The DEATH of DRILLS

[Neil]

Neil.
I'd green rep you but it states I must spread some love around before repping you again. The post I quoted above may just be the BEST piece of advice I've seen given on AZB. I'm not sure if that was your intention or not, but I sure hope people read, and re-read it again to fully absorb the underlying "Big Picture" your hinting at here.

Opinion warning:

Self awareness and *Honest* self evaluation is the most important factor to facing and improving ones weakest elements of *their* game. To execute like a brain surgeon, there is no room for error, not a single one. That single error could be fatal. In a tough match or set, if it comes down to the wire and you're faced with any self doubt about a certain shot, should you error here chances are it will be a fatal one. Ask yourself this, which brain surgeon would you choose? The one who meticulously masters his/her skills and abilities through meticulously executed surgery drills, or the surgeon who just strolls in and says "I don't need any surgery drills, I got this". My choice is made, is yours?

Along with muscle memorization, working on & nailing down a type of shot you struggle with has a double benefit. The first being improving skill & execution, the second is confidence in your ability to execute. Now we all know what the difference can be between skilled confidence and blind confidence. More times than not, the skilled confidence gets the cheese while the blind confidence finds the chair.

When it comes to drills, I am of the belief that while they are extremely beneficial, they must be done in moderation with 100% focus. Meaning you must pay as much attention to each execution as if it was real world scenario. Mindlessly repeating the same task over and over will hardly net you any gain in my opinion. (Example) I will work on a drill roughly 5-30 times depending, then I will setup a layout on the table incorporating this type of shot 2 or 3 shots in, several times over. The results will dictate if further work is needed (and it usually is).

So in closing, it is of my belief that one will only get back what one puts in when doing drills. Do I think drills are the only form of practice needed, absolutely not. Doing drills is only a small part of building a solid base for a master of his/her art. Do not discount the value of mental conditioning as well, an area a lot of people fail to address. Ones mental strength could be the deciding factor of a given outcome in competition, of course one can't discount the luck factor as well.

Dopc. Knows not of what he types, so you're probably better off not reading his posts....

Excellent post! I highlighted a little in red that bears reading several times.

Here's an example of me- For the last hour, I have been practicing the wagon wheel drill in the Billiard University exams. Now, I have practiced this particular drill a number of times. Always get about the same results. (lower than I want to get).

I recently obtained Mark Wilson's book, and quickly realized how lazy I have been lately in my game. So, today, I practiced the drill with the knowledge I have on HOW to get to where I want to, and with the proper focus and extreme attention to detail. Not only did I do better on it than I have done before, but I learned a few things along the way, both about my stroke, precision, and cb placement. That will translate to all parts of my game.

So, the point is, once I started doing the drill correctly instead of just practicing it, I saw immediate improvement.

When playing, yes, you better be learning things along the way. However, when playing, do you REALLY know exactly what you did right and wrong? Or do you just THINK you know? You can say to yourself, next time I have to hit a little lower. But, do you REALLY? Or did you just not stroke perfectly, and accidentally hit too high, or didn't have a really good stroke so you didn't get the action you wanted to, or what you tried to do wasn't even realistic?

Doing the same shot over and over, you get to learn exactly what does what. The same thing over and over should produce the same results. If it's not, and you aren't sure why, you aren't doing the exact same thing everytime, and you now know you need work in that area.

 

[Scaramouche]

Assume those who don't do drills can never miss on these tests.

http://www.147academy.com/files/Downloads/9 BALL POOL.pdf

 

[Scaramouche]

But again, my point is why work on a specific skill when that skill could be mastered while playing?

So you could execute when playing, thus winning, instead of screwing up, thus losing?

 

[jasonlaus]

Video camera while playing the ghost has helped me more than anything. If I miss a ball I just shoot it over. Of course, if you don't know what to look for, reviewing the video isn't gonna help anyway

 

[Cameron Smith]

Good reply. You make a good point. But I think snooker is a slightly different animal.

What I saw in quickly viewing your linked videos was two guys playing snooker (albeit with the balls arranged differently). They weren't doing specific cue ball control drills necessarily.

Watching Ken Doherty, I saw him do some Stroke Training drills and then I saw him trying to run out some snooker frames without bothering with the first portion of each frame -- the break and the eventual opening up of the balls. While I guess those are drills on the one hand, on the other they certainly aren't the type of drills I was referring to as worthless.

My whole trouble with pool drills is everybody says all the pros do them but upon closer inspection what you find is many do not and the ones that do tend to spend much more time on the Stroke Training drills than on the cute little cue ball control ones.

The set ups are generally to simulate certain situations within a frame, so in the case of Ronnie he's running out while only taking pinks. The drills ken is doing is essentially practicing getting from the black to specific areas where the reds tend to go. I'm not sure I explained that correctly, however it's kinda similar to any pattern play routines you might have for straight pool.

I think you are absolutely right about pros. I've heard often that Mika Immonen does not do drills, nor does Shane. But there are ones that do them, I think we know that Darren Appleton believes in them as per one of the recent TAR podcasts.

I guess it comes down to different routes to the same destination. Drill based practice is analogous to structured learning, much in the same way guitar students may learn through a work book. But even with that work book, you can do it wrong. If one isn't getting lazy with their routine, or they aren't learning the shots necessary to complete the drill perfectly, then it won't do them any good. On the other hand a very motivated learner who actively finds aspects of his/her game that needs work can improve without traditional drills.

I think they can be very helpful, but it's up to the player. I agree though, I rarely see anyone practicing long straight in shots.

 

[bdorman]

Is SVB doing drills during TAR podcast #45 (it's currently on the frontpage of AZB or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhpCOzEFhec&noredirect=1

If you watch the entire podcast, it's clear to me that he's doing one-pocket drills -- long rail banks, 4-rail banks, 3-rail banks, all to the same corner pocket. For more than an hour he didn't pocket a ball in any other pocket.

When you shoot the same bank shot ten times in a row in less than a minute -- that's a drill.

Maybe he's doing one-pocket "drills" before his match with Corey Deuel -- although he might not call them drills.

 

[victorl]

I think the lack of emphasis on drills is why American players are falling behind other countries, and that gap is especially prevalent on the women's circuit. It doesn't matter what sport you play, to get to the highest levels and stay there, you have to have the discipline and patience to do drills and practice your weaknesses to improve your skills because just playing the game will only get you so far.

And any pro who says they've never done drills is full of it, because I've never seen a pro who didn't set up a shot they've missed and shoot it over and over again.

 

[BeiberLvr]

And any pro who says they've never done drills is full of it, because I've never seen a pro who didn't set up a shot they've missed and shoot it over and over again.

Bingo! We have a winner, and all it took was a little common sense.

 

[dr_dave]

... I think there are two types of drills, there are those drills that are focused primarily on Cue Ball Control (L drill, wagon wheel, etc.) and there are those drills that are primarily concerned with Stroke Building ... as far as I’m concerned many of them are a colossal waste of time.

FYI, in the 5-DVD Video Encyclopedia of Pool Practice (VEPP) that I created with Bob Jewett, we present 5 major categories of drills with 31 sub categories. For those interested, here's the complete list.

For people like you who don't seem appreciate the value of drills, I suspect drills might not be very helpful. However, for many other people, dedicated, focused, and purposeful practice can definitely raise their games to the next level.

Regards,
Dave

 

[BasementDweller]

FYI, in the 5-DVD Video Encyclopedia of Pool Practice (VEPP) that I created with Bob Jewett, we present 5 major categories of drills with 31 sub categories. For those interested, here's the complete list.

For people like you who don't seem appreciate the value of drills, I suspect drills might not be very helpful. However, for many other people, dedicated, focused, and purposeful practice can definitely raise their games to the next level.

Regards,
Dave

Dave,

Just to clarify -- because it is apparent that many people haven't completely understood my point -- I never said nor implied that I don't appreciate the value of drills, this is misleading.

I don't appreciate the value of SOME drills (big difference). I've found that the time spent on Stroke Building drills is more beneficial than doing Cue Ball Control drills. Some people don't see a distinction between those two, but I do.

From my estimation, many players give up on working on their strokes.

They accept that they can only cue so straight.

They accept that they can't fire in a ball from the end rail and draw the cue ball all the way back to the end rail and then some.

They accept the notion that they can't fire in a jacked up shot from off the rail from 9 feet away.

They accept the fact that if they are straight in on a long shot while frozen to the end rail, they can't slow roll the ball in.

They accept all these things and more, and they turn to controlling the cue ball as a means to avoid all these things. (This is what I did).

What I found was it was working.:frown:

So I stopped doing them and I turned my focus to my stroke and only my stroke. I'm getting nearly fanatical about it. I just want to cue straight. That's pretty much all I care about. I've been doing this for a while now and guess what I've found? My cue ball has mysteriously gotten much better.

This got me to thinking. So, I started paying attention to what the pros say when it comes to doing drills and low and behold what I'm finding is most of them focus on their strokes, NOT on lying a piece of paper on the table and seeing if they can send their cue ball around 3 rails and get it to land on the paper. That's not what most of them do. Did they do that at some point in their development??? I'm not sure, because I really haven't been able to find a lot of interviews that go into what specifically they did as they were developing.

All I know is this is the part of my development that I really screwed up with -- I gave up on my stroke. I never should have. Nor should anybody else if they really want to get better at this game we all love.

 

[dr_dave]

Just to clarify -- because it is apparent that many people haven't completely understood my point -- I never said nor implied that I don't appreciate the value of drills, this is misleading.

I'm sorry if I misunderstood. I should have added "some" so "all" wouldn't be assumed.

I've found that the time spent on Stroke Building drills is more beneficial than doing Cue Ball Control drills
....
All I know is this is the part of my development that I really screwed up with -- I gave up on my stroke. I never should have. Nor should anybody else if they really want to get better at this game we all love.

I agree that most people can benefit from improving their stroke, and there are certainly some good drills that can help with this.

Regards,
Dave

 

[BeiberLvr]

A better stroke will improve CB control but it doesn't improve knowledge of CB control. That's why some of us (pros included) practice CB control. Either now or at some point in their development.

 

[CreeDo]

You may be on to something, maybe not. I know there are at least
one or two things you get from position drills that don't happen just playing normally.

1. "a-ha" moments. Say you never practice that famous stun-follow shot where you replace the OB
with the cue ball. You might try it once or twice a night or it may not even come up for two weeks.
You give it a whack and then note the result, but that mental note is long gone by the time it comes up again.

Recently I was drilling it and finally figured out that at the soft-ish medium speed I prefer to use,
I need to hit maybe center or a hair below at 2 diamonds distance, to make the cue ball turn forward 1 revolution.
There are other ways to get that result of course but that's what I figured out after the 7th in a row.

I've been aware of the shot for over a decade, but could never have told you the tip placement,
distance, or speed to make it happen until I actually drilled at it. I would just throw up a wild guess
on the rare times it came up, and could not recall exactly what I did when I got it right (or how I planned
to adjust when I got it wrong).

You're going to get a lot of these doing drills. When your failures are still 'fresh'
you get more incentive to work on it until success, and it may stick better because you finally
passed a specific drill that was giving you fits, vs. just hitting the shot once in a random game.

2. you notice stuff like cue ball reaction better when you're not distracted by a win or loss goal,
your opponent, the other balls on the table, etc. You can give all of your attention
to observing ball physics and how the cue ball moved. Instead of "I got good on the next ball"
you will take a special note that "when I hit with top from this angle, the cue ball moved forward about 2 diamonds".

 

[Neil]

You may be on to something, maybe not. I know there are at least
one or two things you get from position drills that don't happen just playing normally.

1. "a-ha" moments. Say you never practice that famous stun-follow shot where you replace the OB
with the cue ball. You might try it once or twice a night or it may not even come up for two weeks.
You give it a whack and then note the result, but that mental note is long gone by the time it comes up again.

Recently I was drilling it and finally figured out that at the soft-ish medium speed I prefer to use,
I need to hit maybe center or a hair below at 2 diamonds distance, to make the cue ball turn forward 1 revolution.
There are other ways to get that result of course but that's what I figured out after the 7th in a row.

I've been aware of the shot for over a decade, but could never have told you the tip placement,
distance, or speed to make it happen until I actually drilled at it. I would just throw up a wild guess
on the rare times it came up, and could not recall exactly what I did when I got it right (or how I planned
to adjust when I got it wrong).

You're going to get a lot of these doing drills. When your failures are still 'fresh'
you get more incentive to work on it until success, and it may stick better because you finally
passed a specific drill that was giving you fits, vs. just hitting the shot once in a random game.

2. you notice stuff like cue ball reaction better when you're not distracted by a win or loss goal,
your opponent, the other balls on the table, etc. You can give all of your attention
to observing ball physics and how the cue ball moved. Instead of "I got good on the next ball"
you will take a special note that "when I hit with top from this angle, the cue ball moved forward about 2 diamonds".

Exactly! Good post! Here's a few things I picked up doing the wagon wheel drill-
1. While I knew that you want one third of the angle for the draw shots, I didn't have a good way of setting that up. Until I practiced it over and over. Then, I realized that if the ob I want to run into with draw is 5 diamonds from straight in on the ob I am shooting, I just have to divide 5 by 3, get app. 1.7, and set my cb 1.7 diamonds from straight in on the ob.

2. The better the stroke, the more accurate one must become in tip placement on the cb. Even one half tip off on draw makes a several ball miss on the ob you are playing position on.

3. Speed consistency is also extremely important in this drill. You have to have the cb hook back from the tangent line the same every time.

4. For the follow shots, one only has to draw a line from the ob you want to hit second to the ob you hit first. Then, look at your contact point on the first ob. Draw a line from the first point on the ob through the contact point on the ob, and line up the center of your cb on that line.

5. Those things combined make this a very tough drill to perfect. Getting your speed and contact point to the precision required is indeed a learning process. But, that is what the game is all about.

 

[TheBook]

I can't really discourage doing drills as I am sure they do benefit.

I always think of when I attended my first tournament. There were naturally players all over on the practice tables. There was one player that I was watching doing the L drill. He had it down pat and really looked like he was the player to beat. Problem was he couldn't play pool. He was one of the worse players there. He could do the drills but just couldn't play if that makes any sense.


.

 

[BeiberLvr]

I can't really discourage doing drills as I am sure they do benefit.

I always think of when I attended my first tournament. There were naturally players all over on the practice tables. There was one player that I was watching doing the L drill. He had it down pat and really looked like he was the player to beat. Problem was he couldn't play pool. He was one of the worse players there. He could do the drills but just couldn't play if that makes any sense.


.

Definitely. That's why whenever I do drills, I try to keep some sort of score. Not only to track my progress, but to keep focused and make it sort of like a competition. Doing that is where you'll really start to see the benefit of drills.

 

[Neil]

I can't really discourage doing drills as I am sure they do benefit.

I always think of when I attended my first tournament. There were naturally players all over on the practice tables. There was one player that I was watching doing the L drill. He had it down pat and really looked like he was the player to beat. Problem was he couldn't play pool. He was one of the worse players there. He could do the drills but just couldn't play if that makes any sense.


.

Makes perfect sense. Some people learn how to do a certain drill perfectly, but they never learn how to translate that knowledge to game time. That's partially because they look at a drill as a drill, and game time as game time, two separate things, when they should be one thing in the mind.

People need to understand that drills teach how to make the ball and put the cb where you want to. Game time is really the exact same thing, make the ball and put the cb where you want to for the next shot. The entire game of pool breaks down to those two things.

 

[Bob Jewett]

... There was one player that I was watching doing the L drill. He had it down pat and really looked like he was the player to beat. Problem was he couldn't play pool. He was one of the worse players there. He could do the drills but just couldn't play if that makes any sense.

If you're going to do drills, you need to work on ones that improve your weaknesses. He was evidently practicing his strengths, which is often not productive.

 

[RussPrince]

I don't care what you say, with proper practice, and yes that means ALL kinds of drills, you will learn at double the rate, and in half the time. if you don't know how to practice, then you may be just wasting your time, or even worse learning new bad habits. if you expect your game to grow just from playing "matches" you will improve at a snails pace, and at a certain point, you will hit a wall and stop improving completely.

i don't understand how somebody can think that drilling a shot (even if it's the exact same shot) over and over could not be constructive. You know what happens when you've hit a shot so many times, it's nearly impossible to miss anymore? You've just made that shot a gimme in every game you'll ever play again. You've also increased your self confidence when these shots come up that you've practiced the hell out of.

Want to know the dumb-ass drill i am currently practicing that basically is responsible for my finally jumping up to a skill level 9 in apa. Table length straight in shots with stop action. In the last month i've hit nearly 2000 of them. Some of the benefits were:

-Helped me concentrate on my stance and alignment.
-Has taught me how to concentrate better on the target ball and not where it's going
-I can now MUCH better see when I am a degree or less off on either side of the ball
-straightened my stroke
-removed (some) of my bad tendency to cue on the left side of the cueball (still trying to fix this)
-tremendous new confidence on straight in shots of any kind when I'm playing now

Anyways it's all about how you practice. If you don't take it seriously you won't seriously learn anything. If you miss a practice shot (pocketting and/or shape) it's the PERFECT time to learn how and why you missed it. Don't blow it off. It's your chance to learn something. Repeat the shot again, and again, and again (x100 if you must) treating each attempt like it matters in a game. You will improve exponentially.

For the first time in my life I'm now running back to back games of 8 and 9 ball. It's all about the practice.