Developing Expertise In Pool

Reminds me of

ShootingArts said:

Have you ever seen gravity work while you were asleep?

Hu

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“If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?”


― Steven Wright

“Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

9ball5032 said:

You will go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me.

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“Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

But what does DO look like?

I was asked a few years ago simply, how to get better at pool. My response is copied here. I’m hoping there are some insights that allow you to allow the bigger picture of the game to emerge.

"First, learn the basic theoretical concepts of stance, sighting and the bridge. Then forget them. The cue and the tip are extentions of your hand. A straight path through the ball vertical center axis down the target line sends the ball down that line. Once you can do that consistently then you can trust the feedback you get from hitting an object ball at different angles.

Learn how to make balls by starting at the hole. Make balls from various angles while the object ball is close. Work with another player to increase the numbers of balls you can pocket in a session. Start with the ball close then move the cue ball further and further away. When you miss, move back closer. You want an extensive library of successful execution. Now move the object ball away further from the hole and shoot it in from various angles and then add distance. Always move closer after a miss. This is mastery learning.

For those who are technique phobic you need to understand its peril. Focusing on technique rather than achieving a result is where paralysis by analysis starts. The other issue is that player positioning needs to vary based on the current state of the shooter. For example, you can learn about the concept of dominant eye. With both eyes open point at a target at least 20 feet away. Once you are aligned, close either eye. Did the image shift? If so, how much. Now start over, do the process again but this time close the other eye. The idea is that the eyes are like two cameras and we must make a composite image. The question is which eye provides sight line location. Sounds logical. The problem is that the dominant eye is tested at a particular time and place. Tiring eyes may switch the image. A rigid disciplined player who makes sure all parts are in the same place shot after shot with the idea that consistency is about doing things the same way time after time, will experience inconsistent results in longer matches or on days he is tired. Rather than using the relationship of the head to other body parts, orient yourself to your current perception.

You will have your head/eyes properly positioned when you feel that you are directly over both the cue and the target line and sighting directly along them. The other parts, the bridge and stance must keep you there as the cue moves down the path. Imagine the end of the stroke with the bridge and stance in place and the cue tip coming to its logical location at the end of the stroke, where you have stopped. Once you reach that calm spot, you need to be absolutely still so you can get a clear accurate picture of the cue and ball action. Without that steady position you can't get accurate feedback. If you are moving and the ball is moving, it is like trying to read the license plate on a moving vehicle, possible but hard. Getting better is about getting maximum information from your experience. Being still and focused on the actual details is the biggest shortcut to learning. Prepare yourself to do that and you will rocket past others of the same current skill level. There is no good or bad, only feedback. Read "The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey, if you want a better sense of the mindset.

Many players, in target sports, once they have contacted their initial contact point, fail to follow through. They hit at something rather than through it. Feedback starts with your physical extension. The cue was meant to go through unwavering without deflection and the first piece of feedback is to notice any deviation from that straight path. If it was a fork, did it nick the lip? Look at how small the contact point is between two touching balls. If contact is off just a fraction at the cue end imagine how much further off it becomes as distance increases. Become one with the cue especially the last foot or two.

Principle 1 was that the cue was an extension of the arm/hand and you should always be aware of it and the relationship of the end parts of the cue. It must truly become an extension.

Principle 2 is about making sure you are always positioned so that you feel you are sighting directly down the cue along the target line. This allows you to know, with exacting precision, where the cue is and the path it is traveling on. It is necessary for accurate feedback.

One and two are inextricably linked.

The second principle teaches us that our mental representation is a cognitive construction. I used to keep a journal of my practice. Rereading my entries I found two that changed my game. One was about how, on a bad day, I described my adventure on a snooker table as "like chasing a pea around on the freeway." On a very good day I wrote about how "the balls appeared huge and the pockets like pails." The insight I got was that the size of things was constant. The difference was me. I had created both perceptions. The question was how can I reproduce the large perception consistently. The answer is found in how we compare things. What is my reference? If I am comparing a pea to the freeway, it will appear small. If I compare a pea to a grain of salt it will appear huge. The table has fine details. Look along the ball paths. Is there any lint to throw the shot off line. Look at the ball surface. Are there any nicks or scratches near the contact point. If so have the ball cleaned. It will always be reset in a different spot. The point is to create a beneficial perspective that helps. Notice how large the last foot or so of the cue and tip appear now.

Start from where you know.
If even with your huge base of ball angles you don't sense the correct angle with certainty, don't worry. Think about an angle you are certain about that goes in the vicinity. Now choose another that would miss on the other side of the pocket. Now fine tune. Use fine distinctions away from known angles to sense new angles with certainty. Find the target line this way. Adjust speed the same. Imagine a contact and sense a known stopping point along the deflection line. Imagine another spot beyond your desired resting point and imagine fine tuning the pace to get there. The saying "aim small to miss small" seems relevant here.

Strategy
Always think at least two shots ahead of the current one. In 9 ball and 8 ball I always think out the game and positioning in reverse. I map a desired path from the 8 ball to the 9. Then the 7 to the desired position on the 8. Then from the 6 to 7 and so on. Of course, already pocketed balls change the description somewhat but not the idea.

Strive to improve
Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Learn where you are at and aim just a little higher. Keep track of how many balls you make in each run. Learn which ball is a sticking point. The one you tend to miss. For average players in snooker, they can make three then screw up on the fourth, either the pot or the shape. Know your game. Play within it and strive to expand it.

Coping
This is another issue like the dominant eye. The central issue is choosing the right shot then executing. Orient yourself to the ball and cue. Make sure it feels like an extension of your hand/arm. Once the size comes into perspective make sure you feel like everything is aligned and over and down the line of the shot. If you are doing all this there is little need to be in your head thinking about anything else. You do it all the time. Shutting out distractions so you can focus on getting something done. Are the ball paths clean? How big can you make the balls? Is everything from the mind to the body aligned on target? Once you are focused in on the line you can switch to the feel of the right pace. The feel is in the hand and arm with awareness right to the end of the cue. A fork is an extension of your hand and you wield it without poking your nose or eye. The more the extension becomes automatic the more precision you experience.

Get books to explain the effects of side spin, throw, backspin and topspin. But learn the stop/stun shot first. Take a striped ball. Strike it below center. Observe how it first skids, then starts to rotate backwards, then as the friction stops the backward spin the ball goes through a stage where it's rotation slows to a stop then starts to roll naturally on its circumference. During that phase where the ball has neither forward nor backward roll if the ball hits another dead on it will simply stop dead. Without momentum along the circumference it loses all momentum. If the same ball strikes the target ball at an angle, the lack of rotational momentum causes the cue ball to travel at ~90 degrees to the target ball path. Applying either topspin or backspin alters the cue ball path ahead of or behind that line. That needs to be the starting point to start to learn cue ball control. Controlling the distance at which the ball travels before reaching the stop location is a learned art. Practice it first with straight shots to learn the feel. There are multiple methods to arrive at the stop position. How hard the cue ball is struck and how much backspin is initially supplied create near infinite variations. A deeply struck ball with extreme backspin can be hit quite softly as the extreme backspin will take more time to evaporate before changing direction of roll. A skidding ball with backwards rotation will not roll off line, but loses pace quickly. This allows you to hit a ball firmly but by time of contact the actual contact can be quite soft. A hard struck ball with little spin can skid almost all the way to the target ball. This is a game of feel and without the connection of the cue being an extension, progress will be very limited.

These basics should serve as a firm foundation on which to start building a reliable game."

Individual development

Tin Man said:

The answer is truly player specific. Each player has strengths lifting them up and leaks holding them from going further. The first step is to sort out which are which. Then you need a good plan to improve those leaks while keeping your strengths your primary weapon. I have an interesting chart I drew up on my website (on the FAQ tab) that helps me organize the physical skills in pool, link in my signature if you want to see it.

One change many people don't realize occurs is that more work has to be done off the table. When you're a beginner you can just spend hours on the pool table aimlessly and you will develop. But for a player who can run racks, how much more does table time help? It depends on what kind. There is an optimal mix of practice to competition, playing worse versus better players, etc, and while some of this may be player specific as well there are some balances that work better than others in general. Granted for a full time pro the answer may be to just compete in every tournament you can, match up in between tournaments, and drill/spar in between matches, but I'm talking about people that have budgets when it comes to time. When you have limited resources you really have to be strategic about how you use the hours, and this is a huge leak in people's journeys. They get a long ways without much planning and then don't realize they missed the bus when years start going by without improvement.

Bottom line, while generically we can declare that players need to put in work and learn all parts of the game to improve, this isn't really useful. What's helpful is knowing where that player is exactly, fleshing out clearly where they want to be, then developing a plan on how they will use the resources they actually have to achieve that target. If the resources don't match the goal then something needs to be adjusted.

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This fits with the premise of this thread that players have different needs at each level of development. And, as you so cogently put, its unique to each player. This thread was started to help act as a resource of possible ways to move to the next level.

The part you wrote about off table development is so true. I use a journal to debrief after each session, whether a match, practice or just fun. During that debrief I avoid replaying misses. That amounts to rehearsals of mistakes. Instead I ask myself, what does it look like when it’s done right? Imagine different pros executing, each in their unique way. Ask which way looks like the easiest for you to get a good result?

Your charting link is for the physical part of the game, giving developing players, a blueprint of what to learn next. The mental part is not separate and should be included at each step. Video recording sessions let’s players dissect their game. Help with analysis is often asked in the forums here. Sharing session excerpts with knowledgeable players/coaches let’s players hear and absorb ways to evaluate, a key to learning how to self correct in time.

I still practice at the lrt (living room table). Mine has straight lines I can use for reference. Setting my cue so that it lays over the line then holding it there while I get down positioning my eyes so I am looking directly down the cue and the table line, helps make it habitual.

Adding stroking is the next step. Learn how to hold the cue with a squeeze grip, avoid the curl associated with a strangle hold. If the shoulder is aligned, over the on line cue, the forearm will be vertically aligned when viewed from the back. You can test with a phone camera and a cheap tripod. Aligning the phone can be a tricky first step. A weight on a string acts as a good vertical reference. Figure out how to suspend it directly in line with the cue line, my line in the lrt works for me. You may need to create a reference line with tape, a snap line or a table cloth with a line. One more thing, you need to recreate the rail somehow. I have an old Brunswick box case that works great. A 2x6 with a piece of billiard cloth on it, if you have to make something, will work.

Figure out with different height bridges, varying speeds and imagined stun, follow and draw strokes how to send each in a straight line. A good test is to align the cue with a selected speed and contact in mind. Test the stroke straightness. Stop in front of the ball, close your eyes and deliver the cue. Open your eyes to test if the cue is still on line.

Sometimes on key shots where a disciplined stroke is the shot key, I close my eyes. It has served me well. Never missed a closed eye shot in a match.

And, the importance of planning cannot be over emphasized. That applies to goals big and small. A plan at the table is often missing. Remember no plan is a plan.

We often miss what is right in front of us

In the 1970’s at UC Berkeley, a psychology student and an associate linguistics professor videoed therapy sessions with top therapists. They noticed something odd. When clients processed information they moved their eyes. A pattern emerged common to most of them.

When they processed visual information their eyes looked upwards, left or right. With auditory information, their eyes moved sideways towards their ears, left or right. And, when processing feelings their eyes cast downwards towards their body. How did they know which sense was being processed? The clients told them both when they answered questions and when they spoke. If asked about a conversation their eyes moved to one side. If asked what they planned to say to someone, their eyes moved to the other side. The same with eyes, if someone gave a remembered visual description of something from the past, their eyes moved up to the left and asked to imagine a visual, like pink polka dots on a green VW bug, their eyes moved up and to the right. Likewise for feelings whether physiological or emotional. Despite years of experience with clients therapists had failed to notice the correlation between client language and eye movements. They had missed something in plain sight. The zone is similar.

Most people know what the zone is, because they have been there!! It’s part of everyday experience. The eye movement/language discovery, mentioned above, became the basis for NLP. They also made another discovery, each individual had a preferred sensory language they used. Just like handedness, people paid more attention to sights, sounds, or feelings and it was reflected in the language they used. This information was of particular interest to educators who noted that visually oriented students responded to visual teaching materials, auditory dominant students responded well to verbal materials, etc..

One educational researcher, Dawna Markova, an NLP advocate, made another, under her nose discovery. While a visual learner was visually dominant in consciousness, the same was not true of sensory dominance in their subconscious or unconscious. In fact, their subconscious would be dominant in either sounds or feelings. The unconscious would be dominant in the remaining sense. From this she discovered 6 attentional processing styles. A person who was consciously auditory dominant (A), would have either a visually dominant subconscious (V), or a kinaesthetic domInant (K) subconscious, leading to possible styles, AVK or AKV. Likewise the visually dominant were either VAK or VKA. Leaving KVA or KAV for the feelings dominant. So what does this have to do with the zone?

When players describe their zone, they give us clues as to their experience. While there is a tendency to talk about the zone in the singular, zones each tend to be different and unique. Why shouldn’t they be, the table is different every time. Markova made a discovery concerning what happens when individuals having their everyday consciousness switched to a different sensory attentional mode. An AVK auditory dominant learner being presented visual materials would end up entering a slight trancelike state.

One of the descriptions of the zone that is common is to call it a trancelike state. Markova discovered that the more the learner moved towards the unconscious, the deeper the trance. The AVK learner, if being taught a physical skill, could enter a fairly deep trancelike state while accessing the normally unconscious physical feelings aspect of experience. In fact since the unconscious tends to experience things as whole, the mind suddenly unpacking all these feelings can be easily overwhelmed.

One characteristic of the conscious mind is it’s ability to unpack things into parts. An emotion is a contextual bundle of physiological responses combined with a situational timeline of events. It contains present oriented unconscious generated proposed possible responses. Emotions are reactive.

A recent azbilliards topic was about how some players don’t have an inner dialogue. They represent either the VKA or KVA attentional style. Since pool is a hand/eye coordination activity, only sounds crossing a significant noise threshold will intrude into consciousness. Once there however, trash talk or other intrusive noise can exact a toll. The VKA player can become absorbed in a trance like way by transitioning their attention to the feel element and the KVA player becoming absorbed in visuals can trance out.

Many players talk about needing to get their inner dialogue to stop. I have an AVK attentional style. I look at it differently. As long as my inner dialogue isn’t counter productive, it can remain in the background without issue. Rather than trying to silence that inner voice, I harness it to pay attention to the feel of the shot first then get focused totally on the visual elements involved.

With this information a player should be able to go through a process ending with a trancelike state appropriate for the shot.

I stated at the beginning that I think we go into and out of the zone frequently. When we are there for a few shots we don’t really notice, only when we miss. When our mind is able to enter a repeatable state, then and only then do we call it the zone.

The trick is that like water to the fish we aren’t noticing it. We look too hard for it. You need to go through your normal process. Look, evaluate and decide. Aim and align. Execution is a hand/eye skill. A good strategy should be to pick which of the two gives you a workable trance state during the shot.

Maybe this is a finer differentiation that will make a difference for you.

Frames of mind for competition

straightline said:

Inordinately astute observation here. Back to the front of this thread, I don't do pool in such an intellectually detailed manner. I approach pool from the premise that competition is done wrong (rong, if you will). The object of competitive pool is a no brainer. Don't Be A Fish.

It's this DBAF mindset that causes all the issues and perpetuates the genre/illusion of it.

The question I ask is the "foolhardy" one. What if I (you/anybody) just ran 'em over?
Such as that may be perceived, that's why I do pool. Playing and observing show <what> as well as <what is lacking and in need of evolution>.

Granted I still have lots of requisite skill and knowledge to cover and don't expect to be on any money lists but the goal is _ pool_ and not the titles of competition.

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One of the things about stress is that it tends to cause attention to narrow and internalize. To counter that inward focus the player needs to direct their attention to the table. Shaking hands lets you feel the nervous sweat on your opponents palm. Pay attention to signs of nervousness in your opponent. Be ready to pounce when an error is made. Add pressure to force the other player into their head. Too many players make a ball or two then when a run out is not possible, look for a safe place for the balls. Back up and recognize the bad odds a shot or two earlier. You may need to make a ball to get shape for a lockup safety.

Put the ob nearby trouble areas, on safeties, so a ball in hand allows for breakouts. Be patient. Time adds pressure to anxiety. Keep your focus outwards on achieving results. Going inwards to think about a technique is fine but you need to bring focus back outward when shooting. Imagine the result when done properly and simply do it.

Switch focus when away from the table, to your opponent, to notice signs of weakness or nervousness. You won’t see opportunity unless you are watching.
Predators stalk. The predator is just a metaphor. Predators are often, too hungry. That’s how to turn a predator into prey. Tempt them in impossible position situations. Too much hunger makes them impatient. Learn detachment.

You don’t need to kill a sheep to shear it.