
There was a simple exercise to address this. I closed my right eye, “forcing” my brain to show me the sight picture only from the (previously suppressed) left eye only. When I then opened both eyes, the previously faint image from the left eye now appeared much stronger. It literally felt like a switch was flicked and the sight from my left eye got turned “on” again.
It only took a few minutes of this exercise and all of a sudden I could see the cue correctly in my peripheral vision with both eyes when I was playing, and for the very first time it became trivial to line up perfectly straight.
It no longer looked “wrong”.
At first, the effect wouldn't last very long, and I had to keep “reminding” my brain to show me the vision from my left eye. But as I kept doing the exercise for about 10 minutes every morning and night, it has now, after about 4 months, become pretty much permanent.
Once I was finally able to line up and aim “straight”, the straight delivery version of my stroke I had previously built finally had the right circumstances to start to work properly. And once the shots started going in with straight aim and a straight stroke, the whole thing became easier - it became a self reinforcing system.
I no longer have “terrible” days where I miss routine shots for no reason. I still have good days and bad days, sure, but my A game is much much closer to my B and C game. It is an incredible boost to your confidence when you can shoot under pressure, without having that “good” gut feeling about a shot and you still make it perfectly, purely focusing on good mechanics. I no longer rely fully on subconscious corrections to make the shot work.
Conclusion
This struggle revealed that the relationship between stroke and aim is much more complex than traditionally thought. Whether choosing to refine existing patterns or rebuild from foundation, success requires targeting both the mechanical and the perceptual, at the same time.
Thanks for reading
Once again, whoever has read this mammoth of a post to the very end, thank you. It has taken me months of work to put together. I hope it will help someone and I would love to hear from players working on similar issues.