Good approach. And you can even catch pro level players occasionally lining their cue up with the tip planted behind the ob. I wouldn't think anything of it if U were playing someone that did this in every shot.
Using the OB as an aiming reference to train the brain
- Thread starter BC21
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Good approach. And you can even catch pro level players occasionally lining their cue up with the tip planted behind the ob. I wouldn't think anything of it if U were playing someone that did this in every shot.
Right. And keep doing it over and over and over until it finally works. It's all about training the brain.
Or, just cut out the middle man and forget the artificial devices. Ultimately, the brain observes the cb/ob/pocket relationship and draws on experience to tell you where to aim the cue. So just practice doing that.
Yep.
An interesting way to look at how we learn, how the brain stores information for later recall when needed, is to imagine you have a file cabinet in your head. This file cabinet has millions of drawers, each filled with data that we've gathered over time through our senses, either by sight, sound, touch, taste, smell or emotion. Our senses provide handles for all the drawers in the brain's filing system.
The filing system itself is not well organized, meaning when you recall something, like a childhood memory for example, the data isn't neatly stored in one convenient drawer. It's actually scattered about in several drawers, each encoded into the filing system through whatever sensory input that happened to be involved with getting the information into your brain in the first place.
The more senses we use for inputing data, the more "handles" the brain has for pulling/recalling that data.
And if there aren't any solid handles to pull, your brain will grab the closest match from whatever input you provide.
All of this simply means that if you want to remember something, if you want to have excellent recall, then during the learning process you should give your brain multiple handles that it can use to open all the drawers needed in order to assemble an accurate representation of what is being recalled/remembered. If you want to memorize a long phrase or passage, read it out loud and write it down. This gives the data several handles -- sight, sound, feel -- and makes it easier to recall later on.
Learning to play pool is no exception. The more sensory input we can attach to a particular shot, or psr, or stroke, or whatever, the easier it'll be for the brain to recall it every time you need it. That's why it's important to pay attention to where you are actually pointing your cue (in reference to the ob). In addition to the visual image of the cb-ob relationship, you encode another visual handle to the shot as well.
Very interesting stuff about the brain. When you mentioned that using multiple senses helps with recall I was reminded of a memory. In college I had to walk to the other end of campus for an 8 am Latin class every morning during the winter quarter. I used to listen to a walkman cassette tape of the soundtrack from The Big Chill as I walked. Whenever I hear a song from that cassette, like "Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson, I am instantly thrown back about 35 years no matter where I am. I feel the cold chill, I see the ice under my foot and I can smell the frozen wind. All my senses must have been firing on that one! Come to think of it, I guess "The Big Chill" was an appropriate tape given the situation.