Mark Wilson Facebook-posted this well designed and very direct approach to stroke training. It very efficiently causes you to deeply internalize your own feedback. (You're systematically and easily assessing your physical sensations and visual results during the short building/corrective process.) It's a very effective method:
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Stroke-training exercise for highly motivated players.
Place the cue ball on the foot spot and locate your chin over the shot line to the far corner pocket. You should be one step behind where the stance will be located. Apply eye shift for confirming accuracy a couple of times.
Enter the set up and stance while reconfirming the shot accuracy. Eye shift without any practice strokes. Ask yourself if you were to just move the cue straight will the cue ball hit precisely to a specific point within the target pocket.
Take a couple of measured, fluid, and uniform practice swings and stop (the final pause) and visually check the shot accuracy one more time. This is accomplished with the eye shift from the cue ball to the target but cannot be performed superficially, rather a slight gaze to really observe and glean some feedback.
Now we arrive at the purpose for the exercise...improving the most dangerous part of every stroke delivery, the transition from backswing into the fore swing.
After the final pause and visual confirmation of the shot accuracy you then must close your eyes for the final stroke delivery and proceed to shoot while feeling for a uniform length back swing, smooth transition into the fore swing, and a complete follow through without squeezing the grip hand.
Then you are to remain fixed, motionless after the stroke delivery, open your eyes and analyze the quality and straightness of the follow through.
Ask yourself if you felt any quick or jerky sensations during the stroke with the eyes closed?
What about any grip hand squeezing? If you do not squeeze on the fore swing the tone of your cue at impact will be vibrant and discernible. Squeezing dampens the harmonics of the cue and is also noticeable. Squeezing distorts the precise accuracy of the tip to the cue ball.
Now insist upon making the next shot even better. You will need to be inspired and motivated to really gain from training of this nature in addition to being patient and positive minded. Do not perform these in some kind of hurried, careless, or only semi interested fashion...do not even bother.
After shooting 15 focused shots with just the cue ball hitting the pocket introduce an object ball target into the exercise.
Place an object ball near the pocket and set up with care, confirm the aim, use ideal practice strokes, pause, check, and again close your eyes to feel the stroke delivery, backswing, transition, and follow through. Open your eyes to check on the follow through. Create a habit of asking yourself how will you improve the next one. Once again we need 15 full effort practice shots with some post shot analysis.
Now place the object ball straight in but on the head string with the cue ball located on the foot spot. Again we will be shooting with the eyes closed to enhance what the stroke delivery feels like rather than simply being consumed with making the ball. Are you struggling with accuracy? Tighten up your bridge and any sloppiness will provide inaccuracy. When your stroke delivery improves you will begin pocketing the object ball regularly with your eyes closed but you will be also teaching yourself how to improve.
Do these shots consistently for 5 days.
The next time somebody misses a shot, looks at you and proclaims, "I took my eye off of it", you can just smile because that really has nothing to do with it."
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Arnaldo
