Aiming / alignment down the stick or more "on top"?

Rackattach

Rackattach

Banned
I've been struggling with my head position since I'm really heavily right eye dominant. Are there any drills to help find a good head/eye alignment?

The other thing I was wondering is to get get down almost touching the cue so as you use the shaft as an alignment aid or to stay more on top... any pros/cons to either way?

Thanks
 
I have a friend that plays with the cue rubbing his chin, and another that plays in an almost upright position with his head 2 or 3 feet from the cue. They each play great. I'd use what feels comfortable for you.
 
BC21 said:
I have a friend that plays with the cue rubbing his chin, and another that plays in an almost upright position with his head 2 or 3 feet from the cue. They each play great. I'd use what feels comfortable for you.
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Agreed. Older backs, injuries, operations won't allow for chin on the cue or even slightly above it. You can go way back in history until today and find great players who did it both ways.
 
Not sure if I am correct, but I believe that all the aiming is done when you are standing and looking at the contact point of the object ball while you are behind the object ball. The moment your bridge is formed, you are committed. The purpose of going down low is to make sure that you aimed at the point where you want to hit the cue ball. Is it center ball hit, half a tip up/down, a tip up/down, a tip to the left/right etc. You do not do alignment or aiming once you are down. Your focus should be cueing straight and that helps if you look at the contact point on the object ball as you cue.

Just my two cents worth.
 
One way to learn about your aiming with a stick is:

1. Using laser (or a string), mark a point on a wall some distance from your dining table. Mark a point on the table (on that line) where your CB is. Then draw a line about 15cm from the butt of the cue towards the CB. You can mark a few points on the wall and a few corresponding 15cm line.

2. Now, place a marble (or CB if you have) at the CB marked spot. Now, take a step back and look at the point of the wall. With the marble at the peripheral of your eye, aim your stick (or actual cue shaft) at the point from the centre of the marble (or CB) and stoop over for a shooting position.

3. Once you are in position, rest the stick (or cue shaft) down on the table. Take note whether the butt of your cue is parallel and inline with the 15 cm line. It should be perfect. If it is out by even a degree, it meant that your alignment (or aiming with the shaft) is off. You need to do zeroing (the term used in shooting). If your aim is off (or not consistently on) and it is not corrected, then you will never hit the target or you will not hit the target consistently.

Hope this helps.

For future practice, the table must be shifted such that the 15cm line and the CB spot is line up perfectly with the target spot on the wall.
 
Debating how eye dominance affects hand-eye coordination in sports is almost as opinionated as debating religion or politics. Some say it is very important while others say it makes no difference. I remember reading a study done on baseball players at bat. The study was to determine if varying eye dominance patterns could be used to differentiate the players with higher or lower batting averages. It was concluded that eye dominance was not a contributing factor in determining whether or not a player would have a better or worse batting average than any other player. (These were MLB players.)

Your brain may favor the images of one eye over the other, but it still manages to create a balanced binocular assessment of what you're seeing. If not, you'd find yourself bumping into things quite often. The same thing happens in sports. Through repitition, your brain makes the necessary adjustments for proper hand-eye coordination. Some people have no hand-eye coordination, regardless of eye dominance or no eye dominance, because they've never worked on any skill requiring such coordination.

I guess what I'm saying is this .... through practice we program our brains to develop certain skills. If you're right-eye-dominate and play enough pool with your right eye directly over the cue/aim line, then your brain will build upon this particular visual perception. If neither eye is directly over the cue, regardless of which eye is dominant (or if no eye is dominant), then your brain will use that perception to build your skill.

Your brain may already have a visual preference based on similar hand-eye coordination skills. This is what really matters. The results of that baseball study suggests that eye dominance doesn't necessarily play a major role in determining skill proficiency.

Try this: Set an OB on the foot spot and then place the CB about 18 inches away from it, lined for a straight shot into one of the side pockets. With your dominate eye positioned over the cue/aim line, shoot the shot 10 to 20 times. Use a center ball stun shot, medium firm, no engilsh, no draw, etc... Pay attention to any misses to see if you have a habit of hitting left or right of where you are aiming. Now repeat this test with the cue lined directly under your nose or chin, one eye on each side of the aim line.

Which feels better? Which produces more accurate results? Do both options produce equal results? That's probably the only way to really figure out if eye dominance is an issue for you. I don't have a dominant eye, so this is interesting stuff for me. Please let us know what you discover.
 
BC21 said:
Try this: Set an OB on the foot spot and then place the CB about 18 inches away from it, lined for a straight shot into one of the side pockets. With your dominate eye positioned over the cue/aim line, shoot the shot 10 to 20 times. Use a center ball stun shot, medium firm, no engilsh, no draw, etc... Pay attention to any misses to see if you have a habit of hitting left or right of where you are aiming. Now repeat this test with the cue lined directly under your nose or chin, one eye on each side of the aim line.

Which feels better? Which produces more accurate results? Do both options produce equal results? That's probably the only way to really figure out if eye dominance is an issue for you. I don't have a dominant eye, so this is interesting stuff for me. Please let us know what you discover.
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The baseball study is very interesting. But, I'm going disagree slightly with the above. My experience has been that having your dominant eye over the cue, or having whatever feels comfortable over the cue, does not mean that the cue is set up straight in line with the shot. In my case the cue was crooked at set up, and I straightened it out with a small swoop during the stroke. I was very accurate in pocketing balls doing it this way (I believe it broke down as I hit harder and harder strokes). In shooting that way the inside corner of my left eye was over the cue. Now I shoot with the inside corner of my right eye over the cue and it feels completely normal. When I try to go back to the old way, it looks totally off. I had to find a position where the set up of the cue felt straight and was straight, and where the stroke felt straight and was straight. I may refine this again down the road, but my point is that it isn't really fair to compare your "normal" cue position to a new one because the new one will always feel unnatural and may not produce better results until enough shots are made to ingrain the new visual set up.

Or I could be wrong...
 
Dan White said:
The baseball study is very interesting. But, I'm going disagree slightly with the above. My experience has been that having your dominant eye over the cue, or having whatever feels comfortable over the cue, does not mean that the cue is set up straight in line with the shot. In my case the cue was crooked at set up, and I straightened it out with a small swoop during the stroke. I was very accurate in pocketing balls doing it this way (I believe it broke down as I hit harder and harder strokes). In shooting that way the inside corner of my left eye was over the cue. Now I shoot with the inside corner of my right eye over the cue and it feels completely normal. When I try to go back to the old way, it looks totally off. I had to find a position where the set up of the cue felt straight and was straight, and where the stroke felt straight and was straight. I may refine this again down the road, but my point is that it isn't really fair to compare your "normal" cue position to a new one because the new one will always feel unnatural and may not produce better results until enough shots are made to ingrain the new visual set up.

Or I could be wrong...
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I wish I had a dominant eye so I could experiment with this. So you basically went with what felt better, and made it work? Or with what proved to be more accurate?
 
BC21 said:
I wish I had a dominant eye so I could experiment with this. So you basically went with what felt better, and made it work? Or with what proved to be more accurate?
Click to expand...

My father used to be my spotter from across the table. I would set up a straight shot and he would say "The back of the cue is too far from your body. It isn't lined up straight." I would pull the cue toward me until he said it was perfect. I'd stand up and say, "You've got to be kidding. You need your eyes checked, you're nuts." Eventually I realized that smart phones with cameras were a godsend for this kind of thing and my approach was to do whatever I had to in order to have a straight initial set up, straight take back and straight follow through. I used the Mark Wilson adage of "Just because it feels right doesn't mean it is," and the corollary, "It might feel wrong and uncomfortable, but eventually you'll get used to it."

I've gotten things pretty well straightened out now, but I'm still tweaking things. These improvements do show up during actual play.

Also, why does not having a dominant eye prevent you from experimenting? Some particular position feels right to you. If you moved your head over 1/4 inch it would feel wrong but eventually I think it would feel right. Of course there is no reason to do this if you have a straight stroke.
 
Dan White said:
........
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I've gotten things pretty well straightened out now, but I'm still tweaking things. These improvements do show up during actual play.

Also, why does not having a dominant eye prevent you from experimenting? Some particular position feels right to you. If you moved your head over 1/4 inch it would feel wrong but eventually I think it would feel right. Of course there is no reason to do this if you have a straight stroke.
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Good point. I guess I've heard so much about dominant eye and cue/head position that I assumed I am exempt from such alignment issues. Lol. I'm sticking with that "if it works don't fix it" mentality.
 
Dan White said:
My father used to be my spotter from across the table. I would set up a straight shot and he would say "The back of the cue is too far from your body. It isn't lined up straight." I would pull the cue toward me until he said it was perfect. I'd stand up and say, "You've got to be kidding. You need your eyes checked, you're nuts." Eventually I realized that smart phones with cameras were a godsend for this kind of thing and my approach was to do whatever I had to in order to have a straight initial set up, straight take back and straight follow through.

You really didn't do whatever you had to in order to have a straight initial set up, straight take back and straight follow through if that was your ultimate goal.
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You could have gone to a professionally certified instructor or a pro player turned instructor who knows what to look for and how to teach a long time ago before you got the wild hair twitching on your own to do something and you more than likely would never have had a stroke problem to begin with. But once the hair got twitching you could have set something up and gone then.

Joe Tucker would have been a super selection since he thought enough about the stroke to develop the training devices. He's an excellent instructor with a great set of eyes to know what to look for. Not excessively far away either.

There are plenty in your area or within a couple hours drive to get there.

I don't understand why pool players have such an aversion to getting professional lessons in person. Is it the money and they're just too cheap? Does it have to do with being able to say, "I have never gotten a lesson in my life." With the message being "and look how good I am". What is this thing about being self taught?

And for all you know, you might not be fixed and there are other areas that need work tying into the stroke.

We don't have what great pool instructors have, what the best doctors in medicine have, or even the top car mechanics have. And that is they are super DIAGNOSTICIANS.

They can see more things going on in the entire picture to home in on what needs attention. We only see what we want to see because we think it's the problem. And even then we can't see all of our body in action with just a video from a phone or mirror.

Could also be an area we never considered or thought about.

Pool and pool players need to learn from golf. Amateur golfers and hackers are the ones who buy all the books and tapes, set up video cameras on the range and self diagnose what they perceive as their problems.

98% of all the pro players on the PGA tour have personal instructors following them around from week to week watching their swings and tweaking it to stay in form and have been working with pro instructors since childhood.

A trained outside set of eyes can see much more of what's going on than what we think is going on. They can also diagnose better.

But if you're happy rebuilding your own engine and doing oil changes, stay happy.







 
SpiderWebComm said:
Blah, blah, blah.
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You are an interesting mix of ignorance and arrogance. I'm reminded of a male peacock strutting around the cage with plumage on full display.

I have to admit you got me to break my policy of ignoring you, so there's that.

Thanks for the chuckle! :thumbup:
 
Dan White said:
You are an interesting mix of ignorance and arrogance. I'm reminded of a male peacock strutting around the cage with plumage on full display.

I have to admit you got me to break my policy of ignoring you, so there's that.

Thanks for the chuckle! :thumbup:
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Whatever you think Danny Boy. You are the mix of total brilliance and humility so you should know it all.

You've never ignored me and I can't get you to do anything you don't want to do. You did it yourself. Take responsibility for your own actions.

Now, just be happy for the rest of your life because you've finally figured out the stroke after 30 years of playing. :thumbup:
 
SpiderWebComm said:
You could have gone to a professionally certified instructor or a pro player turned instructor who knows what to look for and how to teach a long time ago before you got the wild hair twitching on your own to do something and you more than likely would never have had a stroke problem to begin with. But once the hair got twitching you could have set something up and gone then.

Joe Tucker would have been a super selection since he thought enough about the stroke to develop the training devices. He's an excellent instructor with a great set of eyes to know what to look for. Not excessively far away either.

There are plenty in your area or within a couple hours drive to get there.

I don't understand why pool players have such an aversion to getting professional lessons in person. Is it the money and they're just too cheap? Does it have to do with being able to say, "I have never gotten a lesson in my life." With the message being "and look how good I am". What is this thing about being self taught?

And for all you know, you might not be fixed and there are other areas that need work tying into the stroke.

We don't have what great pool instructors have, what the best doctors in medicine have, or even the top car mechanics have. And that is they are super DIAGNOSTICIANS.

They can see more things going on in the entire picture to home in on what needs attention. We only see what we want to see because we think it's the problem. And even then we can't see all of our body in action with just a video from a phone or mirror.

Could also be an area we never considered or thought about.

Pool and pool players need to learn from golf. Amateur golfers and hackers are the ones who buy all the books and tapes, set up video cameras on the range and self diagnose what they perceive as their problems.

98% of all the pro players on the PGA tour have personal instructors following them around from week to week watching their swings and tweaking it to stay in form and have been working with pro instructors since childhood.

A trained outside set of eyes can see much more of what's going on than what we think is going on. They can also diagnose better.

But if you're happy rebuilding your own engine and doing oil changes, stay happy.
Click to expand...

I don't think his post needed your's.:rolleyes:

Some can figure things out just fine their own way.
 
Dan White said:
My father used to be my spotter from across the table. I would set up a straight shot and he would say "The back of the cue is too far from your body. It isn't lined up straight." I would pull the cue toward me until he said it was perfect. I'd stand up and say, "You've got to be kidding. You need your eyes checked, you're nuts." Eventually I realized that smart phones with cameras were a godsend for this kind of thing and my approach was to do whatever I had to in order to have a straight initial set up, straight take back and straight follow through. I used the Mark Wilson adage of "Just because it feels right doesn't mean it is," and the corollary, "It might feel wrong and uncomfortable, but eventually you'll get used to it."

I've gotten things pretty well straightened out now, but I'm still tweaking things. These improvements do show up during actual play.

Also, why does not having a dominant eye prevent you from experimenting? Some particular position feels right to you. If you moved your head over 1/4 inch it would feel wrong but eventually I think it would feel right. Of course there is no reason to do this if you have a straight stroke.
Click to expand...

I agree. I've been having issues with the stroke, mainly when putting power on the longer shots. Whats working feels off but is getting better through constant practice.
I think as we get older our body starts changing, causing issues.
 
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