Touch as a difference maker
The bloodhound has such a sensitive sense of smell that it differentiates at the molecular level. Guess what, human’s sense of touch is its equal. Experiments have shown that the sense of touch in people tested in the lab picked up the difference between surfaces that were only a single molecule different in thickness. The bloodhound has an olfactory lobe, a part of the brain that makes a sensory picture of smells. The human brain has a large part that is allocated for a similar task. When we touch something it deforms the skin and that deformation can be very small yet we can tell it’s texture and even differentiate color. We also sense pressure and vibration through our touch. I prefer a cue without a wrap because I think a wrap dulls my sense of touch. I don’t use a glove for the same reason. I don’t even use talc. If my hand sticks I keep washing them until they don’t. Ask hand dishwashers about how their hands get dry from multiple washings.
One of the pioneers in neuroscience was Wilder Penfield. Using probes to map the human brain in live subjects he created a representation of the brain regions associate with parts of the body. The largest area is the mapping of the hand especially the fingers. The 3-D mapped rendering at the Museum of Natural History in London shows that when the hands are used to execute motor skills the brain’s hand area is huge.
I think that based on this evidence alone our most likely biggest differentiator, the difference that can make a difference is our sense of touch. Our feel for the tip contacting the ball, our sense of pace and how it relates to transferring energy from the cue through the tip and eventually from ball to ball, has immense potential. We have supercomputer capacity to harness a level of sensitivity far beyond what we see in most top level games. Some of the tactile exactness that top 3 cushion players display reveal another level of sense of weight and pace control. Beyond that an awareness of how the spins will translate into different pace dynamics off multiple rails is showcased. In fairness the quality of rails and the consistency in quality of equipment overall is sadly lacking, comparatively, in the pool world.
Certain parts of the hand have more sensitivity than others. The fingertips compared to the palm are light years apart in sensitivity. When gripping the cue, the more fingertip contact the more potential for a stronger sense of feel for a shot. Ronnie O’Sullivan and Stephen Lee both talked about the hand opening and closing during the stroke but the back finger tips never losing contact with the butt. Their description of the front part of the hand hold was not so much a grip as a squeeze. If you hold a cue a few inches from the butt end and let it teeter so the butt comes up under your forearm, the cue and arm will be aligned. Now switch your focus onto the shape the hand took as the cue teetered. The forefinger is triggered, the fingers are extended and bent at the mid joint bringing the fingers into position so that the tips are distributed along the butt. From this starting position the back part of the hand can open, the fingers stay flattened and if added pressure is need it can come from the sideways squeezing of the front two fingers and the joints between the forefinger and thumb in the web area between them. When a player twists a cue those two joints need to be separated. If they are squeezed together the entire wrist must be rotated to twist the cue. Both players speak about sensing the tip "bite" the ball. How much of their sense of touch and timing is related to those fingertips feeling the changes in pressure and vibration along the cue?
Early psychology used to talk about the body and mind as two separate entities. Essentially the description of the relationship was like slave/master. The brain was thought to run everything, it commanded and the body answered. Today that is turned on its head. Cognition has been discovered to be embodied. The language of our thoughts is seen to be an interpretation of what our body is telling our mind it’s experiencing. Neurons are located in areas throughout the body. Severed connections to the body by spinal cord injury don’t stop the brain in the gut, the enteric nervous system from ingesting and digesting food. Heart/lung transplants survive after the brain connection is cut because of the developed neurology in that system. Communication when it is there tends to be mainly one way. The heart connects to the emotional side of our brain while the gut connects to our mood through its production of the majority of the body’s seretonin.
Getting in touch with our body goes beyond sensation in our fingertips. Our sense of balance is related to our feelings of certainty. People with vestibular disruption, inner ear balance center issues, become uncertain. Modeling good spellers revealed that they used imagery, not sound to sense an imagined spelling. Their level of certainty on correctly sensed spelling was located on the midline of the body, it’s balance center. You see people and animals have an off center cocking of their head when confused (uncertain). Vets will tell you that many animals with balance issues exhibit with a cocked head. A gut feeling is a certainty sense and knowing with certainty in your heart of hearts should be looked at as somatic feedforward and feedback. All center of body sensations. The idea of a centeredness extends from eastern disciplines through meditative practice brought into athletics. The physical reality of certainty being related to our sense of balance seems well documented.
Learn to listen to your body telling you about what you are planning. It can sense if what you are imaging is even possible. Give your body full sensory information. Look at the details of the shot. Look at the cue ball surface closely, Ronnie O’Sullivan looks frequently at his tip with close scrutiny. All surfaces need to be part of the total picture.
The mantra "
What does the shot look like when it’s performed properly" goes beyond vision. Imagery is a total body experience. Dial up the sensitivity, listen more closely, sense the shot with your extended self. You already sense that cue as an extension. You walk around with a bodily awareness of its size and shape. Without that you would be colliding and poking everything with it.
My sense is that getting more in touch with this massive machinery literally at my fingertips can take a players game to the next level.
