What Do You Look For in a Pool Instructor
- Thread starter lfigueroa
- Start date
I believe Alex lives in or near The Hague — ergo the Plague from The Hague.
Lou Figueroa
Max Eberle / tom worth/ Bus Driver Ron are good! I feel comfortable vouching for these 3 teachers/coaches!
All above are battle tested! Meaning won tournaments or high stakes gambling and can perform under pressure!
I would be hesitant selecting someone not battle tested! Talk is cheap! Can you execute under pressure and teach others to execute?
Ike runnnells would stress over meals
! Pool stress would upset 
his stomach! He devised elaborate meal routines to settle his upset stomachs during his matches! Talk about next level!
How many bca certified instructors come with a nutritional background
? Let alone some victories to their name!
Kd
Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk
All above are battle tested! Meaning won tournaments or high stakes gambling and can perform under pressure!
I would be hesitant selecting someone not battle tested! Talk is cheap! Can you execute under pressure and teach others to execute?
Ike runnnells would stress over meals
! Pool stress would upset 
his stomach! He devised elaborate meal routines to settle his upset stomachs during his matches! Talk about next level!How many bca certified instructors come with a nutritional background
? Let alone some victories to their name! Kd
Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk
Regardless of the sport, most of the players and coaches are all obsessed with the physical mechanics of body part positions and delivery...the mechanics. To say it's not important would be stupid because it is the foundation for everything. I guess I haven't been around enough instructors to know what they teach, but how many integrate all of that with the expansion of the imagination to be able to read an entire table for some games like 9 ball or 8 ball before the first shot is even taken and early into
their lesson processes?
When every shot you have has a minor angle that's in position to pocket the ball and get the next angles on remaining balls to run out takes imagination, preplanning, touch/feel, and execution.
What wheels are cranking in the mind of Efren while playing 1pocket that allows him to hide the CB to put an opponent in jail so bad that it's impossible to get out, or when tried the table is opened up for him to keep pocketing balls?
How can top pro players run multiple racks of 9 ball over and over without missing and make it look so easy? Sure, they have great mechanics, but each rack starts with imagination and then execution. The game is simple because they mostly have easy shots which were planned and created.
How does a pro player run 150 balls or higher without missing in 14.1? Mechanics? Sure. But imagination and planning more so.
Who are the instructors that teach one to expand their imagination to read the table and create all the future shots for higher runs? It seems if they can't do it themselves they can't teach it. But, they could still be very good with mechanics.
their lesson processes?
When every shot you have has a minor angle that's in position to pocket the ball and get the next angles on remaining balls to run out takes imagination, preplanning, touch/feel, and execution.
What wheels are cranking in the mind of Efren while playing 1pocket that allows him to hide the CB to put an opponent in jail so bad that it's impossible to get out, or when tried the table is opened up for him to keep pocketing balls?
How can top pro players run multiple racks of 9 ball over and over without missing and make it look so easy? Sure, they have great mechanics, but each rack starts with imagination and then execution. The game is simple because they mostly have easy shots which were planned and created.
How does a pro player run 150 balls or higher without missing in 14.1? Mechanics? Sure. But imagination and planning more so.
Who are the instructors that teach one to expand their imagination to read the table and create all the future shots for higher runs? It seems if they can't do it themselves they can't teach it. But, they could still be very good with mechanics.
Sorry ,what is an HOF player?
Hall Of Fame
to use an anolgy
you need to build your house with concrete block to be strong
thats where mechanics come in
and while you are building the house there are certain type of instructors to help you build it
once the house has the foundation
you need to find an interior designer to for the finishing touches ...ie ....someone with imagination
so to make a more direct comment to your post spidey
in my opinion you need a mechanic in the beginning because learning the imagination part wont help you if you cant execute the plan
but the number of people available for that final piece of the puzzle (imagination/patterns) at the highest level are much less in number
jmho
icbw
WobblyStroke
Well-known member
Steve Davis had an interesting journey coming up in the game and detailed how he would allow his coach (dad) to tell him anything about mechanics but had to stay out of the gameplay stuff and leave it to Steve. He then got a coach for that side of the game and kept the two quite separate.
You see this approach in many sports. Esp team sports, where it is obvious. You have the coach that takes care of the X's and O's and teaches the game and how to play it. Then you have trainers to work on the body to prepare it. And swing/technique coaches off in their own lil corner.
Obv a compartmentalized approach with specialists in every area would be ideal. Unfortunately there are two problems with this for pool. One is the money involved in such a setup. The other, as mentioned several times in this thread, is the lack of availability of top level guys who can really help top level players.
A Mosconi Cup team, or even just a tight nit group of players like the Polish pool players that basically travel and practice as a team are fantastic for player development. Iron sharpens iron in terms of practice partners and sharing tips. But also, they can get one coach for all to benefit together. I'm actually surprised more 'teams' like the Poles have haven't popped up, especially given their overall success in the last few years. I know pool is a solitary sport so we try to do everything alone, but a support group that brings with it accountability is great to have. Not to mention the benefit of pooled funds and shared time slots for those rare coaches equipped to teach world class players.
And to think how maligned and belittled the Polish nationality has been over the years regarding stupidity.
Typical: https://www.lysator.liu.se/jokes/polish2.html
Here's what I wrote on the subject in 2004.
What is it that makes a pool instructor a great one? Is it knowledge? Is it communication skills?
I recall that when I was a college student, I took an economics class and the professor was a Nobel Prize winner. Unfortunately, his great scholarship wasn’t enough to make him a great teacher, because he didn’t seem to have the ability to communicate well with the students in the class. In other economics classes, though, professors having far less scholarship taught me more than the Nobel Laureate because they had superb communication skills.
What, then, is the perfect mix of scholarship and communication skills? In fact, it is really rather simple, it’s all about maximizing P, where:
P = proportion of a subject that can be taught by a teacher
K = knowledge, the percent of a subject that is understood by the teacher
C = communication skills, percentage of the teacher’s knowledge of a subject that they are able to convey to students
The basic idea is that P = K x C
For example, one who understands 80% of a subject and is able to communicate 60% of what they know is capable of teaching only 48% of a subject. A less knowledgeable teacher might only understand 70%, but if they have enough communication skills that they can convey 90% of what they know, they are capable of teaching 63% of a subject, and would qualify as the teacher you’ll learn more from.
The very best pool players tend to have a high K value, but most of them have a C value that is far lower than those who focus on and develop their teaching skills and teaching materials. This explains why, in seemingly every sport, the best players are nearly never the best teachers. The best communicators may have a very high C value, and it's usually more than enough to offset the fact that they may have slightly less knowledge.
Remember, when you choose a pool instructor, try to maximize P, not K. If you’re one of the lucky ones and have already hooked up with a pool instructor with a high K value and a high C value, stay the course, for you’ve got the right instructor working with you.
As usual, Stu is right on point.
As a generalization but of course there are always exceptions, I would say that the very proven pro pool players are better off helping teach the advanced students.
The professional career pool instructors, although they can also be extremely helpful to the advanced students (and many of them have current pro players as their students), are much better knowing how to help / improve the lower skill level students who really need work / adjustments on their fundamentals and technique.
Let's face it. To a certain degree mechanics don't mean s**t. The way top guys play straight pool they could make 95 percent of the shots standing any way they want and holding the stick any way they want. Mechanics come into play when your 8 feet away and stuck on the rail.
Nobody can teach imagination. They can only facilitate it. You don't know what you don't know. Once you know, it opens up another door. To see someone do something that you've never seen before should turn on a light bulb like a holy s**t moment.
The reason that instructors claim they can turn Cs into Bs and Bs into As in one day is because their flaws are so obvious that any pool room denizen could probably give them some unsolicited advice and help them in 10 minutes.
WobblyStroke
Well-known member
Definition of 'low hanging fruit'.
The higher up the ranks you go, the harder it is to help.
You are right that it works the other way too. The pros are so far removed from the lower ranked players, that without a significant amount of time invested in developing their teaching, they can't reach those guys as effectively as the instructors can. They are much better suited to serve the advanced players that are closer to their own level who can actually benefit from even just observing their day to day activities at the table.
"Cannot possibly" is a very limiting statement you've made.
In a typical one- to two-hour first lesson, my students increase their APA handicaps two points. They consistently tell me weeks after they've been winning all or nearly all their matches and were put up by league bosses two points. I frequently get a call or email a few weeks after even a first intensive lesson.
I've had a C player become a shortstop, his dream, after ten hourlong lessons, a week or two apart each. I've had players fly me in for a weekend to improve in local leagues but then quit their leagues to play in pro-ams, etc.
Because TK is a good friend and other reasons, we are adding a lot of "secret sauce" to this clinic and a player could well/easily go up from C to B or B to A. My speciality isn't "Let me change your grip, stance and stroke, now practice for six months two hours a day to improve," it's far more often "You have a great grip, stance and stroke," let me show you how to do those in a pro manner and you will become much stronger BEFORE THIS LESSON ENDS.
While I've had students tell me I have ideas that seem to come from outer space, I pledge that anyone's pocketing ability and position play will dramatically increase in a single lesson or money is returned.
There are some teachers who are very diligent and will not end the lesson until their student is significantly better. Unfortunately, in my (limited) experience most teachers make radical changes to a student's fundamentals than are pleased when they improve after two hours a day practice for six months.
And yet when I've offered you a free two-hour lesson so you understand, you refuse, because your goal is to troll, NOT to learn in two hours how to go next level.
WobblyStroke
Well-known member
I think you underestimate the cavernous gap between a good instructor and a 'pool room denizen'...tho I do love the term lol.
Also, mechanics matter a great deal. It's not just for long shots where a particular type of mechanics help. If one is not mechanically sound, in some way...not necessarily the accepted conventional mechanics...they can't make medium and even short shots with regularity. You get away with more up close so there are more options, but there are sound mechanics at play any time a guy is making a high percentage of shots (even if they aren't something you'd find in a textbook).
It's like the basketball drill of aiming with the elbow and shooting from absurd body angles as long as the elbow is right. You can do something similar in pool where you take care of just one thing and as long as that is in place, you can make a high percentage of balls regardless of how goofy everything else may look. But that one thing still falls under the umbrella term of 'mechanics' and makes the stroke functional. Perhaps we only disagree on how we are using the word 'mechanics'.
As far as teaching imagination, you are right. Nobody can teach that. However, we can teach a process for developing and sharpening it. I just had a lesson the other week where I asked my student, "How specific are the shot lines and ball destinations that you imagine?" He said, not very. Well how is anyone going to learn much, let alone efficiently if they aren't super clear on their plan for a shot? That is step one. The more you use your imagination and get specific with it, the more you will develop it.
Good post. What you seem to be saying is that to learn the mental game that must supplement skills development, you'll do best if you seek out the help of a battle tested competitor. Agreed 100%.Max Eberle / tom worth/ Bus Driver Ron are good! I feel comfortable vouching for these 3 teachers/coaches!
All above are battle tested! Meaning won tournaments or high stakes gambling and can perform under pressure!
I would be hesitant selecting someone not battle tested! Talk is cheap! Can you execute under pressure and teach others to execute?
Ike runnnells would stress over meals
How many bca certified instructors come with a nutritional background
Kd
Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk
I have been around pool for some time. Seen a few become national champions, pros, top amateurs."Cannot possibly" is a very limiting statement you've made.
In a typical one- to two-hour first lesson, my students increase their APA handicaps two points. They consistently tell me weeks after they've been winning all or nearly all their matches and were put up by league bosses two points. I frequently get a call or email a few weeks after even a first intensive lesson.
I've had a C player become a shortstop, his dream, after ten hourlong lessons, a week or two apart each. I've had players fly me in for a weekend to improve in local leagues but then quit their leagues to play in pro-ams, etc.
Because TK is a good friend and other reasons, we are adding a lot of "secret sauce" to this clinic and a player could well/easily go up from C to B or B to A. My speciality isn't "Let me change your grip, stance and stroke, now practice for six months two hours a day to improve," it's far more often "You have a great grip, stance and stroke," let me show you how to do those in a pro manner and you will become much stronger BEFORE THIS LESSON ENDS.
While I've had students tell me I have ideas that seem to come from outer space, I pledge that anyone's pocketing ability and position play will dramatically increase in a single lesson or money is returned.
There are some teachers who are very diligent and will not end the lesson until their student is significantly better. Unfortunately, in my (limited) experience most teachers make radical changes to a student's fundamentals than are pleased when they improve after two hours a day practice for six months.
Never and I mean never have I seen it happen in a short period of time.
What the hell do I know.... probably not much.
I took virtual lessons from Anthony Beeler. At the very beginning, he had me write down attainable goals I would like to accomplish. He started training my mind before I even got into the lessons.
He told me to start with simple goals, and progressively make them harder for the 12 month period. My 12 month goal was to Break and Run 2 racks of 8 ball... back to back. That might not sound too hard for some of you, but where my game was at the time, it wasn't happening.
I accomplished that goal.... and it was on a 9 foot table! A good instructor molds the mind, as well as the body.
He told me to start with simple goals, and progressively make them harder for the 12 month period. My 12 month goal was to Break and Run 2 racks of 8 ball... back to back. That might not sound too hard for some of you, but where my game was at the time, it wasn't happening.
I accomplished that goal.... and it was on a 9 foot table! A good instructor molds the mind, as well as the body.