The Zone -- Are We There Yet?

Biloxi Boy

Biloxi Boy

Man With A Golden Arm
There is a good thread currently going strong, Which Variable Is the Cause of Most Missed Shots, in which this subject surfaced. This will open another can of worms, but what the hell . . .

At some point in my pool life, I found myself slipping into two very closely related states, both of which I came to describe as being "in the zone". One was a purely meditative/trance-like state which sometimes occurred when I was playing alone just running/pocketing balls. It was definitely not "practice", and the end result was that time seem to stand still and the world became calm and distant. My other zone was a competitive one in which my game reached a new level -- whatever you want to call it, I believe we've all been there.

Over in the other thread, Senior Tom wrote "When we get too much into our conscious mind, we have a tendency to mess up the shot. In the zone, it doesn't take a lot of thinking, just doing. 'Just do it !'"

So the "Succinct Police" don't bust me, I am going to stop here, and let y'all have it.

What is the Zone? How do we get there? Where can it take us?
 
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I don't know the answer. But there are times when I'm playing at my best and I'll run some balls and when I get done and I sit back down someone will come up and start talking to me about this shot or that shot that I just made and in a lot of cases I can't remember them. I'll remember the weird ones, the super tough ones, the kicks and the banks that require me calling things out, but for a lot of other shots....it's just a blur even though it happened within the last few minutes in a lot of cases. I think it's because I get into this automatic, not actively thinking, state when I'm shooting my best and that's just what happens for me. Maybe that's the zone, maybe it's not. But it's a weird feeling to not be able to remember those shots.

Only happens when I'm playing well...when I'm playing poorly I remember all the shots....and all the ways I screwed them up
 
Biloxi Boy said:
There is a good thread currently going strong, Which Variable Is the Cause of Most Missed Shots, in which this subject surfaced. This will open another can of worms, but what the hell . . .

At some point in my pool life, I found myself slipping into two very closely related states, both of which I came to describe as being "in the zone". One was a purely meditative/trance-like state which sometimes occurred when I was playing alone just running/pocketing balls. It was definitely not "practice", and the end result was that time seem to stand still and the world became calm and distant, My other zone was a competitive one in which my game reached a new level -- whatever you want to call it, I believe we've all been there.

Over in the other thread, Senior Tom wrote "When we get too much into our conscious mind, we have a tendency to mess up the shot. In the zone, it doesn't take a lot of thinking, just doing. 'Just do it !'"

So the "Succinct Police" don't bust me, I am going to stop here, and let y'all have it.

What is the Zone? How do we get there? Where can it take us?
Click to expand...

I think dead stroke visits us when we're doing one, two, or maybe more things differently than before.

Perhaps a bit more of a step to the left, establishing contact between bridge hand and cue shaft with a different motion, a slightly longer or shorter bridge, a longer or shorter grip, a slightly turned wrist there, a higher or lower head, a more level cue, a longer back stroke, a more relaxed or tighter bridge, and so on. On occasion, all this comes together to produce a precise stroke and the ability to do what we will with the cue ball.

Then, the mental part of dead stroke comes to us and we become absorbed by our ability to execute shots with sharpened precision. The next day, we go to the table and, because we're not machines, we do it a bit differently, and end up with different results. Way back when, I would notice that if I just played very quickly, without thinking, I could play "very well." I would run around the table, collapse into a stance, throw a hodge podge of sometimes unorthodox bridges on the table, and zip the balls into the pockets. I could run a lot of balls this way. The problem was that this "system" wasn't reliable enough to count on.

Nowadays, it's more the opposite. I find that it's when I'm concentrating on the balls and table, considering every nuance of the upcoming shot -- position play, table layout, and using a very studied technique -- that I play "very well."

So why the difference?

I think it's because the words "(play) very well" have a different meaning for me now than before. The lack of reliability that I experienced as a younger player was because I just wasn't good enough and didn't have the knowledge I have today. The failure of my earlier "system" was actually my failure as a player. Now, I think I have a better appreciation for how difficult the game can be and can more clearly see what I don't know and might not be able to execute. I also now know, with much more accuracy what playing "very well" means. Many times in the past, I thought I was playing "very well." Now, I have a much more narrow definition of those words and they require a much higher level of precision and consistency in execution than I would have used just six months ago.

So what does this all mean? I dunno.

Perhaps it's just that "dead stroke" means different things to different people, and different things at different times in our lives. Certainly, "dead stroke" for a player that has only been playing for a year or two, means something quite different to a player with twenty or thirty years of playing experience. And because we keep "raising the bar' the target is always in sight but just out of reach.

Lou Figueroa
 
The zone always gets a book length post from me, one of my favorite subjects.

There are over a half-dozen states referred to as the zone. Three states are when you are physically, mentally, and emotionally ready to compete at your best. Not really any form of the zone but I will call this zone level one following an old book. Zone level two incorporates all of zone one plus a narrow focus on the task at hand. Maybe a single word or short phrase repeated in your head. "Smooth" is one I have used because any form of competition even those requiring maximum speed seem to benefit from smoothness.

Then there is the third level of the zone, perhaps the highest level. Usually incorporates level one but it doesn't have to. Nothing to do with level two although I have read that level two can help you enter level three. I am of mixed opinion, level two isn't a must so I will just say maybe it helps.

Level three, more information is pouring in than you have ever experienced not in the zone. All senses including some you didn't know you had are providing information. Your conscious mind is in a corner somewhere overseeing things and will step in if needed but it is silent. Your unconscious is sorting all of the information and sorting the useful information needed in the moment. It is filing everything else and it will be remembered later but if it isn't useful for the task at hand it is filed off to the side.

The unconscious is working at 100%, your body is working at 100%, the seeming impossible is possible. You know tough banks and kicks are falling before you bend over to shoot.

Pool is one of the tougher things to find the zone in because of the constant interruption of racking. I found the easiest way to find the zone was doing something very similar but not exactly the same over and over. Think bouncing a ball off a rail over and over with your hand. In my case it was driving a short track car around in circles. The ideal lap is very similar over and over but traffic forces you to break and regain that pattern.

Many people are disbelieving of the third level zone if they haven't been there. Sounds a bit mystical. It may even be a bit mystical. However having been there many times in a handful of forms of competition and a few life threatening situations I can say it is real.

One instance, I was at one of my favorite hangouts, my sister's home. Her first baby had just started rolling over. She was changing a diaper on the couch, I was leaning in a doorway about ten or twelve feet away. She got up to grab a diaper from another room not thinking of the danger of the baby rolling over. The baby rolled over and was falling head first towards a concrete floor covered with the old tar paper linoleum. I threw myself in a rolling dive so that I caught the baby on my chest as I slid under her. Never an athlete, I was known for being a bit clumsy. A few beers certainly didn't help!

A large old farm style house, my sister saw what happened as she came in the door on the other side of the living room, too late to prevent the fall herself. "How in the world did you do that?"

"No choice!" I had snapped into the zone, made the right decision what to do, and acted. All in a split second. Not in the zone I wouldn't have had time to even straighten from my position on the door frame. I would have been trying to catch the baby from on top too and might have crushed her myself.

There have been many times less dramatic including setting a local record in my second season of pistol competition that masters and grandmasters had chased for fifteen years. For some of that time an over twenty time world champion had chased that record. I surely wasn't in their league as a shooter, maybe as a competitor. Also, I deliberately used the zone to set that record. One I am proud of because it was a first. No matter how many people come behind only one can be the first.

To deliberately enter the zone you have to relax, totally release, focus. A scary thing to do when what you are doing seems to call for intense focus. The intense focus will be there but from the unconscious, not the conscious.

Hu
 
slide13 said:
I don't know the answer. But there are times when I'm playing at my best and I'll run some balls and when I get done and I sit back down someone will come up and start talking to me about this shot or that shot that I just made and in a lot of cases I can't remember them. I'll remember the weird ones, the super tough ones, the kicks and the banks that require me calling things out, but for a lot of other shots....it's just a blur even though it happened within the last few minutes in a lot of cases. I think it's because I get into this automatic, not actively thinking, state when I'm shooting my best and that's just what happens for me. Maybe that's the zone, maybe it's not. But it's a weird feeling to not be able to remember those shots.

Only happens when I'm playing well...when I'm playing poorly I remember all the shots....and all the ways I screwed them up
Click to expand...
Dead Stroke fellas.
 
ShootingArts said:
The zone always gets a book length post from me, one of my favorite subjects.

There are over a half-dozen states referred to as the zone. Three states are when you are physically, mentally, and emotionally ready to compete at your best. Not really any form of the zone but I will call this zone level one following an old book. Zone level two incorporates all of zone one plus a narrow focus on the task at hand. Maybe a single word or short phrase repeated in your head. "Smooth" is one I have used because any form of competition even those requiring maximum speed seem to benefit from smoothness.

Then there is the third level of the zone, perhaps the highest level. Usually incorporates level one but it doesn't have to. Nothing to do with level two although I have read that level two can help you enter level three. I am of mixed opinion, level two isn't a must so I will just say maybe it helps.

Level three, more information is pouring in than you have ever experienced not in the zone. All senses including some you didn't know you had are providing information. Your conscious mind is in a corner somewhere overseeing things and will step in if needed but it is silent. Your unconscious is sorting all of the information and sorting the useful information needed in the moment. It is filing everything else and it will be remembered later but if it isn't useful for the task at hand it is filed off to the side.

The unconscious is working at 100%, your body is working at 100%, the seeming impossible is possible. You know tough banks and kicks are falling before you bend over to shoot.

Pool is one of the tougher things to find the zone in because of the constant interruption of racking. I found the easiest way to find the zone was doing something very similar but not exactly the same over and over. Think bouncing a ball off a rail over and over with your hand. In my case it was driving a short track car around in circles. The ideal lap is very similar over and over but traffic forces you to break and regain that pattern.

Many people are disbelieving of the third level zone if they haven't been there. Sounds a bit mystical. It may even be a bit mystical. However having been there many times in a handful of forms of competition and a few life threatening situations I can say it is real.

One instance, I was at one of my favorite hangouts, my sister's home. Her first baby had just started rolling over. She was changing a diaper on the couch, I was leaning in a doorway about ten or twelve feet away. She got up to grab a diaper from another room not thinking of the danger of the baby rolling over. The baby rolled over and was falling head first towards a concrete floor covered with the old tar paper linoleum. I threw myself in a rolling dive so that I caught the baby on my chest as I slid under her. Never an athlete, I was known for being a bit clumsy. A few beers certainly didn't help!

A large old farm style house, my sister saw what happened as she came in the door on the other side of the living room, too late to prevent the fall herself. "How in the world did you do that?"

"No choice!" I had snapped into the zone, made the right decision what to do, and acted. All in a split second. Not in the zone I wouldn't have had time to even straighten from my position on the door frame. I would have been trying to catch the baby from on top too and might have crushed her myself.

There have been many times less dramatic including setting a local record in my second season of pistol competition that masters and grandmasters had chased for fifteen years. For some of that time an over twenty time world champion had chased that record. I surely wasn't in their league as a shooter, maybe as a competitor. Also, I deliberately used the zone to set that record. One I am proud of because it was a first. No matter how many people come behind only one can be the first.

To deliberately enter the zone you have to relax, totally release, focus. A scary thing to do when what you are doing seems to call for intense focus. The intense focus will be there but from the unconscious, not the conscious.

Hu
Click to expand...
Exactly. The conscious mind steps in and mistakes happen. Allow your unconscious to pull the right file and execute on demand. That's what it's there for. Driving the bus. So let it.
 
So am I to now understand that the spectral observers of my nascent struggles to master the basics of the pool hall who spoke only rarely to provide me terse guidance (and then apparently compelled only by a growing intolerance of my abuse of the game and resulting degradation of their environment) were in fact western incarnations of Shaolin priests?
 
'The Zone' is indeed almost 'mystical' as Hu put it and it is def a different state of mind as many have alluded to. There was a thread on this not too long ago that dove into this for a page or two. Basically, players are trying to get into the slower brain waves and there are meditative and breathing techniques designed to promote the slower brain wave states. The aim is to get into Alpha waves, which adults only rarely tap into in their waking state. The holy grail is to go one level lower into Theta waves, which are even more rare. This is why in some sports nerd circles, 'the zone' is sometimes referred to as 'going theta'.

There was a great lil documentary I saw on Theta brain states in which some mystical type things were discussed but it also included great athletes talking about being in the zone. Among them, Tiger woods discussed how he, like slide13 above, could not remember his shots in that state. He could remember walking up to the tee box and the walk down the fairway, but everything over the ball was a hazy blur.

My most recent brush up with 'the zone' happened last week when I played a friend who is a high level snooker player but not much of a 9ball player by comparison. Well he was that day. The guy didn't miss a ball and ran out from everywhere. He had a slew of runouts and was laughing about it afterwards because he couldn't remember any of them. I tried to compliment his great shot after a rack here and there and he just smirked and said something like, 'Oooooh sounds sweet, wish I could remember it'.
 
WobblyStroke said:
'The Zone' is indeed almost 'mystical' as Hu put it and it is def a different state of mind as many have alluded to. There was a thread on this not too long ago that dove into this for a page or two. Basically, players are trying to get into the slower brain waves and there are meditative and breathing techniques designed to promote the slower brain wave states. The aim is to get into Alpha waves, which adults only rarely tap into in their waking state. The holy grail is to go one level lower into Theta waves, which are even more rare. This is why in some sports nerd circles, 'the zone' is sometimes referred to as 'going theta'.

There was a great lil documentary I saw on Theta brain states in which some mystical type things were discussed but it also included great athletes talking about being in the zone. Among them, Tiger woods discussed how he, like slide13 above, could not remember his shots in that state. He could remember walking up to the tee box and the walk down the fairway, but everything over the ball was a hazy blur.

My most recent brush up with 'the zone' happened last week when I played a friend who is a high level snooker player but not much of a 9ball player by comparison. Well he was that day. The guy didn't miss a ball and ran out from everywhere. He had a slew of runouts and was laughing about it afterwards because he couldn't remember any of them. I tried to compliment his great shot after a rack here and there and he just smirked and said something like, 'Oooooh sounds sweet, wish I could remember it'.
Click to expand...
I found I could get into the Zone playing snooker but not so much playing pool and recognizing the eaurific feeling. Even running out racks It wasn't the same for me.
 
George the Greek said:
I found I could get into the Zone playing snooker but not so much playing pool and recognizing the eaurific feeling. Even running out racks It wasn't the same for me.
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Interesting. After our couple of sets, my guy was talking with another good snooker player about how 'the rush' he got from playing like that was a bit different than snooker, but easier to achieve on a pool table.
 
"The older I get the better I used to be" (Lee Trevino) I don`t think the zone really exists any more than I believe in Santa. I think our memory tricks us into thinking we actually occupied a higher plane, when the explanation is actually pretty simple. You have a base ability, sometimes you play below, sometimes above. There is nothing supernatural going on, you are just having a good day. Do we have a cute word for when we are playing bad? The anti zone?
 
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Biloxi Boy said:
I know that most players are familiar with being in dead stroke or the zone but how many of us are aware that we are experiencing an altered state of consciousness?
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For awhile I was getting in the zone multiple times a week shooting pistols. I was very aware of being in a different state. Sometimes I felt myself entering it for a few moments. I am hard of hearing, have been since I was tiny. In the zone I shot a perfect score for the stage then walked back to where two friends were standing and told one how to fix a problem he was having with his pistol. They had been about ten feet behind me talking about the issue when I was firing three to four shots a second.

Sometimes I could feel my senses growing much stronger as I entered the zone. Somewhat oddly, one night shooting pool, eightball, I fell into the zone for the longest time ever. Ten or twelve hours playing eightball on an old junk nine footer, other people doing all the racking on the challenge table. I made over eight hundred dollars that night at five dollars a game. No losses from the first time I hit a ball until my last challengers went straight to work from the place the next morning. Even more amazing, no scratches on that bucket pocketed table! I knew I had played from daylight to daylight the next day but I felt fresh and ready to play another twelve hours or more.

To clarify one thing, at least for me dead stroke is different from the zone. I have been in dead stroke many times without being in the zone. Never been in the zone without being in dead stroke though.

The zone is hard to understand and fairly easy to believe it doesn't exist if you haven't been there. I never put much weight in out of body experiences until a friend that was anything but flighty or a doper had it happen to him. Normally the class of the field, he sprayed bullets all over a target after being awake over 24 hours. I asked him what happened. He said he was floating about twenty feet above the firing line watching some moron shoot without even looking at his sights and that moron was him!

I was not working recovering from yet another surgery and I thought chasing an out of body experience would be fun. I did some homework on the subject and decided it was far too dangerous to pursue.

I really believe that someday many of the things we don't understand and call the supernatural today will be well understood and considered normal. There are things I don't understand and once scoffed at. I don't scoff at anything anymore. Might be a matter of people having trouble explaining or me not having any reference points to work with. Might be total BS too, but I don't know and don't dismiss anything today.

My partner in projects for years held over eighty patents. A man who could think outside the box!

Hu
 
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