Communicating Speed from One Player to the Next...

[ENGLISH!]

Here is a post from a thread that was started asking the question, is there an 'establish' way to communicate shot speeds to players.

That thread went off into 'advertising' & personal trash talk, etc.

I think this post summed it up in a rather practical manner for anyone interested.... so that they do not have to sift through all the peripheral stuff.

As many others have said, this is a coaching question and the only people you really have to coach on this are lower level players.

I use lag speed as my base line as most of my 2-4 APA players know lag speed. It's the rare shot that requires more than 150% of lag speed. So mostly I just tell them something a little more or a little less than lag speed. and that gets the job done for low APA players.

When certain safety shots require very little speed - a diamond or 2 (and amateurs have a terrible time hitting super soft) I tell them to bridge as close to the cue ball as possible - 1 or 2 inches and then hit soft.

No one has problem hitting hard. If it takes a hard hit, I just say "hit it hard and make sure you stay down on your shot". You can't coach more precisely than that with low APA players.

In an ideal world, league players would drill 1 diamond hits, 3 diamond hits, 1 table hits, 1.5 table hits etc and know what each feels like. And in my experience with National APA teams, the low handicap players have learned this.

If you need to talk to your 5+ APA players about speed this precisely, then they're not really 5+

 

[336Robin]

Stroke Speed

In all of the years Ive been playing I have one exercise that sums up most of what a new player needs to know. I do this as well from time to time and calibrates the first 5 speeds that most people need to be able to identify with on the table. If you can do these the rest are only some practice and play away.

1. from the spot to the opposite rail
2 from the spot to the opposite rail plus 4 diamonds to the middle of the table
3 from the spot to 2 plus more diamomds to the rail again which is lag speed
4. from the spot to the lag speed at 3 plus 4 more diamonds to the middle of the table
5 from the position at 4 pluse 4 diamonds to the rail you plyeed 1 speed to and that is 5 speed.

if you can hit these consistently you can control the linear travel of the cue ball on most shots during normal play.