Rare and special lesson here for sure..
Thanks again Gene. It was a pleasure...
For all the active readers of this thread that like me doubt the value learning about / compensating for eye dominance, here is my honest and unsolicited review of my time spent with Gene this evening.
Please note, that I would be considered by most as an advanced amateur player, so the focus of the lesson centered mostly on identifying and gauging my eye dominance. Adjusting my fundamentals was not a consideration at any point. I also never doubted the phenomenon of eye dominance.
First off, it should be known that Gene is a pleasure to deal with, and very forth coming with his approach. There is no snake oil being offered for sale.
He has his own approach to determining which eye is dominant and by how much it is effecting your aim. Gene verified what I already believed to be my dominant eye, and the amount of time it took to prove how it was effecting my aim, was mere moments.
My stance on how players can naturally correct for ED (lol...I realize what else that could stand for) has not changed. IMO any player who is truly attempting to excel at pool can and should be adjusting how they hit the OB to pocket it correctly. However speaking as someone who was away for the game for nearly a decade. What Gene showed me has renewed my confidence at playing this game at a high(er) level.
What I discover in my short time with Gene, is that my ED was actually creating confidence issues at key moments. Brief story shorter..: Cutting the ball one way,, everything is natural. Cutting it the other, the aim feels off and I end up adjusting by feel to pot the ball. Now I do make that adjusted shot more often than not. However when I'm playing at less than my best, having to correct after my approach instills doubt. This does have the potential to leach into the rest of my game while the pressure increases throughout a match/tourney. I'm known as a grinder, and I always do my best to play through this potential self doubt. This perceived "grinding" is honestly me just trying push the doubt out of my mind while down on the ball. To be clear, this ED revelation and it's likelyhood in improving my game is conjecture on my part as I obviously haven't had the opportunity to test my theory in the heat of battle during the last few hours. That said, I can speak objectively about my own game and tendencies in key moments. ...so I think I can speculate with some certainty.
I have absolutely zero doubt that my time with Gene this evening will improve my game. Will I make more balls...?...no, not directly. I do now however understand why I feel the need to adjust aim while down on the ball. This will translate into reset and re-approach rather than "on the fly correction" which is the bane to consistency, and will prevent me from second guessing myself in tough situations.
I should also state that the "correction" does not impact my fundamentals and/or PSR.
Strong players..., this is worth your time. :thumbup:
Before we did this lesson I watched JV play on some videos. I watched for about 30 minutes and hardly ever seen him miss but I could see he would get up and down again sometimes on certain shots. He would still get there on most of them and still make the ball.
When he says at the end of the post: Strong players...., this is worth your time.....He is relating to strong players because he can play with the best of them. He can flat out play.
There are players hidden all over the place that could be playing professionally but they are doing the family thing, work thing and that is great. Jv is one of those guys.
I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would be pleasantly surprised how much this would help to envision the shot as good as humanly possible. Something that just was kind of not there on certain shots cut to the left.
Because of the level of play JV is at, any little improvement is huge.
On the same token, the lower level player learning the same thing is huge also but in a different way. The lower level player can now make some kind of sense about what is going on when he shoots a shot otherwise the whole game is just a mess and seems like mission impossible. Once this is learned they can start to improve at an extremely fast pace. This is why many of the young guns I have worked with get to a higher level and seem to come out of nowhere.
Now , what higher level they get to depends on how hard they work because there is allot more to this game than seeing the shot correctly but if the sights on any gun are crooked the person shooting the gun would look very bad, not knowing what the problem was makes it even worse.
Just keep missing and missing and missing. Shape doesn't work, ball patterns aren't even a thought and the missed shot takes care of any ball patterns or shape you were planning on. Nothing works well.
JV is a prime example of a player that plays at a higher level and played flawless at certain times in his life. He shared this thought with me during the lesson. During the flawless time he was playing all the time. Gambling every day and just getting out from everywhere. This is what repetition will do and is how many of the pros stay on top of their game. Playing allot. They have learned during their life from other players and also from monkey see, monkey do.
But once this player can actually see how flawed our own natural eye dominance is and how to correct it there is no telling this player that this isn't the answer for everyone that wants to improve.
JV teaches pool. so he was kind of pleasantly surprised by what he saw. Something that would give him the confidence to feel good about every shot by knowing how to keep the eye dominance under control. Once this is done manually for awhile it kind of becomes natural. But at the same time we drift back, not getting there sometimes and need to dig in and work at it again.
Myself, I remind myself every time I come to shoot pool how i need this to be right or i will struggle sometimes until I do get it right. And JV will discover this also. Our eye dominance will betray us from time to time. I call it a tune up to get on the right track again. Knowing how to correct this manually is a must. If you don't know how to correct it manually there is no tune up.
Working with a player of JV's ability is very rewarding to me. I know that I am working with a player that had put his heart and soul into the game. Grinding out every shot and grinding out every dollar played for.
Being able to show and help someone with something that I know will just add to this whole story line is the best possible reward for me.
The best part of the whole thing is JV teaches some pool and he can share this with some of the young guns up there in Canada. He can build some young champions. This will just help them get there a little faster.
JV, I want to thank you for letting me share this with you. Good Luck my friend....:thumbup: