Arm under the shoulder swinging straight?

[greyghost]

The title is what Dr. Cue had said over and over when he was putting on a session at our university.

How important is it to have your arm under your shoulder swinging straight to have a consistent and proper stroke?

I, for instance, do not have my arm under my shoulder, but inside my shoulder closer to my body.

I have also seen some really proficient and well known players who shoot very outside their shoulder... I forget the pros name but he learned to play at a really young age and he wasn't tall enough to see shoot correctly over the table so he started to shooting outside his body.

If this is an important aspect to a solid stroke, how can one go about correcting their stroke to become more aligned, shoulder and arm?

It's difficult to tell when I am lining up a shot if I am shooting inside my body because I am so use to the feel of it.

Thanks in advance,

Ben

Its very important, as having the hand/lowerarm plumb with the shoulder leaves us with a mechanical motion with a smaller number of moving parts that need to be manipulated....the less moving parts the less you have to calculate for....

if you stand on the shot and set your back foot, your grip hand should be holding the cuestick where you want to hold it to shoot....the grip hand and cue are touching against your side pocket seam......

now when you drop down into the shot let the hand do what feels natural....it will automatically come off the hip right smack under the shoulder....

i can see if i can post a few pics later today or tonight if you don't quite get what I'm saying.