Developing Expertise In Pool

Self management keys

Imac007 said:

So if all our attentional resources aren’t taken up by routines or the complexity of using advanced knowledge and techniques what is its role? In life in order to simplify, we categorize and generalize. We often label situations, that makes them easier to classify and work with. The immense memory and cognitive processing that would be needed to treat each unique situation as separate and discreet would be impossible. We need the organization to function. That said each shot on the table is ultimately unique. When we start to make finer and finer distinctions we are bringing the unique details back into awareness. Within that context we find an idea, "shot keys".

Jeremy Jones is a pool commentator. He and Jim Wych are two of the best and collaborated on much of the 2019 World 10 Ball Championship. These are two accomplished pool experts. Wych was once a top ranked snooker players and top veteran commentator while Jones adds commentary expertise to his pool knowledge, to make him arguably the best in the business. His ability to sift through the elements that make each situation unique and focus on the shot keys in each position gives us a glimpse into what the player needs to be thinking about once good habits and knowledge development give them the essential tools.

Application of knowledge is wisdom. Without ongoing wise decision making, gifted, knowledgeable players will never achieve their potential. Finding the shot keys in each situation by bringing it back to its uniqueness let’s us see the true challenges in even the simplest shots.

Tempo, timing, rhythm and consequences all play a part as well, including the larger sandbox of individual games, full matches and more; player lifestyles, habits, routines and professional planning/behavior. Players are more than a single shot, game or profession. Putting things in perspective from the smallest details in a shot to the panorama of our place in the universe or the entirety of time offer different contexts each with its own hierarchy of what is important. Shot keys are just that. At the table, bringing all of your skills and knowledge to bear, what are the key things to focus on while executing this particular shot?

With that in mind here is a link to a 10 ball match with Jeremy Jones commenting. Imagine how to take your mind at the table into the level of awareness, considering each of the unique situational factors and listen as Jeremy gives you a glimpse into the world of "shot keys".
https://youtu.be/G2UiE11iZ3U

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While Jeremy and Jimmy will often give you a glimpse into the demands of a particular shot at the table other commentators will take you into another aspect than table management keys, personal management keys.

Things like taking a deep breath and relaxing. Focus keys like seeing the ball into the hole or staying down on the shot. Many of the comments in this topic thread have offered us examples. The people who mention that analysis or internal dialogue are just distractions are telling us indirectly to keep it simple and focus on the shot essentials, like "put it in the hole."

While the "shot keys" of JJ and Jimmy focus on the physical challenges in the shot, the personal challenges are there too. A simple straight forward shot has its own challenge. Ask Alex P., missing a virtual sitter, for him, at a World QF. It’s said that 90+% of aiming is from back and above the shot. A simple shot comes along and suddenly the player forgets to aim, just dropping down on the table, no alignment or aiming. The challenge in the shot, for him, is self management, picking an exact target for both balls. The challenge is in keeping it simple by not losing focus.

These shot keys vary from person to person. They dog the individual player. They include the warnings in paralysis by analysis, thinking too much, not getting out of our own way. The keys those players need are the ones that trigger their focus onto the relevant shot elements. Finding the details that make a difference, the keys to the shot, a precision mindset channeling excellence, not eventual excuses.

These are the things under your control, appropriate places to focus.

Distractions, the past, like errors, and other things that are outside our control, can control us if we let them. We can’t change them we can only control our reaction to them.

duckie said:

It’s critical for a player to be aware of their body and what it’s doing. There could be a slight change in how the body is used that makes you play great one day and suffer the next.

For me, I recently noticed how I held my shoulders has helped increase my consistency. I kinda use a slouched, slightly bent forward position for by shoulders before I get into shooting position.

I also found that there is a certain bridge hand/grip hand distance that is ideal for me. Theses two items allow the cue to be in the right position for sending the CB where I want.

The only way I was able to pick up on these slight differences in body position was by spending a lot of time at the table. If you play very little, it will be hard to notice any differences in your body when playing bad versus playing good.

When your playing good, become aware of what your body is doing. Notice the feeling your body has getting into position. Notice the feeling of a proper stroke.

I watch a lot of motorcycle racing plus raced a few years. In motorcycle racing, the rider plays a active role in how the motorcycle handles unlike in car racing where the driver is just sitting. A motorcycle racer uses his body to control direction changes...ie hanging off.

There have been racers that changed teams to a different motorcycle and struggle to achieve the same level of prior success. After a few races, they’ll be back to the same level of success.

Most of the times, the changes made to the race motorcycle was to make the motorcycle fit the rider.....not the rider fit the motorcycle. Simple stuff like a lower seat position, different shape of the gas tank, positions of rear sets, controls, bars and so on.

If those racers were not aware of their body and how it was functioning on the race motorcycle, those changes that increased their level of success could not have been made.

Same applies to pool. The use of your body plays a vital role in your success at the table. The sooner you become aware of what works and what doesn’t with your body, the sooner your consistency will increase.

In motorcycle racing......a race set up for one racer, never works for another racer.

Same applies in pool. One style of playing never works for another player. Like the racer, you most fit your play to you. Like the racer, you must be aware of everything that matters to how well you play.

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Re-reading posts I found this one. It was a great post and needs to be acknowledged. The part about body part focus, alignment and often it being part of a shot key, on a day, is so true.

The shoulders part resonated deeply with me. Snooker great Joe Davis talked about laying his bridge arm on the table, fully extended, with his bridge gripping the cloth and his weight being forward. He called his position anchored. Since each of us come in different shapes and sizes on different height tables his description was about what was right for him. He did however reveal a principle, get anchored. In simple terms it is about getting yourself fully extended so you can’t get up. You stay down because you have no choice. Davis gave us that clue, get fully extended, to stay down.

In order to get up, if your weight is forward, you have to push against something or somehow shift yourself back which also usually requires a push. Try an experiment. Stand arms length away from a wall. While fully extended with your fingertips just grazing the wall, push yourself away from the wall. You can’t. Once your shoulder joint is fully extended, you can no longer push. If you are right handed and you reach out with your bridge, then drop anchor by dropping your left shoulder, creating maximum separation in the joint, you can’t get up easily. In fact I found that my right side had to rise first.

Now to my right shoulder. During the aiming process away from the table I lower my head with my hand, arm, elbow and shoulder on the cue line. While moving forward into the shot I sense my shoulder lowering directly towards the cue. As I slide forward into the bridge position my hands separate. The grip hand moves back towards the vertical position near my side and the left side moves forward and towards the cue line. Once down my dropped shoulder anchors me in place.

I don’t think much these days about the dropping of the left but since I couldn’t get up when using it, my body quit lifting during shots. Since the right shoulder being over the cueing line and integral to straight cueing and aiming, it is normally a part of my setup awareness, especially early in a session. Ingrained positioning takes place when shots go off as planned. Unconscious competence is the goal, in some things. We however, are talking here about more than mere competence to expertise. Bringing the straightness of the stroke into consciousness is a shot key for me on many first shots. Once the shoulder falls on the shot line the grip can stay neutral as long as alignment is sending the cue straight. Once it is, all my focus can fall on the shot keys that the table situation dictates.

The quote

"For me, I recently noticed how I held my shoulders has helped increase my consistency. I kinda use a slouched, slightly bent forward position for by shoulders before I get into shooting position."

reminds me of a shot key that I once used that I labeled as "being over into the shot".

Poolmanis said:

I like your threads.

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Thanks for the kudos.

I love your posted links. Some amazing shot making. Your preshot preparation and seeing everything needed on some of the more challenging shots, is exemplary.

poolnut7879 said:

Unconscious incompetence
Conscious incompetence
Conscious competence
Unconscious competence

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When I first saw this comment my reaction was simply, "well sure, the stages of learning definitely apply here". That hasn’t changed but how I view it has, because the perspective was incomplete, a much larger picture is in play. I question and challenge everything but somehow this got by me at first glance. That’s partly because like many things, it’s true, but only in a limited context.

The topic here is about expertise. To use a metaphor, the foothills of competence lay at the feet of the mountains of mastery, leading up to the sheer stonewalling face of perfection.

The eastern disciplines in the fighting arts realize the distinction. Levels of competence are recognized as are levels of mastery. A basic belt in martial arts denotes a newbie in self defense. Once competence is achieved in basic defense a second belt is awarded and so on. The movie The Karate Kid illustrated that basic form could be learned in mundane tasks like waxing a car and painting a fence. The master then triggered the ingrained action in a defensive context and demonstrated that competence had been reached on an unconscious level.

The problem is that competence is a floor and expertise is the ceiling.

THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM APPLYING EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IN COACHING ATHLETES BY JEFFREY HUBER.
Three Stages of Motor Learning
.... You want your athletes to respond, not think. You want them to grip it and rip it. You want them to look and automatically react. Well, motor learning, particularly early learning, involves attempts by learners to acquire an idea of the movement (Gentile, 1972) or understand the basic pattern of coordination (Newell, 1985). To achieve these goals, learners must use cognitive (Fitts & Posner, 1967) and verbal processes (Adams, 1971) to solve problems. To this end, Fitts (1964; Fitts & Posner, 1967) suggests that motor skill acquisition follows three stages: the cognitive stage, the associative stage, and the autonomous stage

The cognitive stage is similar to the second learning stage, the novice brings a skill into awareness. Trying to understand what to do is first.

The associative stage is an adaptive, trial and error, conscious learning phase. Incremental improvement and understanding how to do the motor skill are found here.

The autonomous stage is when the motions become habitual and unconscious, often due to rote repetition. A level of excellence is achieved.

These stages are the early motor skill acquisition model but newer models reveal more. The automaticity stage is not unlike the unconscious competence stage in the learning model.

In recent times the study of expertise has revealed the path to higher levels occur when the performer counteracts automaticity by adding more and more complexity to the performance picture. The finer and finer distinctions are just one way players developing expertise continue to evolve. To identify and deliberately learn how to develop more dexterity in executing skills, allows players to continue to progress. Only when athletes fail to generate more levels of intricacies do they stagnate. Evolving includes adapting and progressing in newly revised and robust ways.

The search for the differences that make a difference is the path to mastery.

Going back to the learning model we see that by constantly taking the skill back to the third stage we bring it back into consciousness. Once exposed we can search for more insights and new ways of working with the variables.

Habits that hold us back can be brought into the realm of deliberate action and dealt with. In an earlier post I spoke about my issue with getting up on some shots. My solution years ago was to use behavior modification to develop a new habit, staying down. After years away from the game, the conditioning had worn off. This time instead of building a new habit I simply built a stance where I couldn’t get up easily. I had no choice but to stay down. Eventually my body lost all impulse to jump up. I had "learned" (wax on, wax off), to stay down and it was unconscious.

Creating what it should be rather than focusing on what you don’t want it to be, is a mindset and contains the essence of that evolution. Change is the only constant so harness it and make things what you want them to be. That mindset fits the model leading to continued improvement, the intent of deliberate practice. Tinker, take things apart and reassemble them. Be brave, you need to destroy before you can rebuild.

Questioning what you believe often acts as a wrecking ball, just as my challenge did here.

No Mr. Miyagi here

gogg said:

If it isn’t rude to ask, what martial art do you train in?
Several insightful references have brought it to mind for me....
And as a side note, I have enjoyed this thread immensely! A lot of deep thought involved in the development of the ideas concerning expertise .

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No real martial arts except some youthful judo. Have studied eastern disciplines as just another realm in which exceptional performances are documented. Thanks for the appreciative comments.

No further interest?

Is this thread no longer relevant to players?

One Pocket John said:

Heck no.

The old saying goes "the more you know, the more you grow."

Keep on writing. I enjoy and learn from all of your posts.

What would be nice is if you could put all of your posts into an organized writing in Word an send (via email) the writings to folks that request them.

I would be number one on the list.

Thanks
John

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Thanks for the encouragement.

The dance of the balls

One Pocket John said:

Heck no.

The old saying goes "the more you know, the more you grow."

Keep on writing. I enjoy and learn from all of your posts.

What would be nice is if you could put all of your posts into an organized writing in Word an send (via email) the writings to folks that request them.

I would be number one on the list.

Thanks
John

Click to expand...

In the book, Peak, by Anders Ericsson/Robert Pool, they talk about a student they enlisted to test purposeful practice. His task was learning how to remember and recite correctly, longer and longer sequences of numbers. At one time during the trials he got stumped. He had developed strategies of lumping together numbers in groups. He then developed patterns of retrieval which involved chunks of various lengths in certain sequences, choreographed rhythms, timing and sequencing. His eventual solution, when he got stuck, was to revisit the steps and change the choreography. When faced with other sticking points, that tactic allowed him to get past each performance plateau.

The dance of the balls is a metaphor used to describe the gracefulness and exquisite timing found in the stroking and movement of the balls on the table, by masters. It’s more about the spectator perspective. That said, the analogy of the description, offers players an important insight.

Part of improvement is to develop skills until they become learned to the point of automaticity. That level is the repetition of a sequence of actions in an unconscious habitual form. A preshot routine often does the same.

Constant improvement often means letting go of ways we do something in order to make room for the new. Recently a revelation pointed thinking in a different direction. Maybe we don’t need to let something go. Could it be the sequencing, the choreography, that could lead to better performance?

I’m a left eye dominant right handed player. Coming from a snooker background, the Joe Davis description, since he was the same, was the model I followed. Moving to the pool tables I was forced to rebuild my game. Joe was short and I much taller, with long arms.

A square stance is now used. The right arm strokes beside my body. In order to have my vision center in place, my sequence was first to find the shot line. That means my eyes are on the line. I then stepped on the line keeping my head in place. Now with my body square, and my head to the right near my shoulder, the description involved moving "over into the shot". The sense was that I had to shift the entire left side, in almost a folding motion from left to right. The cue moves over until it superimposes the line then everything moved forward into the shot.

The problem was that I had to be vigilant. Sometimes my cue was ever so slightly perceptually skewed. I wasn’t looking directly down the cue center, I was seeing more of the left side of the shaft and it had a slight right to left bias. I hadn’t gotten "over enough".

I’m constantly taking everything apart and reassembling them. Recently I was using the cue more in the aiming process. Instead of bringing it across to superimposes it on the line, I used it earlier in the aiming sequence.

Changing the choreography has changed several things. Now once shot decisions have been made, the cue is pointed down the line. Room permitting the butt is held forward with a comfortably extended hand. My head lowers to look down it to pick a shot line. My right foot moves forward onto the line. My left side still trails and the bridge finds the cue. Still facing down the cue visually, I move forward into the shot. The bridge slides down the line under the cue while the grip hand moves to the vertical beside my body. Meanwhile my left side is free to move in order for the head and body to complete a more forward move. By keeping my left side back after stepping on the line, a forward move by everything allows the body to just move ahead without sensing a folding towards the line.

Only the sequencing was really changed. The choreography involved innate sequencing that allowed me to get into the right place more naturally. The skewed cue has only emerged when I fall into the old pattern. Now, I get up instead of trying to adjust alignment consciously or unconsciously. A red flag attached to the skewed perspective knows how to correct the perception issue. Different music is now playing and the steps are sequenced to the new tune.

They say the electronic components to build a television set were available decades before one was assembled. Maybe improvement can come simply from how we assemble the existing parts. No need to invent something new or replace a part with a different more improved one, be McGyver and get more out of what you have. Think inside the box instead.

Targeting, aligning and setting the cue line are each different dynamics

hotelyorba said:

This thread is very interesting to me, I guess I'm a bit late to the party. :
......
The only weak spot, as far as I can see now, in this whole routine is my eyes. I rely greatly on clearly seeing the spots and the lines, and believing fully that what I'm seeing is right. On days that I'm feeling well and I slept well that night, that's no problem. After a bad or short night however, my sight tends to suffer. I'm not seeing as clearly and I have trouble keeping the eyes on the spot.

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When trying to understand what difference throw made I found that over a distance of 5 feet a single degree threw perspective off by an inch. Turning that around and approaching the shot, the cue is nearly that long. If I have my head at the midpoint when I aim, I’m at about half of that. From that distance even a half degree off amounts to an inch.

The advice to approach the shot line from back from the table on the line makes sense. I now hold the cue by the butt in front of me, when possible. Sometimes I put the tip on the table in front of the ball and look down it from the raised butt when balls intervene.

Logically if I’m off even a half inch from a cue length away I would hope I would notice. Approaching a table from distance on the line does the same thing. Lee Brett, a noted instructor/author, recommends shot selection, initial aiming and approach start back at least 3 feet from the table. Commit before getting down is part of that process. Here is a link to the snooker coach to the first woman to score a perfect 147.

https://youtu.be/uE4mKqUeYc8

He teaches lining up from behind the butt. Distance is your friend when aiming and aligning.

Conversely, when picking a target on the ball, closeness rules. Objects when closer appear larger and we see more detail. Both of those perspectives aid targeting. The cue line is chosen to hit the target and is more of a aim/alignment dynamic. A tip when looking at choosing the aim angle is to get on the line between the cb and ob. Don’t get fixated on the cb. Position yourself at different distances from the ob roughly on the final aim line. In my experience at some point during the varying of my perspective the shot picture emerges and is sensed with certainty. Once you ”see“ and feel the details of the shot, take that back to the cue ball and stance setup. “Seeing” and aiming are less dependent on eye position when down if you do those things before getting down. If you’re looking straight down the cue before the stroke and the aim line feels right, trust. Get perfectly still before the final stroke, see the shot, then wait for your body to shoot when it’s ready.

Ge

Imac007 said:

As players strive to get better they focus on the fundamentals, but is that the path to being an expert? They say elite athlete’s advancement lies in their ability to make finer and finer distinctions. Skiers learn to differentiate between types of snow, current weather effects, how packed it is and then minute shifts in the edges and placement of weight on the skis to make high speed adjustments. Where most race car drivers focus on the 3 basic parts of a turn, entry, apex and exit, and think 2 corners ahead, world renowned driver, Jackie Stewart, when tested, focused only on the current turn, it’s details and his descriptions and fMRI results showed he segmented turns into 8 parts. He knew the devil was in the details. Breaking down the skill into minute awareness bits allowed him to find the small ways he could gain time on his opponents. When tested he didn’t show better reaction time than other drivers. He learned where to focus to get his edge.

The question players, who want to take their game to the next level, need to ask themselves is "what part of what I’m doing can give me an incremental advantage."

What do you think is the primary area, of finer distinctions, that most likely will lead to expertise in pool?

Click to expand...

Each player when at their best has an essence to their shooting. SVB has a surgical precision. The stroke is deliberate and abbreviated. Even when he needs to let his stroke out it, the finish has a sense of finality. Jason Shaw has more of a laser like slicing action, while Filler is a sniper squeezing off round after round. Corey ranges from a delicate softness in his touch to dynamic power. Then Alex P’s stroke seems to join with what the balls needed to do. The stroke seems to emerge from the shot rather than the other way around. That essence has prompted many commentators to call him a pure striker of the ball. Each are descriptions of timing.

Years ago I read a book by Madeleine L'Engle,
A Wrinkle in Time. The concept was that time travel might be possible if linear time could be folded. The idea was that the shortest distance between two points, in time, was not a straight line but a wrinkle. It’s a metaphor but has that element of truth.

When performers describe peak performances, a common thread is how time seems to expand or slow down. As we experience the passage of time our focus moves in and out. Pure experience is external, then thought gives us an interpretation moving our focus inward. When we emerge again to the external flow of life, the inward “folding” of attention meant we lost the intervening external time.
Joan Vickers introduced the world to “quiet eyes”. Good putters, free throw shooters and other targeting experts were shown to take a slightly longer quiet time to execute. They take time to smooth out the “wrinkles” in their experience and wait for a still point. Without wrinkles tine sense expands as pure experience is allowed to flow.

In his book, The Rhythm, Richard Lonetto talks about experience having more of a wave character. He describes a still point just before peak execution. Heart rate monitors on players at the Mosconi Cup showed us changing excitement levels. Planning a table crests the wave as decisions are made. Transitioning from choosing to action is best accomplished if a lull is experienced before execution. Without the trough of a quiet eye moment, rising anxiety, not the essence of the best self emerges.

Joe Davis talked about a pause at the back of the stroke while Del Hill said to pause before. Bottom line is all are describing a moment in which the purity of the stroke can be experienced.

What would that pure stroke look like? Line it up, feel it’s essence, let it happen, experience its purity. Smooth out the wrinkles, there is pure joy in the flow of balls on strings, connected as one. Then let it go and do it all again, like a child caught up in play’s undiluted essence. The letting go is as important as the still point. Holding on is an internal wrinkling of experience. Relive the moment if you must but then move on. The true joy is in the doing, the journey.

Just like Debussy said that music is the space between the notes. These still points, quiet eyes and pauses are the unwrinkled spaces connecting us to the music of the spheres and the dance of the balls.

Jackie Stewart found those moments in each turn collapsing parts of seconds, wrinkling time in his own unique way. Paradoxically by experiencing the turn in so many segments he was expanding it at the same time.

Shots are so much sweeter when time is taken to find the sweet spots, the shot keys that are part of the essence of in stroke moments. As Vickers quiet eyes research showed, that interval might only be a half second longer but contains purity and perfection when we take more time.

Getting “the wrinkles out of my game” has taken on an updated version of the old analogy.

Getting the wrinkles out of your game

Imac007 said:

As players strive to get better they focus on the fundamentals, but is that the path to being an expert? They say elite athlete’s advancement lies in their ability to make finer and finer distinctions. Skiers learn to differentiate between types of snow, current weather effects, how packed it is and then minute shifts in the edges and placement of weight on the skis to make high speed adjustments. Where most race car drivers focus on the 3 basic parts of a turn, entry, apex and exit, and think 2 corners ahead, world renowned driver, Jackie Stewart, when tested, focused only on the current turn, it’s details and his descriptions and fMRI results showed he segmented turns into 8 parts. He knew the devil was in the details. Breaking down the skill into minute awareness bits allowed him to find the small ways he could gain time on his opponents. When tested he didn’t show better reaction time than other drivers. He learned where to focus to get his edge.

The question players, who want to take their game to the next level, need to ask themselves is "what part of what I’m doing can give me an incremental advantage."

What do you think is the primary area, of finer distinctions, that most likely will lead to expertise in pool?

Click to expand...

Each player when at their best has an essence to their shooting. SVB has a surgical precision. The stroke is deliberate and abbreviated. Even when he needs to let his stroke out it, the finish has a sense of finality. Jason Shaw has more of a laser like slicing action, while Filler is a sniper squeezing off round after round. Corey ranges from a delicate softness in his touch to dynamic power. Then Alex P’s stroke seems to join with what the balls needed to do. The stroke seems to emerge from the shot rather than the other way around. That essence has prompted many commentators to call him a pure striker of the ball. Each are descriptions of timing.

Years ago I read a book by Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time. The concept was that time travel might be possible if linear time could be folded. The idea was that the shortest distance between two points, in time, was not a straight line but a wrinkle. It’s a metaphor but has that element of truth.

When performers describe peak performances, a common thread is how time seems to expand or slow down. As we experience the passage of time our focus moves in and out. Pure experience is external, then thought gives us an interpretation moving our focus inward. When we emerge again to the external flow of life, the inward “folding” of attention meant we lost the intervening external time.

Joan Vickers introduced the world to “quiet eyes”. Good putters, free throw shooters and other targeting experts were shown to take a slightly longer quiet time to execute. They take time to smooth out the “wrinkles” in their experience and wait for a still point. Without wrinkles tine sense expands as pure experience is allowed to flow.

In his book, The Rhythm, Richard Lonetto talks about experience having more of a wave character. He describes a still point just before peak execution. Heart rate monitors on players at the Mosconi Cup showed us changing excitement levels. Planning a table crests the wave as decisions are made. Transitioning from choosing to action is best accomplished if a lull is experienced before execution. Without the trough of a quiet eye moment, rising anxiety, not the essence of the best self emerges.

Joe Davis talked about a pause at the back of the stroke while Del Hill said to pause before. Bottom line is all are describing a moment in which the purity of the stroke can be experienced.

What would that pure stroke look like? Line it up, feel it’s essence, let it happen, experience its purity. Smooth out the wrinkles, there is pure joy in the flow of balls on strings, connected as one. Then let it go and do it all again, like a child caught up in play’s undiluted embrace. The letting go is as important as the still point. Holding on is an internal wrinkling of experience. Relive the moment if you must but then move on. The true joy is in the doing, the journey.

Just like Debussy said that music is the space between the notes. These still points, quiet eyes and pauses are the unwrinkled spaces connecting us to the music of the spheres and the dance of the balls.

Jackie Stewart found those moments in each turn collapsing parts of seconds, wrinkling time in his own unique way. Paradoxically by experiencing the turn in so many segments he was expanding it at the same time.

Shots are so much sweeter when time is taken to find the sweet spots, the shot keys that are part of the essence of in stroke moments. As Vickers quiet eyes research showed, that interval might only be a half second longer but contains purity and perfection when we take more time.

Getting “the wrinkles out of my performance” has taken on an updated version of the old analogy.