am I practicing correctly and efficiently?c

J

judochoke

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
6 months in, practicing at least 2 hours a day at home. 75 percent of my time, I like to put out 7 solids and the 8 ball, and just practice pattern play. I do this twice, and then I throw all of the balls and play the ghost, one time. then I do the line up drill, all 15 balls at the middle diamond in a row, trying to go in order. then I just repeat those three drills, over and over again.

my other 25 percent of the time, I use a timer, and a notebook, and will do 20 minutes of draw, 20 minutes of follow, 20 minutes of frozen ball shots, ect. ect.
I will also work on a shot that im missing, or 90-90 aiming.

they are so many drills out there on the internet, should I be doing all of these different drills? or just stick to the ones im doing and enjoy??

my improvement is coming, but its a very slow process.

I also like to put out 6 balls and shoot in order, via tom Lowry, I can get all six 50 percent of the time.

am I efficient??????? thanks for any replys. judo
 
J

jrctherake

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
judochoke said:
6 months in, practicing at least 2 hours a day at home. 75 percent of my time, I like to put out 7 solids and the 8 ball, and just practice pattern play. I do this twice, and then I throw all of the balls and play the ghost, one time. then I do the line up drill, all 15 balls at the middle diamond in a row, trying to go in order. then I just repeat those three drills, over and over again.

my other 25 percent of the time, I use a timer, and a notebook, and will do 20 minutes of draw, 20 minutes of follow, 20 minutes of frozen ball shots, ect. ect.
I will also work on a shot that im missing, or 90-90 aiming.

they are so many drills out there on the internet, should I be doing all of these different drills? or just stick to the ones im doing and enjoy??

my improvement is coming, but its a very slow process.

I also like to put out 6 balls and shoot in order, via tom Lowry, I can get all six 50 percent of the time.

am I efficient??????? thanks for any replys. judo
Click to expand...

Two things to remember:

Nobody improves "while" playing.

Nobody finds their weaknesses with drills.

Bottom line:

Find your weaknesses during actual competition. Make mental notes of missed balls and safeties. If you play the ghost, do the same thing.... during/after ghost play.

After you've made mental notes or on paper etc.... of your errors during play, "DESIGN YOUR DRILLS AROUND YOUR WEAKNESSES FOUND DURING PLAY".

Cookie cutter drills work but NOWHERE AS GOOD as a drill designed for YOUR specific weakness.

The line of balls drill (many variations of them), the L drills, wagon wheel etc...etc...etc... are a complete waste of time if it is not your problem.

All of the above can be arranged at home or at a room by yourself but, most improve much faster with guidance from an instructor..... eventhough, some instructors are useless.
 
B

BarTableMan

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Practice Tip

A friend of mine asked me what drills are best to get better. He is an APA 4 level 8-ball player. I've been an APA 7 for 25 years now. I told him he needs to spend a year learning stance, bridges, stroke and timing way before you attack a bunch of drills. He claimed he already knew how to shoot. WRONG! The point: practicing drills with poor body movements creates a lifetime of bad habits. You have to have someone correct your body first. A tip...watch snooker videos. They stand and stroke with beauty.
 
Lawnboy77

Lawnboy77

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
BarTableMan said:
A friend of mine asked me what drills are best to get better. He is an APA 4 level 8-ball player. I've been an APA 7 for 25 years now. I told him he needs to spend a year learning stance, bridges, stroke and timing way before you attack a bunch of drills. He claimed he already knew how to shoot. WRONG! The point: practicing drills with poor body movements creates a lifetime of bad habits. You have to have someone correct your body first. A tip...watch snooker videos. They stand and stroke with beauty.
Click to expand...

Yep! Ronnie O’Sullivan, Allison Fisher and Karen Corr come to mind.
 
Lawnboy77

Lawnboy77

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Here is a good book that will help to. I’m sure there other good ones to.
28efe2cce6ee7f3a82ea0d31fd47b91f.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Scratch85

Scratch85

AzB Gold Member
Gold Member
Silver Member
jrctherake said:
Nobody finds their weaknesses with drills.



Bottom line:



Find your weaknesses during actual competition..
Click to expand...


Agree with this. I’m pretty good at my practice drills. Wish they came up in my games more often.

Had a basketball coach that was big on jumping rope. We got better at at jumping rope but we didn’t get better at playing basketball.



Sent from my iPhone using AzBilliards Forums
 
strmanglr scott

strmanglr scott

All about Focus
Silver Member
You cater drills to your weaknesses.

When you find a shot you miss more than once, create a drill to make you better at that shot.

No matter what game you play, there is a percentage of the shots your game is not doing well with.

If a player just plays the game he prefers to play for practice, how many times do those challenging shot come up? Not much. But if a player can recognize weak points, a player can cater drills to that weakness.

Instead of playing game upon game where that weakness is only challenged a few times, a player can practice a drill for an hour or indefinitely and be addressing their weakness the whole time.

Drills aren't for finding weaknesses, they're for addressing them and overcoming them.
 
ShootingArts

ShootingArts

Smorg is giving St Peter the 7!
Gold Member
Silver Member
A few things to consider

Good advice so far, can't fault any of it. I would add straight pool or one pocket only going to seven playing yourself one pocket. The most important thing I would add is a piece of paper.

Cut an eight inch circle out of printer paper and lay it where you plan to put the cue ball. When you get on paper 75% of the time cut it down to six inches, then five and four once you get to seventy-five percent each size. After four inches cut it down to two. Now the goal is to shadow the paper, get some part of the cue ball on top of the paper while pocketing the object ball of course.

It took me two to three years to reach that last level, mostly on just seven foot bar tables but I played some nine foot and snooker tables too. At that level nobody that comes through the door has to like what you can give them. It is really strong if you gamble, you are the luckiest person in the place.

Pocketing a ball is usually the easiest part of a shot. Focus on position and you will find pocketing the object ball is almost automatic.

Hu
 
goettlicher

goettlicher

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I notice that all of your drills are designed for "in front of the cue ball".

Fifteen minutes a day of stroke work out should be added.

randyg
 
R

RichSchultz

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
jrctherake said:
Two things to remember:

Nobody improves "while" playing.

Nobody finds their weaknesses with drills.

Bottom line:

Find your weaknesses during actual competition. Make mental notes of missed balls and safeties. If you play the ghost, do the same thing.... during/after ghost play.

After you've made mental notes or on paper etc.... of your errors during play, "DESIGN YOUR DRILLS AROUND YOUR WEAKNESSES FOUND DURING PLAY".

Cookie cutter drills work but NOWHERE AS GOOD as a drill designed for YOUR specific weakness.

The line of balls drill (many variations of them), the L drills, wagon wheel etc...etc...etc... are a complete waste of time if it is not your problem.

All of the above can be arranged at home or at a room by yourself but, most improve much faster with guidance from an instructor..... eventhough, some instructors are useless.
Click to expand...
This nails it!!
 
Grilled Cheese

Grilled Cheese

p.i.i.t.h.
Silver Member
The old saying goes -- practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.


There's training and then there's practice. Or you could say, there's learning and then there's practice.

Drills are type of practice. In order to drill the right things and in the correct way, one must learn or be trained on what is proper first. Otherwise, you are drilling bad habits or bad form.

Hindsight is 20/20. After 20+ years...if I knew what I knew now...I would have gotten better dramatically faster. I too used to bang balls around thinking this was practice. It's better than nothing, yes, but not much better.

You can learn that way. But it's a trial and error process. It is a brute force method. Because of the unstructured, randomness about it, the dozens of variables in what you are doing and what you are doing right/wrong - your brain has a hard time working out what is right and what is wrong and this is why it takes much much longer to improve by just shooting patterns or balls on a table. Your brain is trying to learn by nature, as opposed to through understanding.

Players who learn only by banging around hundreds of thousands of balls can become pretty good. Some excellent. But they are always "feel" players and never become elite.

Your only feedback of what you did right is making the ball and getting shape. Your only feedback of what you did wrong was missing the ball or missing shape.

That's not enough.

To get better faster, you need proper instruction and to ISOLATE aspects of your stroke, mechanics and speed control. So your brain can "FEEL" and "PERCEIVE" aka Learn these aspects in a real way. To learn exactly what is going on mechanically with your stroke.


This way, you can master speed control - which is more important than pure shot making. Yes, this is an old debate, but the truth is speed control is king.

Because...as was mentioned in the Buddy Hall Center ball thread going on right now -- REAL excellence falls around good center ball play and controlling your angles. How do you do that? With speed control.

Way too much importance is placed in shot making. Most struggle with this for a long time. Because they are always shooting awful shots. Not just long range tough ones...distance doesn't matter. It's shooting off-angle, unnatural shots. Learn angles and speed control, and now you will be shooting a series of more reasonable shots aka easier ones which are more natural for position. And this builds confidence.

Learning speed control through strictly feel is not ideal. You need to learn and understand your own stroke to the point that you can execute reasonably consistent speed shots on demand. Yes, it becomes kinda mechanical but that's the point!

Feel players fall apart. Always. No consistency. But the guys who know the mechanics of their stroke and have practiced and drilled to be able to reproduce varying degrees of speed have superior speed control, in any conditions.


The game, in a strange way, is actually dramatically more simple than most of us make it out to be. The hard part is keeping it simple. That will make sense one day. Trust me.
 
ShootingArts

ShootingArts

Smorg is giving St Peter the 7!
Gold Member
Silver Member
Art and Science

Grilled Cheese said:
The old saying goes -- practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.


There's training and then there's practice. Or you could say, there's learning and then there's practice.

Drills are type of practice. In order to drill the right things and in the correct way, one must learn or be trained on what is proper first. Otherwise, you are drilling bad habits or bad form.

Hindsight is 20/20. After 20+ years...if I knew what I knew now...I would have gotten better dramatically faster. I too used to bang balls around thinking this was practice. It's better than nothing, yes, but not much better.

You can learn that way. But it's a trial and error process. It is a brute force method. Because of the unstructured, randomness about it, the dozens of variables in what you are doing and what you are doing right/wrong - your brain has a hard time working out what is right and what is wrong and this is why it takes much much longer to improve by just shooting patterns or balls on a table. Your brain is trying to learn by nature, as opposed to through understanding.

Players who learn only by banging around hundreds of thousands of balls can become pretty good. Some excellent. But they are always "feel" players and never become elite.

Your only feedback of what you did right is making the ball and getting shape. Your only feedback of what you did wrong was missing the ball or missing shape.

That's not enough.

To get better faster, you need proper instruction and to ISOLATE aspects of your stroke, mechanics and speed control. So your brain can "FEEL" and "PERCEIVE" aka Learn these aspects in a real way. To learn exactly what is going on mechanically with your stroke.


This way, you can master speed control - which is more important than pure shot making. Yes, this is an old debate, but the truth is speed control is king.

Because...as was mentioned in the Buddy Hall Center ball thread going on right now -- REAL excellence falls around good center ball play and controlling your angles. How do you do that? With speed control.

Way too much importance is placed in shot making. Most struggle with this for a long time. Because they are always shooting awful shots. Not just long range tough ones...distance doesn't matter. It's shooting off-angle, unnatural shots. Learn angles and speed control, and now you will be shooting a series of more reasonable shots aka easier ones which are more natural for position. And this builds confidence.

Learning speed control through strictly feel is not ideal. You need to learn and understand your own stroke to the point that you can execute reasonably consistent speed shots on demand. Yes, it becomes kinda mechanical but that's the point!

Feel players fall apart. Always. No consistency. But the guys who know the mechanics of their stroke and have practiced and drilled to be able to reproduce varying degrees of speed have superior speed control, in any conditions.


The game, in a strange way, is actually dramatically more simple than most of us make it out to be. The hard part is keeping it simple. That will make sense one day. Trust me.
Click to expand...


I agree that cue ball control is of primary importance. Pocketing a ball doesn't mean you will have cue ball control but having cue ball control means you will be able to pocket balls.

Although we can slightly lower the importance of speed control by entering the area of shape at best angles, speed is indeed a huge part of playing shape and angles. However, no amount of mechanical practice in the world will give you speed control until you understand the affects of collision induced spin, both collisions with cue balls and rails. Because there is an infinite variety of variations the only way to judge speed after collisions is by experience. In other words, feel.

Good mechanics are important but without feel a player will never know how to apply them. Most people think engineering is a science. Engineers know it is an art and science. Pool is the same, both art and science. Without one you can't apply the other.

Hu
 
alstl

alstl

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
For offense I would recommend equal offense. It's better than just rolling balls on the table because you get unintended clusters you have to break open.

If you are playing rotation then 9 or 10 ball ghost is okay but you also should practice some kicking. One way to practice kicking is playing the ghost and if you successfully execute a kick it doesn't count as a miss and you continue to run balls.
 
C

ChrisinNC

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
judochoke said:
6 months in, practicing at least 2 hours a day at home. 75 percent of my time, I like to put out 7 solids and the 8 ball, and just practice pattern play. I do this twice, and then I throw all of the balls and play the ghost, one time. then I do the line up drill, all 15 balls at the middle diamond in a row, trying to go in order. then I just repeat those three drills, over and over again.

my other 25 percent of the time, I use a timer, and a notebook, and will do 20 minutes of draw, 20 minutes of follow, 20 minutes of frozen ball shots, ect. ect.
I will also work on a shot that im missing, or 90-90 aiming.

they are so many drills out there on the internet, should I be doing all of these different drills? or just stick to the ones im doing and enjoy??

my improvement is coming, but its a very slow process.

I also like to put out 6 balls and shoot in order, via tom Lowry, I can get all six 50 percent of the time.

am I efficient??????? thanks for any replys. judo
Click to expand...
Sounds like you're putting in some quality practice, but don't underestimate the importance of playing matches against other similar skilled or better players. You just can't replicate that pressure when practicing drills by yourself. It doesn't have to be gambling or any kind of tournament, but when I'm playing someone even when there is nothing at stake, I'm always wanting to play a race to a certain number of games just like it was a tournament match, which helps keep me focused.
 
strmanglr scott

strmanglr scott

All about Focus
Silver Member
jrctherake said:
Two things to remember:

Nobody improves "while" playing.

Nobody finds their weaknesses with drills.
Click to expand...

I disagree with this whole heartedly. My game grew significantly playing couple days a week for 2-3 hours playing one of the best players I know. His level of play forced me to step up my focus, changed my style of play and increased my safety play (seemed like it was impossible to get a solid safe on him). My whole game got better. I would lose to him 90% of the time until I finally made some changes. Forever changed my game.

Now when I get in stroke real well, those days of playing come back and I joke to my friends that I'm channeling him.

Take time to watch pros play and watch closely.

I noticed while watching the Cup almost every shot the player at some point got behind the OB and found the contact point. Thats in my pre shot routine, but up until this last week I had been wondering if I really needed to do that every shot.
 
couldnthinkof01

couldnthinkof01

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Straight pool high run practice might be worth considering.
It offers pressure to beat your best run, cue ball and speed
control, pattern play and break outs, and sustained focus.

Just set up your favorite break shot and fire away.
 
M

Mustardeer

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Find a 9 footer with tight pockets, line up a long straight shot with the ob center table and cb near a corner. Can you make 10 in a row? If not you got stroke problems. Work on your stroke until you can shoot corner to corner consistently ( hint: mental game is a huge factor ). This could take months to master. I like putting a cb on the rail and shooting a long cut shot before a tourney to see if I’m in stroke.

Then once you have a decent stroke you can practice on a barbox. All you’re doing now is learning the tangent line because you can make any ball now. Where EXACTLY will the cb hit on the rail? Practice various speeds/angles/english and examine cb path. We all know roughly where the cb is going but you need to know the exact point.

Then watch pros play to learn strategy and patterns. Learn to avoid danger zones, pick a specific point on the table where you want the cb, go into the line of shot, always be on the correct pocket line, pick the right key ball, etc.

At this point you should be breaking and running out a lot.

Then do a lot of tourneys to learn to deal with pressure until you start winning a lot of small ones. Then come play me for big money for your lesson #2. Of course I’ll need 3 games on the wire you’re too good man. 😹
 
iusedtoberich

iusedtoberich

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I'm a big fan of doing drills from a drill book. The one I used the most (I'm sure there are many other good ones...) is "Joe Tucker's Guaranteed Improvement". It was $11 when I bought it years ago.

One thing I noticed for me is that doing drills out of a drill book "force" me to shoot shots I normally would not during a game, due either to not recognizing the shot, or preferring another type of shot. One such shot for me was a basic shot of going back and forth across the table with the CB. I would personally prefer going forward 3 rails with inside to get to the same end position

I started regularly doing the drills from this book about 10 years after becoming bit by the pool bug. It forced me to learn shots, and make them a regular part of my game, that I was avoiding all that time.
 
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