Practice Log

[Guapo]

I decided to keep a practice log to chart my progress. The reason I'm posting it up here is so that the experienced players can read through my observations. I figured you guys might have some valuable insight that would be helpful in my journey.

The drills I'll be doing for now will be from Phil Capelle's Play Your Best Pool.

For the sake of improvement, I do my drills on 9 footers even though I mostly play on bar boxes.

I originally wanted to diagram these drills with a CueTable layout but I ran into some problems. You can read about it here: http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?p=3181570#post3181570

I had a short practice session on 8-30 before my league match. Each part is repeated until I'm successful 5 times.

Perfecting your stroke

Cue ball is placed on the head spot and aimed at the middle diamond at middle diamond on the opposite end. I'm supposed to follow thru and keep my cue in position waiting for the CB to come back. The object of the drill is to have the CB make contact with the cue tip.

1/2 Tip follow
It took me 14 attempts to have 5 successful ones

Centerball
8 Tries to make contact 5 times.

Observations: Most of the misses mentioned above resulted in the CB missing my tip by about 6 inches or less to the right. I'm assuming I'm unintentionally hitting right instead of dead center.

Draw
25 tries to make be successful 5 times. First one came on my tenth try.

Draw is what I struggle with the most. In game situations, they're the shots I miss most often.

Perfecting Your Stroke II

Same as above but this time an OB is placed in the center right between the side pockets. The object is to hit a stop shot, have the OB hit the middle diamond and the end rail and come back to hit the stopped CB.

Found this online:

It took me 22 tries to have the OB contact the CB 5 times.

Observations: On most misses, the OB would come back reasonably straight back at me but the CB had came to rest a few inches to the right or left.

Straight-In Shot Stroke Check

This diagram sums it up. The object is to shoot a stop shot but for the sake of not spending my whole day on this drill, I counted a made shot as a success (which it is on a 9 footer).

15 tries to make 5

Down the Rail Shot Drill

This drill is a straight in shot but the balls are placed a fraction of an inch off the long rail. On the right side for righties and vice versa. Balls are placed on the middle diamonds (lined up with head and foot spot).

Stop
24 tries to make 5

In my defense, these pockets are smaller. And since I'm shooting at the corner pockets at the smallest incoming angle, they have to be dead on given the high speed required. If the shot is off, they'll get rattled out of the pocket.

Follow
14 tries to make 5

Draw
26 tries to make 5

Observations: This is the shot that made me want to make this thread in hopes of getting advice. I noticed that on most of my misses I would inadvertently shoot the CB slightly into the rail before hitting the OB. This hardly happens, if at all, on the other variations of this drill. For some reason I do this frequently on my draw shots.WHY IS THIS???

Field Goal Drill

This is another aim/stroke drill. Three balls are placed on the rail next to each other. They are spread to give a about a 3/8 gap between them. Remove the middle ball. The object is to Shoot the cue ball between the two balls and have it hit the rail without making contact with the "field goal posts".

Width of table

7 tries to be successful 5 times

Observations: Both misses hit the ball on the right-hand ball.

Length of table

11 tries to get 5 clean.




This was a shorter practice. I think it was about two hours. My goal is to do the drills once a week for about 4-5 hours to allow me to get to the rest of the drills in the book. I know more practice would be better. If I could, I would practice 2 or 3 times a week but it's just not feasible at the moment.

Do you guys have any tips or critical comments on where to improve? What else should I be tracking/observing?

Would it be more efficient to just take a set amount of attempts and track how many times I do it right rather than trying until I get 5?

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

 

[scottjen26]

A few comments:

- In your first and second drills, realize that even small amounts of english will cause the ball to not return to your tip. Something like 1/8 of a tip would probably be enough across that distance to cause you to miss, and when shooting most typical shots that amount of english won't actually hurt you too much given the margin for error on a lot of shots. So just don't be too hard on yourself if it takes 10 or 15 tries to get 5 successful.

- Notice though that your draw and follow were much worse than your centerball, which tells me you are probably doing something different on those strokes, so something to work on there. Follow or draw should be the same stroke as with center, smooth back with a nice transition and smooth acceleration through the shot, just with your tip in a different position. Overly simplified of course, but the idea is to not do anything different just because your tip placement is different.

- For the down the rail drill, if the balls are say 1/2" from the rail, you have a small effective pocket to be shooting into and a small margin for error on that shot, especially on a 9' footer with smaller pockets, and especially if hitting it at speed. You really can't touch the side rail on the way down when shooting at speed, and on some tables you can't veer too much to the outer jaw either, so instead of having an inch or two of leeway as when shooting into a full pocket your effective target might only be 1/4" or 1/2" larger than the size of the ball. It's a tough shot when shooting firm or shooting with enough draw to say draw the ball back a few feet, especially if your stroke isn't smooth.


It's great that you are charting your progress and working on your fundamentals. I think either doing each one until you hit a set amount (5 in your case) or doing x number of repetitions and counting your successes is okay, I kind of like doing each one say 10 or 20 times and keeping track of how many you do right slightly better, but I don't think it matters. Some of the better instructors on here may have a better opinion on this.

Good luck, if you would like to discuss anything further PM me I'd be happy to help out.
Scott

 

[Patrick Johnson]

A few comments:

- In your first and second drills, realize that even small amounts of english will cause the ball to not return to your tip. Something like 1/8 of a tip would probably be enough across that distance to cause you to miss, and when shooting most typical shots that amount of english won't actually hurt you too much given the margin for error on a lot of shots. So just don't be too hard on yourself if it takes 10 or 15 tries to get 5 successful.

To work directly on your tip placement, use a striped ball as your "cue ball" for this drill. Place the striped CB so its stripe is vertical and in line with the target (parallel with the long rail). It will give you a visual target (the center of the stripe) and show graphically (the stripe will wobble) if you hit offcenter even slightly. You have to take an extra couple of seconds to orient the stripe carefully each time (or it won't work), but it's worth it.

pj
chgo

 

[Ghosst]

Draw
26 tries to make 5

Observations: This is the shot that made me want to make this thread in hopes of getting advice. I noticed that on most of my misses I would inadvertently shoot the CB slightly into the rail before hitting the OB. This hardly happens, if at all, on the other variations of this drill. For some reason I do this frequently on my draw shots.WHY IS THIS???

Not having been there to see it, I could imagine two possibilities:

You're elevating your cue slightly which is adding unintentional squirt and swerve on the shot if your tip doesn't strike the cueball directly in the vertical center. Pat's suggestion of using a striped ball as a cueball is great for seeing the unintentional side.

The other possibility is also about fundamentals and might be the cause of some of the other shots you made with unintentional side: you might be cinching up the grip on your cue when it contacts the cueball, especially when you add power. That you can try away from the table, just hold the cue out and bridge on a desk or table. Tighten your grip up and watch what happens to the tip.

I'm left-handed and when I do that I get unintentional right side, especially when I'm tired. That's usually my queue to take a break.

 

[duckie]

As said, without seeing what you are doing, it is really all guess work.

You do what I call the "Is everything straight" drill. That's your Perfecting your stroke II.

The reason I use that name:
First, you have to be able to see a straight in shot and set one up. Easier said than done.
Second, the cue has to stroke straight down the center line of balls.
Third, you have to be straight in your alignment/stance to do this. Everything got to be straight, on line.

Its a tough drill to do well, but if you do you are shooting straight.

So, for some reason, you are not shooting straight on the down the rail shot. Sometimes when the balls are close to the rail, the rail being your your view can throw you off. That line the rail makes in your view needs to be ignored.

Sometimes being close to the rail, your can not really place your bridge hand in the the best spot.

It goes on......

Just keep at it, and then one day, you'll go "duh" and start hitting them every time. Or rather a whole lot more.

Here is a drill to try called the tangent line drill. The object is to place ball on the rail where you think the CB will hit after making a cut shot. Then do the shot and see if you hit the ball.

Then try different spins and place a ball on the rail to hit. Of course, move the ball layout around the table.

Its a great drill to learn the different lines that can be made coming off a OB. Great for helping to break up clusters or move balls around to where you want them.

CueTable Help

 

["CaliRed".]

it appears you're using Windows 7 and Firefox. (don't forget when you take screenshots, to make sure you don't have websites up in your tabs, that you don't necessarily want the whole world to see:smile This is a fantastic screen shot program, it's small, it's free and it's does everything you need to do for taking screenshots. http://getgreenshot.org/ Get the 0.8.1 RC1 download

I would go here http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/#sp and run the uninstaller tool. Then run the Full Installer. If you still have issues, scroll up to the top of that page I gave you, and click on the Shockwave Support Center and look around for others that have your issue.

One other thing.. when you post pics in the forums, resize them so they're no wider than 1000 pixels. Yours was 1360 something and ran way off the side of the screen. Keeps the thread from looking all wacky and making people use the scroll bar to scroll over to the right, to be able to see the text in peoples posts and the Next Page button.

hope that helps!

 

[Patrick Johnson]

Here is a drill to try called the tangent line drill. The object is to place ball on the rail where you think the CB will hit after making a cut shot. Then do the shot and see if you hit the ball.

Then try different spins and place a ball on the rail to hit. Of course, move the ball layout around the table.

Its a great drill to learn the different lines that can be made coming off a OB. Great for helping to break up clusters or move balls around to where you want them.

CueTable Help

This is a good drill - it teaches you by forcing you to make precise predictions and compare your results with them.

Another way to mark the target on the rail is to place a coin on top of the cushion nose and see if you can make it jump. This has the advantage of not stopping the CB when you hit it - so you can mark two or three rails to see how accurate you can become at predicting those too.

Takes some extra time to make the predictions and mark the rails, but it's worth it.

pj
chgo

 

[softshot]

it appears you're using Windows 7 and Firefox. (don't forget when you take screenshots, to make sure you don't have websites up in your tabs, that you don't necessarily want the whole world to see:smile This is a fantastic screen shot program, it's small, it's free and it's does everything you need to do for taking screenshots. http://getgreenshot.org/ Get the 0.8.1 RC1 download

I would go here http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/#sp and run the uninstaller tool. Then run the Full Installer. If you still have issues, scroll up to the top of that page I gave you, and click on the Shockwave Support Center and look around for others that have your issue.

One other thing.. when you post pics in the forums, resize them so they're no wider than 1000 pixels. Yours was 1360 something and ran way off the side of the screen. Keeps the thread from looking all wacky and making people use the scroll bar to scroll over to the right, to be able to see the text in peoples posts and the Next Page button.

hope that helps!

I just use the print screen button and then paste it into paint..