Best straightforward (ie non-25 minute youtube video) advice/training on stroke

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Dr. Dave
Sharivari
Mark wilson
Zero X billiards by Tor Lowry

Very important: put in practice everything you see on those lessons.
 
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lakeman77

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Vilius Schulte Ebbert
On you tube, snooker coach, lots of stuff

 
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straightline

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Vilius Schulte Ebbert
On you tube, snooker coach, lots of stuff

This was good right off the bat. Quick and to the point.

 

DaveK

Still crazy after all these years
Silver Member
Buy Mark Wilson's Play Great Pool Book- treat the book like you are taking live lessons- meaning that you simply must read each section on stroke mechanics, understand the concepts, then get to a table and video all your practice sessions and review the video prior to each subsequent practice session.
You will need to do this religiously ( minimum 6 hours a week) for several months be effective.
Guaranteed to straighten out your stroke and improve other mechanics related stroke issues if you follow this routine.

Total cost about $100 for the book and a decent tripod for your I phone to do the videos.

Mark points out things like maybe you don't have clearance from your body with your stroking arm. Maybe your body alignment is off and your stroke is compensating, maybe you are not identifying the correct shot line prior to aligning to the shot- etc. etc.

Best advice IMO. There are no quick fixes, rather attentive practice is required ... a lot of it (most are not interested or capable of putting in the required effort from what I have seen).

Dave
 

ShootingArts

Smorg is giving St Peter the 7!
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Silver Member
ggg
The Self Discipline required aren't exactly found in abundance in the pool community. Lol.

That is why the vast majority of pool players will never advance past low B level, most won't get there. If I could have raced circle track seven days a week I would never have learned to play pool. Pool was my second love but much more available.

My pool table was between my kitchen/den and the bathroom or my bedroom. As a teenager I made a rule I had to run a rack of pool every time I passed the pool table. That was twice for every trip back and forth. Besides pretty much daily practice and play sessions, this added up to a lot of time on the table. I did work the L drill and two circle drills and a half circle drill. Not for long though, just not a drill kind of guy.

I racked, I broke, I ran the balls off. The patterns seemed too consistent throwing them out.

I read the first post in this thread when it came up. When I saw that a twenty-five minute video was too long to watch to fix the OP's stroke I wandered on. I would happily watch a two hour video until I had every bit of it memorized if I thought it would help my stroke. I will let OP go for the five minute fix.

Hu
 

DaveK

Still crazy after all these years
Silver Member
The Self Discipline required aren't exactly found in abundance in the pool community. Lol.
The pool community is not unique.

A reasonable place to start getting a stroke that is not "a little off sometimes" is getting the stance correct. To that end Wilson has a program using tape on the floor to mark your foot position relative the balls on the table. I don't have the book in front of me now, but I recall him recommending stepping into the pre-marked position and get down on the ball for 1/2 hour a day for 3 weeks (someone please correct me if this is wrong). While doing this he says DO NOT STROKE THE CUE ... the exercise is to get your FEET RIGHT ! This will be no fun, and I suspect that folks just want to have fun.

This is an excellent book about how some individuals become great ... not being "a little off sometimes".


Dave
 

Mensabum

AzB Gold Member
Gold Member
ggg


That is why the vast majority of pool players will never advance past low B level, most won't get there. If I could have raced circle track seven days a week I would never have learned to play pool. Pool was my second love but much more available.

My pool table was between my kitchen/den and the bathroom or my bedroom. As a teenager I made a rule I had to run a rack of pool every time I passed the pool table. That was twice for every trip back and forth. Besides pretty much daily practice and play sessions, this added up to a lot of time on the table. I did work the L drill and two circle drills and a half circle drill. Not for long though, just not a drill kind of guy.

I racked, I broke, I ran the balls off. The patterns seemed too consistent throwing them out.

I read the first post in this thread when it came up. When I saw that a twenty-five minute video was too long to watch to fix the OP's stroke I wandered on. I would happily watch a two hour video until I had every bit of it memorized if I thought it would help my stroke. I will let OP go for the five minute fix.

Hu
Hi Hu!!
I know a player, spooky good. Nobody knows his true speed, but he consistently runs 200 plus in practice. Older road dawg, never played in tourneys, but beat every top player of his day dumb enuf to to step up - for big coin. Very selective player. One good score last all year. Anything else was gravy.
I've heard tell he had to run a certain number of balls everyday after school b4 he could eat or do anything else. Sounds similar to your routine. Lol.
Recipe for a monster.
Nodoubtaboutit.
 

ShootingArts

Smorg is giving St Peter the 7!
Gold Member
Silver Member
Hi Hu!!
I know a player, spooky good. Nobody knows his true speed, but he consistently runs 200 plus in practice. Older road dawg, never played in tourneys, but beat every top player of his day dumb enuf to to step up - for big coin. Very selective player. One good score last all year. Anything else was gravy.
I've heard tell he had to run a certain number of balls everyday after school b4 he could eat or do anything else. Sounds similar to your routine. Lol.
Recipe for a monster.
Nodoubtaboutit.

Speaking of routines, the more sadistic of saddam's sons was put over the olympic team. I seem to remember he flat killed a few competitors but some of his other training methods were interesting. A runner not run fast enough to suit him? He had them beaten on the bottom of their feet for hours. This seems like it would slow them down but apparently it did a lot for their mental game!

There were some unknowns in pool. I was pretty well unknown but the underground knew of me. Road players came knocking on my door and their grapevine had me becoming known to them. I became a running horse owner and trainer and that didn't leave much time for pool. Then came a wife and young'ns. A few years later I found myself on 24 hour call. So long pool!

I wonder if there are still some underground players like you mention. I suspect so, many are content to do their own thing. Some from older eras were big money specialists. In the old days these guys came to town and took off a good score and went away often with nobody including their victim aware they had been targeted by somebody making a living off of people who could afford to lose a good score.

Problem today is credit cards and ATM's, nobody totes big cash. It wasn't that common in the old days either, gentlemen would write checks and accept them between their fellow gentlemen. Titanic Thompson took off the man that owned Chrysler. One of the first things he did was take away a top of the line car. Ti wasn't a one trick pony though. He could take down the cash with pool although probably no better than a B player today. He could take it down with cards, golf at which he was world class left handed, very close right handed. After only winning by a stroke right handed he would offer somebody a chance to get their money back, he would play them double or nothing left handed the next day! Finally he had a whole list of ridiculously tough prop bets. Most of them didn't involve trickery other than getting someone to take the bet.

Hu
 
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hang-the-9

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
You need a teacher to watch you shoot and help you make adjustment. From your point of view it will be almost impossible to correct things. A lot of people I work with say "wow, I had no idea I was doing this" or "this feels straight to me" when they were 1 inch off center.
 

BlueRaider

Registered
The series you should watch.
Mark's mini-lesson at DCC is great. Especially the way he breaks down the difference in setting up between amateurs and pros. I actually modeled my PSR after Landon's in this video.

Scott Rohleder also has a great 4-part video about the straight-in shot, including how to align your body around your cue to shoot them properly.

 
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