PRACTICE VS PLAY

[WobblyStroke]

Regarding your nerves and performing under pressure, this is the main reason the Iversons and McCreadies of the world think practice is way overrated...because it cannot develop this aspect of your mental game and simulate the conditions you need to deal with. Dealing with pressure and nerves is its own skillset and can really only be developed in match play.

Things like negative thoughts floating into your head as you are down over a shot...shoot anyway...Miss. Can only happen so many times before you develop the discipline to get up off the shot and clear your mind and start your routine over again (a routine that can become rock solid in practice). Even if not a negative thought but rather a "omg I'm actually gonna beat this guy" as you are down on a money ball...get up and reset.

Developing breathing techniques and ways to reduce physiological arousal is also very important. This was actually my biggest strength in competition and I have Yoga and meditation practices to thank for it. What is not often understood by many is that emotions have corresponding breath patterns and breath patterns have corresponding brain wave states. They are interconnected and by controlling the one we can def control--breath--we can influence the others and really settle the nerves. It isn't necessarily that energy drops, but it becomes more focus and actually makes you sharper. As one famous golfer said, "it's not about getting rid of the butterflies in your stomach, it's about getting them to fly in formation". This is massively important as the relationship between physiological arousal (caused by stress of competition or otherwise) and performance are known to be related in this fashion....

In practice, unless you find challenging drills or placement pool setups, and mix things up, you will mostly end up on the far left of the curve (why some days are more productive than others). In competition, we can find ourselves on the right side of the curve.

Luckily, a lot of good research has been done on this and a lot of very useful techniques have been developed and widely shared for getting into that peak performance arousal level... whether we are talking about psyching ourselves up and raising energy in a practice environment, or calming nerves and reducing stress in the heat of competition. Since you are reading mental game books, I'm sure you've come across a few of these strategies. Use them and they will help you actually reproduce your practice level game in matches.

 

[bbb]

Regarding your nerves and performing under pressure, this is the main reason the Iversons and McCreadies of the world think practice is way overrated...because it cannot develop this aspect of your mental game and simulate the conditions you need to deal with. Dealing with pressure and nerves is its own skillset and can really only be developed in match play.

Things like negative thoughts floating into your head as you are down over a shot...shoot anyway...Miss. Can only happen so many times before you develop the discipline to get up off the shot and clear your mind and start your routine over again (a routine that can become rock solid in practice). Even if not a negative thought but rather a "omg I'm actually gonna beat this guy" as you are down on a money ball...get up and reset.

Developing breathing techniques and ways to reduce physiological arousal is also very important. This was actually my biggest strength in competition and I have Yoga and meditation practices to thank for it. What is not often understood by many is that emotions have corresponding breath patterns and breath patterns have corresponding brain wave states. They are interconnected and by controlling the one we can def control--breath--we can influence the others and really settle the nerves. It isn't necessarily that energy drops, but it becomes more focus and actually makes you sharper. As one famous golfer said, "it's not about getting rid of the butterflies in your stomach, it's about getting them to fly in formation". This is massively important as the relationship between physiological arousal (caused by stress of competition or otherwise) and performance are known to be related in this fashion....
View attachment 698361
In practice, unless you find challenging drills or placement pool setups, and mix things up, you will mostly end up on the far left of the curve (why some days are more productive than others). In competition, we can find ourselves on the right side of the curve.

Luckily, a lot of good research has been done on this and a lot of very useful techniques have been developed and widely shared for getting into that peak performance arousal level... whether we are talking about psyching ourselves up and raising energy in a practice environment, or calming nerves and reducing stress in the heat of competition. Since you are reading mental game books, I'm sure you've come across a few of these strategies. Use them and they will help you actually reproduce your practice level game in matches.

excellent....
its so interesting to me how much this enters into playing.
you work so hard to have a repeatable straight stroke
and now you have to go learn yoga..........

 

[WobblyStroke]

excellent....
its so interesting to me how much this enters into playing.
you work so hard to have a repeatable straight stroke
and now you have to go learn yoga..........

bahahaha. Luckily a few quick videos of a neuroscientist going over various breathing techniques and their physiological effects on YouTube should suffice . It's a very useful way to spend your time in the chair.

 

[WobblyStroke]

You ever see a guy just wilt and get in his own head? Negative body language and noises he makes? Maybe he even goes on full tilt and just loses all focus slapping balls around like a berserker (or Earl at his worst).
Don't be that guy...ever. Work on this and your win% goes way up.

I played professional poker for the better part of a decade (after a back injury ended my competitive pool days). I had a massive winrate, much bigger than guys who made me uncomfortable at the table and I thought were actually better than me. Well yes, their A game beat my A game hands down. But I almost never tilted and dipped into my C game where they tended to give back a lot of the money they earned with their skillful A games. Same applies in pool. Emotions can run high. So learn to deal with them and at least make the other guy beat you. Don't beat yourself.

In practice you improve your skills and A game. In competition you learn to fight your way to showing as much of that A game as possible and avoiding showing ur ass like my guy Earl did on occasion.

 

[FranCrimi]

although i think you need to devote more time to practice as you are devloping your skill (icbw)

Well, if you practice one day per week like I suggested, you'll have plenty of practice for the week. How many hours in a day? Start in the morning, break for lunch --- take several breaks if you have to --- and continue into the afternoon. You could get a good 6-8 hours of practice in and you could work on all the things you wrote down from playing other people all week. Isn't that better than practicing 2 hours a day for 4 days? You'll be too tired to play matches after 2 hours of practice. It's a different mindset. Time management is key here.

My boyfriend used to say, "I'm going to the pool room to practice today." And he'd return 12 hours later. All practice. Then it was back to playing.

 

[evergruven]

obviously not an instructor fascinating, dynamic topic tho
besides the practice and playing itself, spending time on the table
I like taking time to let knowledge and experience sink in some
if you play every day, I think you obviously learn and improve that way
but I think by taking a break, and either doing something else
or, doing "nothing"/meditating, we can unlock latent knowledge
even just thinking about pool, but away from the table, is very useful
i.e. being here on azb- there's more than one way to cook dinner.
by being diligent, caring, and open-minded, we can achieve a lot

and again, I think mixing it up is good..playing tennis, 1p etc.
there's a cross-pollination that happens when we do different things
personally, I know pool has improved my abilities in other areas
and vice versa!

 

[WobblyStroke]

there's a cross-pollination that happens when we do different things
personally, I know pool has improved my abilities in other areas
and vice versa!

I have a handful of students that I teach across multiple sports using the same concepts. Pool, golf, and tennis are very interrelated indeed. As has been my experience, yours, and that of my students, "when you level up in one, you level up in them all". You can of course play these sports in different ways, but you can also boil each down to its core concepts and apply the same concepts across all 3. The organizing concepts and basic stroke model (before the details) I use for golf and pool are actually identical. They have more with how to move in a repeatable, predictable manner, with effortless power and great force control rather than how to play any sport in particular. So ye, I couldn't agree more, getting better at one sport can def have a positive influence on your performance in others.

 

[WobblyStroke]

Well, if you practice one day per week like I suggested, you'll have plenty of practice for the week. How many hours in a day? Start in the morning, break for lunch --- take several breaks if you have to --- and continue into the afternoon. You could get a good 6-8 hours of practice in and you could work on all the things you wrote down from playing other people all week. Isn't that better than practicing 2 hours a day for 4 days? You'll be too tired to play matches after 2 hours of practice. It's a different mindset. Time management is key here.

My boyfriend used to say, "I'm going to the pool room to practice today." And he'd return 12 hours later. All practice. Then it was back to playing.

Well I said I wouldn't @you unless we disagree strongly enough, just didn't think it would come so soon lol.

I will assume your bf was a good accomplished player for this type of practice routine of getting all his practice in on one day a week. This is certainly fine for someone with well developed skills. However, for learning anything new, whether we are talking about a kicking system or calculus, one hour a day is far superior than 7 hours once a week. This is not merely an opinion...there are many studies on learning and specifically motor learning that back up my statement.

For someone building up skills rather than merely sharpening them and making little tweaks here and there, it is important to keep the learning in manageable chunks AND have some good sleep before the next bout of learning. A lot of learning is consolidated while we sleep. By cramming in 7hours in one day, that is a lot to unpack for one day and much less will be retained than if the exact same experiences were spread out in one hour a day manageable chunks with their own night of sleep to commit those to memory. Again, the research is clear on this. Besides, any math teacher can tell you, it is better to work on your math for half an hour a day than 3hours in one go. Same goes for pool, or anything else we are trying to learn.

And about being too tired to play... I don't know how grueling your practices must be to be more draining than a match, but if someone can grind through 7hrs of practice in a day and not have the last 5 be a total waste of time bc they are too tired, they should have no issue playing a match after practicing a bit. In my playing days, I routinely had an early practice session in the afternoon before going out to play in the evening and I'd say it certainly helped me more than it hurt.

 

[klikr]

Keep in mind: every situation you face in a game "against an opponent" could have also been the same situation you face after you've done a break or a bad position, basically random. Most times when you lose games, you haven't lost against the opponent, but actually against yourself. Pool is probably the game where this is the case the most. That said, I want to express that playing games with/against opponents is hardly ever more challenging than playing against yourself, at least if you're not playing for money. All you need to do is, f.e. when playing rotations as part of your training, to take every shot serious. Like really serious. Don't move around the object ball or cue ball to get an easier shot. Take the situation as if it were in a money game.

Setting up a training pattern is good for the routine, and you also get a real chance to focus on working on weaknesses you or others may have identified in your game. Do those training patterns as much as you feel comfortable with.

If you feel you're lacking precision.... well this is the most difficult part, because it addresses muscle memory in a way that is probably different for every person. Say, you have a certain training shot and you're training for the cue ball to come to rest at a certain spot. It depends on your dedication how large that spot is allowed to be. A pro player may train for 2-3 in², an amateur may be happy with consistently reaching a 4-5 in² spot.

(just my 2c, picking up a few clues I read in this thread, too tedious to quote each )
PS: no, I'm not an instructor, I'm just old.

 

[bbb]

klikr
thanks for your replly and welcome to the site
i see you are a new member
one comment i have
although the same situation could come up in practice that comes up in a game
when its hill hill in a game with something at stake(league/team win/tournament placing in the money/gambling...etc)
i dont think you can create that same pressure situation in practice
jmho

 

[WobblyStroke]

klikr
thanks for your replly and welcome to the site
i see you are a new member
one comment i have
although the same situation could come up in practice that comes up in a game
when its hill hill in a game with something at stake(league/team win/tournament placing in the money/gambling...etc)
i dont think you can create that same pressure situation in practice
jmho

True. The nerves and pressure are nearly impossible to replicate. A game I like to play in practice to finish is "Last 3 misses". Basically u play open racks and take ball in hand to start as well as after every miss. Once u miss a 3rd ball, ur done. While this isn't nearly the same as a momey game or match that ur team is counting on u to win, it does give u a little bit of extra incentive to bear down and focus, especially when u get down to ur last barrel.

obv this can be modified to any skill level where beginners might want 5 or more misses on 8ball racks and guys expecting to string racks together can just play "miss n go home" in rotation games like 9b or 10b.

 

[FranCrimi]

bbb....watch out for the armchair experts. They will lead you astray. They mean well....but....

 

[WobblyStroke]

bbb....watch out for the armchair experts. They will lead you astray.

Or maybe he should watchout for teachers that don't know the very basics of research done on learning telling him to practice new skills in a way contrary to what all the literature says. Grow up Fran

 

[FranCrimi]

Or maybe he should watchout for teachers that don't know the very basics of research done on learning telling him to practice new skills in a way contrary to what all the literature says. Grow up Fran

No, YOU grow up. You write long-winded, verbose speeches and diatribes. I cut to the chase. It's as simple as that. Stop being so obsessed with yourself. You don't know that much.

 

[WobblyStroke]

No, YOU grow up. You write diatribes. I cut to the chase. It's as simple as that. Stop being so obsessed with yourself. You don't know that much.

LOL
Now now Fran, no need for you to melt down in yet another thread.
You presented one way to practice based on your and your bf experience.
I presented a different way, based on countless peer reviewed studies on learning.
If he chooses your way, fine. To each their own. But it would be a shame if a thread on practice didn't at least touch on actual learning theory...esp once a coach recommends an approach opposite to what is accepted in the literature as a superior approach.

I guess I should count myself lucky that we only disagreed 3 times in the year+ I been on AZB. But every time you got catty and made things personal instead of just sticking to the info. Like in the other instances, you're just wrong on this one.

 

[klikr]

True. The nerves and pressure are nearly impossible to replicate. A game I like to play in practice to finish is "Last 3 misses". Basically u play open racks and take ball in hand to start as well as after every miss. Once u miss a 3rd ball, ur done. While this isn't nearly the same as a momey game or match that ur team is counting on u to win, it does give u a little bit of extra incentive to bear down and focus, especially when u get down to ur last barrel.

obv this can be modified to any skill level where beginners might want 5 or more misses on 8ball racks and guys expecting to string racks together can just play "miss n go home" in rotation games like 9b or 10b.

You're totally right. Maybe I wasn't phrasing it the way I intended, so here's another try.

As soon as you realize that situations on the pool table are quasi random, even if the opponent has snookered you, and you actively work on making this your mindset, you will over time gradually lean more to the left of the curve shown above, even in competitive situations.

The concept behind this is called cognitive reframing, iirc.

Easily said, hard to achieve. Albeit maybe easier than gambling for years

 

[WobblyStroke]

You're totally right. Maybe I wasn't phrasing it the way I intended, so here's another try.

As soon as you realize that situations on the pool table are quasi random, even if the opponent has snookered you, and you actively work on making this your mindset, you will over time gradually lean more to the left of the curve shown above, even in competitive situations.

Easily said, hard to achieve. The concept behind this is called cognitive reframing, iirc.

Right you are. It is often said that this game is you vs the table. The more we can develop this mentality, the less stress we will experience in the heat of battle and yes, hang out more near the peak of the curve rather than in the panic zone.

Still, nothing like experience to develop this. I'm sure we've all been in spots we were absolutely sweating bullets and after a few times, it's not nearly so bad.

I remember watching a Corey Deuel match and the commentator was marvelling at how he played this big match that meant everything like it meant nothing. Corey also gave an interview in which he stressed that the physical part isn't all that hard...it's the thinking part and not letting negative thought creep in and take root. He def seems to have mastered cognitive reframing.

 

[FranCrimi]

LOL
Now now Fran, no need for you to melt down in yet another thread.
You presented one way to practice based on your and your bf experience.
I presented a different way, based on countless peer reviewed studies on learning.
If he chooses your way, fine. To each their own. But it would be a shame if a thread on practice didn't at least touch on actual learning theory...esp once a coach recommends an approach opposite to what is accepted in the literature as a superior approach.

I guess I should count myself lucky that we only disagreed 3 times in the year+ I been on AZB. But every time you got catty and made things personal instead of just sticking to the info. Like in the other instances, you're just wrong on this one.

This is not how you help people. Going around quoting scientific journals rarely gets at the root of someone's problem. I do plenty of research. That's one of the many things that goes into my analysis of a player's situation. But it's just one of many. bbb has been posting here in this forum for a long time --- way longer than you have. Some of us have a feel for where he's at mentally and what his stumbling blocks have been over the years.

I believe that this forumla I'm proposing for him is what would help bbb the most, and it may very well disagree with your J-O-U-R-N-A-L. But maybe what's in that journal of yours is not what bbb needs right now. I can assure you that the world won't collapse if he doesn't follow popular opinion.

The difference between you and me is that you're lecturing the world and I'm talking to bbb.

 

[WobblyStroke]

This is not how you help people. Going around quoting scientific journals rarely gets at the root of someone's problem. I do plenty of research. That's one of the many things that goes into my analysis of a player's situation. But it's just one of many. bbb has been posting here in this forum for a long time --- way longer than you have. Some of us have a feel for where he's at mentally and what his stumbling blocks have been over the years.

I believe that this forumla I'm proposing for him is what would help bbb the most, and it may very well disagree with your J-O-U-R-N-A-L. But maybe what's in that journal of yours is not what bbb needs right now. I can assure you that the world won't collapse if he doesn't follow popular opinion.

The difference between you and me is that you're lecturing the world and I'm talking to bbb.

Eh, way to be civil about it.
But really, all I did was present a different way... one supported by studies on how humans learn things. And you warned him of armchair experts that don't know much leading him astray when what I posted is literally supported by the literature and if anything, your way would be leading him astray from how we learn best.

Not saying it is the only way, hell some people do just fine just playing. But if we're going to discuss practices, I have no idea why you'd jump all over me for a post that offered proven concepts for efficient learning.

I guess, with Matt not around, you had to turn your ire at somebody.

If you got any more derrogatory comments just DM me, nobody comes to this forum to check out who Fran is having baseless emotional arguments against this time. We wasted enough time on that in the face square thread.

 

[FranCrimi]

Eh, way to be civil about it.
But really, all I did was present a different way... one supported by studies on how humans learn things. And you warned him of armchair experts that don't know much leading him astray when what I posted is literally supported by the literature and if anything, your way would be leading him astray from how we learn best.

Not saying it is the only way, hell some people do just fine just playing. But if we're going to discuss practices, I have no idea why you'd jump all over me for a post that offered proven concepts for efficient learning.

I guess, with Matt not around, you had to turn your ire at somebody.

If you got any more derrogatory comments just DM me, nobody comes to this forum to check out who Fran is having baseless emotional arguments against this time. We wasted enough time on that in the face square thread.

It will serve you well to stop weighing in on when I try to help players because you don't understand my process. Don't make assumptions about what I know and don't know. If you have a question, then ask it but don't jump to conclusions about me or, yes, I will come at you hard. You don't help players by focusing solely on theory and ignoring other very important signs they give. Until you start to understand the person asking the question and have looked both in and OUT of the box for solutions, you are nothing more than a theorist. That's what makes you an armchair expert.