See AND Shoot

IamCalvin06

IamCalvin06

Yang "The Son of Pool"
Silver Member
Okay anyone else out there think they have trouble with Pro/One? I can tell you now that it has been the ever elusive high for me and i have been chasing it for years. I have spent 4-12 hrs a day for the past 3 months attacking Pro/one thru trial and error.

Yes i have the DVD! Yes i have seen and await every support video/new thread about Pro/one! I am a junkie chasing the high i felt when i first used Pro/one.

I email and call Stan on the regular with some crazy notions and problems why i cant get it right.

We have all heard at one point or another someone say "i shoot better drunk" well... the system first clicked for me over a few drinks. Needless to say its bc i know the system and i just let my eyes and body take over.

So then for months now i've been tinkering and trying all these different things trying to get it right. I turn my head and my body into crazy positions trying to see visuals properly.

I forgot to mention that i learned the original pivot method from Hal and also incorporated Ron Vitello's hip pivot. So for any of you who went my route and are having issues with Pro/one...

I am Right Handed Left Eye Dominant. For some odd reason i see my 75% of my visuals with my Non Dominant Eye.

So I email Stan and tell him almost daily whats going on with me. He usually gives me the same answers.
1. Use your strongest Visual Alignment and Sweep to Full Stance with That Alignment.
2. The CB is your Target
3. Once you have your Visuals Forget about them and Sweep
4. See And Shoot

I was starting to to think that there's no help for my problems. Until today... See AND Shoot. Simple enough.

I thought my Biggest Error was Seeing Visuals. I felt as though my Sweeps were on point. I practice with a line on the table all the time. However i failed to realize something important.

I learned to hip pivot from Ron V and Dave Segal (spiderwebcomm) also recommended it for Hal's original CTE manual pivot bc it keeps your Eye moving in line with the Cue. This was a great technique for the system bc you feel yourself moving into the shotline as though you are scraping your tip across the face of the OB. Its a very powerful feeling especially when you're firing a ball in table length at 100mph. :cool:

But for Pro/one Sweeps it is like a f*cking plague. For months now i have been trying to achieve the same thing. Still looking at the OB and as i Sweep my Eye is connected to the Tip like there's a chain connected to it. Wtf right? i know i can't be the only one.

So lets recap what Pro/one is.

1. See Visuals at ball address from your strongest visual alignment
2. Focus on CCB and Sweep
3. *****SEE THE NEW CENTER**** and align your cue!!!!
4. Drill it into the back of the hole and let the whole pool hall know what it sounds like to make a ball instead of hoping the pocket will accept your slop.

Biggest thing is SEE and Shoot. Dont let the Cue beat you to the shot. Put the Cue Down and Sweep. See the new CCB and the shotline. Now do it with your cue. I know this isn't a problem for the masses but for those of us O.G. pivoters... yea... i feel your pains.

Let go of the OB she's that psycho GF who gave AMAZING H34D but she's nuts!! The CB is your New BFF! i know i know its tough bc you feel like you're shooting blind not seeing the OB. But she'll always be there, waiting on you to finish stroking and when you're ready... just fire away and that B!tch will be gone.

Ok im sure Stan doesnt approve but im in a good mood. Stan's a true ambassador to the game just like Hal! They never ask for anything and are always willing to help. Never sticking out their hands and telling you to pay for something that's not real. I have never met Stan personally but Nevel should pass his nickname over bc Stan's the "TRUTH"!
 
For those who wish to expand their knowledge on pro one or are having trouble with it and live in the USA I'd recommend getting some one on one lessons with Stan.
:smile:
Peace
 
This may be patently unhelpful to you, but it depends on why you're chasing the system. If you're doing it, just to feel like you've mastered that particular thing and that's it, I kind of get that. If you're doing it because you want to play better pool, I don't get that at all. I don't know how well you play, but I think the vast majority of people can't hit what they aim at on a consistent enough basis, so aiming systems are a lot less helpful than learning how to hit what you aim at. I mentioned this in one other post, and I'm just putting it here, because I didn't realize people were putting in those kind of hours trying to learn an aiming system, and still maybe not getting it. If you set up a length of the table shot on a 9 foot table that's straight in, and don't use a pivot method or anything, just aim at the center, bottom of the object ball, where the ball touches the felt, you're aiming right. If you miss at all, it's not your aim that's the problem. Think about it. Even if you make the shot 90% of the time, that's not enough to beat the ghost in a 9 ball rack
even twice in a row, even if your cue ball never scratches, never gets hooked, and never leaves a bank. That's not very good. So if you don't make that ball even 90 percent of the time, there's no aiming system on the planet that can help you do any good. If you're going to invest those kind of hours, and your reason for doing it is to play better pool, it seems to me that your time would be better spent increasing your percentage of being able to hit what you aim at.
 
I agree wih you on most you said!
Actually missing a straight in shot can have several reasons:
Like you said: Stroke issues like mostly:

-Cueing across the line of aim based on wrong cue alignment
- elbow gets out of line during the process of stroking
- the wrist makes sideway move in the moment of impact

But apart from this the player may not perceive the center of the cue ball correctly and applies side spin although he thinks his tip contacts dead center.-- therefore the cueball will deflect and will not contact the object ball at the intended point.

Further: the player does may not have his cue under it's dominant eye and therfore perceives an untrue picture of where he thinks the point on the object ball is and where it actually is.

OR

The player actually aims with both eyes but the cue is not centered under his chin...


So all in all there is nothing more important than getting down the basics and I defenitly recommend to take lessons from an instructor...


But if you want to develop your abilities and knowledge about the game, I recommend to read books, watch videos, play with stronger players, do drills like the exams of the Billiard University for example, but as well working with and on different aiming systems.
Nothing will substitute table time but this table time can be more or less usefull depending on what you do during this time!
Working on aiming systems will lead players to work on certain shots in a highly structured way. They will test different speeds and different kind of strokes ( stun/follow/draw/side spin...)
This is what will lead to a better understanding of it all...

Just my opinion!

Ekkes
 
Straight-ins are the easiest shots to line up in pool and yet a lot of people have problems with them. It comes down to a fault during the stroke mostly so they are a good tool to find out what's going on with your stroke.
This being said, when the shots become tougher, and not so clear cut how do you why you missed? Aiming and alignment problem or a stroke issue? If you can utilise an aiming system like PRO1 effectively, you know its lining you up for a centre pocket pot each time so when you miss a tough cut, you know it isn't because you aimed or aligned wrong, but because you had a stroke issue. If you are willing to learn, an instructor or even yourself can make changes to stop what ever messed up with your stroke. Which will lead you to play better pool.

You have to take into how much confidence people take from aiming systems. They take comfort in knowing that to pocket the ball they have to follow X amount of steps and then stroke it. I've noticed first hand in high pressure situations that falling back on an aiming system takes a lot of pressure away from you and you stroke more fluently.

You can't play without an aiming system IMO. Whether its by memory and hitting a million balls, 90/90, SEE, PRO1 or whatever. Everyone uses one, after all you have to aim in pool.
 
I can definitely see using an automated, repetitive routine, that can take the pressure off and improve consistency. I just think there are a lot simpler ones that take less time to learn, than the things I've seen from a lot of these systems. And as for unintentional squirt on the straight in, due to added english, it seems to me that can be fixed pretty quickly, too, by lining the cue at the center bottom of the cue ball--that's center. If it's done intentionally for a couple days, no matter what you're doing with your eye alignment, your brain will learn what center looks like to you. You can check to see how you're doing by seeing if whitey's spinning after contact, and adjust. If you can't find center ball using this, I can't imagine an easier way to find it, and nothing I've seen from any aiming systems make me think they have a better way to get a person to contact the cue ball without left or right than this, especially not using a pivot. With this you can keep the tip on the vertical central axis the entire time, rather than sweeping horizontally. This is simple to do. And yes, if you never work on the straight in, and just hit other shots, you will have no idea what is at fault. If you're trying an aiming system to see if it works for you, and your straight in ball percentage, isn't high enough, you will have no idea if your particular aiming system is worthwhile. If you miss, it may be because you're aiming perfectly, but your stroke is terrible, and if you make it, it may be because the aiming system is terrible, and your stroke missed what you were aiming at and made the ball. Then you're just stoke listening to other people's opinions and hoping they're right, and there's a lot of disagreement. That's why it's important to have a good idea of your straight in percentage. Say you make the straight in 90 percent, but another angle you set up, you only make 75 percent. Then an aiming system might help. If every shot you shoot has an equivalent percentage to your straight in percentage, than an aiming system won't help. Those are necessary numbers to know before considering learning an aiming system, especially if you're planning on spending that kind of time and I assume, money, on it. I'm not saying that no one should ever learn an aiming system, I'm just saying they should take a day or two to figure out their numbers, to see if the right aiming system would help at all and justify an investment.
 
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Yeah that's true enough. Aiming systems shouldn't be aimed at new comers. I know when I first started out aged 6 my instructer drummed my stroke into me first, besides, I was too young to under stand fractional aiming which he later taught me. Time was spent on basics, and after a year I was aiming from memory pretty much. But this was on a 6x3 snooker table. So once I was big enough to advance to a 9x4.5 snooker table my memory was as good as useless. The learning curve started again, and then again when I moved to a 12x6.

Aiming system + solid stroke = pro. That's putting it in very simple terms, but you won't find a pro that doesn't know how to aim, and doesn't have a solid stroke.

As far as straight ins are concerned; I hit a lot of straight ins and the CB has side spin, yet the ball goes dead straight and the CB stops in the ghost ball position. It can be hard to spot with a plain CB, which most people play with. I never was taught straight ins as a means to test my cueing accuracy. Instead my instructor placed the CB on the brown spot and a red on black spot and I would try hit the red head on. The instructor would remove the black after contact and the CB had to come back up table and touch your tip for it to be classed as straight. On a 12x6 this is really difficult. On any table its difficult actually, straight is straight so it doesn't matter if it travels 7ft or a mile, its going to go straight.

If I were teaching someone I'd rather give them 10 shots up and down table back to tip, gather a percentage and then work on improving it. All the time they can be using a system or not. If a person only hits CCB 3 out of 10 times, they are going to pocket 3 out of 10 balls with a centre ball aiming system. I don't know if the same could be said for someone who didn't know how to aim.
 
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So what you're saying is...

Look if you haven't tried or experienced it then it would be hard to express why i "chase" it. CTE Pro/one is at the core of what shooting pool is.

If you must know i do have a straight stroke and it can be verified by a couple of instructors namely Scott Lee. I took a lesson from him 3 yrs ago and the first thing he said was, "your stroke is excellent, what else would you like to work on today".

The biggest let down for me in pool was the fact that i could do almost everything but i was taking forever to aim.

i.e. I would get down on a shot and get up 2 or 3 times bc it never looked right. I would never shoot a shot until i felt like i was on the line. My game was strong but never effortless. After a set or match i was mentally exhausted.

Pro/One leads a player to the proper shot line, and can actually straighten out someone with a less than average stroke. It gives you basically what a Pro would see at Ball Address and Thru Full Stance.

This is where my aiming suffered before Pro/one. I couldn't match what i was seeing when i was at Ball Address to Full Stance.

I used to always make all my decisions from Ball Address (aim,CB direction,speed). Then when i got down to shoot it didn't look the same. Pro/one has helped me identify why that was.

1. I was picking up my aim with my Non Dominant Eye while standing and trying to shoot from my Dominant Eye.

2. I was only aware of one sweep to Full Stance which was to just bend Straight down the shot line. Hence why i was great cutting right but left cuts suffered.

All i'm saying is "it's either for you or its not" that's up to you. But for anyone who hasn't tried it and has all these opinions and judgements about Pro/one i recommend the following videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKqOPjUVMQ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qBi-hFLCY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORCkqZwvCn0

Thanks Dave these videos make my day!!
As Melinda Huang (OMGWTF) would say. "The Floggings will continue until moral improves."
 
Nice videos. Someone has a lot of time to waste. If you're the one who made the videos, time management probably isn't a priority for you, anyway.
 
I'm probably about done on this thread here, my man. A brief explanation of that quote, is that a definition is all encompassing. If someone thinks they know everything about someone else, and says this is that person's definition, they are putting that person in a box, and missing some part of them. This isn't saying that it's not okay to notice some things. If you say someone is a nice person, you're not saying that is the sum total of who they are. Saying that you may have a lot of time on your hands, is in no way defining you. I'm sure that there are many aspects to your life, and not just that you have free time. I am not defining you. Anyway, I've said my piece, and this has degraded to complete pointlessness, starting with you posting links to your videos, that I wasted several minutes of my life looking at. I am done here. Say what you will.
 
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