Critique my stroke

brandoncook26

brandoncook26

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Hey all, hitting some balls in the basement and thought I would try to record a rack so people can critique my game. Let me know if you see anything you like or hate, or something I can improve on. I tried to take a little off the break since I practice mostly 10 ball and this was a 9 ball rack...a little easier to spread them. I was a little more upright during that break.

Sorry for the poor quality, it was taken with my iPhone. The table light seems excessively bright on the video as compared to in real life. It's only one rack but I would say it's pretty indicative of my game. Obviously I don't run out every time. Table is a 9 foot Diamond with 4.5" pockets.

Thanks for any comments you may have.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk6JvyX8t_M


-Brandon
 
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brandoncook26 said:
Hey all, hitting some balls in the basement and thought I would try to record a rack so people can critique my game. Let me know if you see anything you like or hate, or something I can improve on. I tried to take a little off the break since I practice mostly 10 ball and this was a 9 ball rack...a little easier to spread them. I was a little more upright during that break.

Sorry for the poor quality, it was taken with my iPhone. The table light seems excessively bright on the video as compared to in real life. It's only one rack but I would say it's pretty indicative of my game. Obviously I don't run out every time. Table is a 9 foot Diamond with 4.5" pockets.

Thanks for any comments you may have.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk6JvyX8t_M

[...excessive white-space removed...]

-Brandon
Click to expand...

Brandon:

I think your stroke looks good. Interesting that you have a backwards-canted wrist (hand angled backwards towards the buttcap of your cue), just like John Schmidt and Stephan Cohen (another straight pool powerhouse, from France). Not that there's anything wrong with that; as long as your wrist is in line with (and doesn't deviate from) the arc of your swing, shouldn't be a problem.

Looks like you have an established PSR, too -- you don't "slide into" the shot from the outside, but rather step back, orient yourself, and then step forward into the shot. Very nice.

Your Lance Perkins-style pool stance looks pretty much textbook to me, but remember I specialize in (and recommend) snooker fundamentals (read: perhaps you'll get some more detailed scrutiny from those instructors that teach/utilize the Lance Perkins pool stance).

Another thing for future video submissions: you already know you have over-exposure in the video, so you might want to adjust your camera phone accordingly, to prevent the "wash-out" that we see.

Hope this helps!
-Sean
 
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Thanks for the comments Sean. The wrist angle just happened naturally. Over time I have seemed to gravitate towards playing primarily off my index and middle finger. From playing like that, my wrist has adjusted so that the cue hangs off those two fingers naturally from gravity. Brumback mentioned it to me also once, but he uses his middle and ring so that probably feels right for him.

As for the stance, I am actually a little more forward facing than I used to be. My backhand is right next to my hip, and I have kind of developed a stance where I use my hip to line up my visual cues, then step in with the left foot 45 degreees from the line, kind of like a boxer's lead stance.

Again, I appreciate the look.
 
brandoncook26 said:
Thanks for the comments Sean. The wrist angle just happened naturally. Over time I have seemed to gravitate towards playing primarily off my index and middle finger. From playing like that, my wrist has adjusted so that the cue hangs off those two fingers naturally from gravity. Brumback mentioned it to me also once, but he uses his middle and ring so that probably feels right for him.

As for the stance, I am actually a little more forward facing than I used to be. My backhand is right next to my hip, and I have kind of developed a stance where I use my hip to line up my visual cues, then step in with the left foot 45 degreees from the line, kind of like a boxer's lead stance.

Again, I appreciate the look.
Click to expand...

You're welcome, Brandon. Concerning the wrist angle, that makes perfect sense. If you hold your hand out in front of you in the form of the universal "STOP" signal (hand open, fingers together), and then turn your hand towards you so that your palm is facing you, you'll see that the middle finger is about half a finger-joint longer than the index finger (on average for most people), and the middle finger's joints are offset from the index finger's joints by approximately the same amount. When you invert your hand to point downwards and fold those fingers into a cradle -- as you're doing -- the index finger forms a slightly higher "ledge" than the middle finger, which correlates to you having to arch the hand backwards to compensate. Since John Brumback uses his middle/ring fingers in the same way, he has the opposite condition -- the middle finger "ledge" is lower than the one offered by the ring finger, and the hand tends to arch more forward than yours to compensate. You're just subconsciously making the wrist adjustment based on the slight offset of where those two fingers bend (at the first and second joints, obviously).

As to the stance, what you describe is actually classic Lance Perkins stance -- the "boxer" stance with somewhat squared shoulders. This is what he taught to Welker Cochran when he was trying to "mould a champion with fundamentals to beat Willie Hoppe." Over the years -- with the traditional lack of formalized pool instruction until the BCA came much later -- the pool stance has tended to become more of a bastard child, where people started to implement more of a turned-shoulder 45-degree-angle-to-the-shot-line thing. The fact remains, though, that even though your shoulders may be square-ish to the shot line, your right foot is still angled to it (45 degress or somewhat to the shot line). That's classic Lance Perkins. (Just by way of comparison, try turning your right foot INTO the shot line, and notice that your knee and hip change orientation accordingly. In fact, you may notice that your knee "wants" to lock the leg into a straightened position, you "want" to bend 100% at the waist, and your hips now become more square to the shot line with your feet more parallel to each other -- leaving you feeling like 1.) much of your weight is supported by that right leg; 2.) all your joints are now facing INTO the shot; 3.) that somehow you feel like you're planted up against a wall on your right side, and; 4.) that you have to "reach over from your left" to place your bridge hand in front of you due to the squared shoulders. It's an odd feeling for a pool player used to balancing weight on both legs, but it's extremely stable. Welcome to the snooker stance. ;) )

I hope you don't mind the slight digression in italics, because I wanted to demonstrate the differences with what I was talking about when I talk about the pool stance vs. the snooker stance. Even though you might think your boxer stance is more "snooker-like because of the square-ish shoulders," there's still a lot of difference between it and a pure snooker stance. Just turning that planted foot directly into the shot line makes a huge difference. Whether you choose to play around with that is up to you. Nothing wrong with either stance -- just merely observations.

Again, I think you have good form. Nice pendulum stroke path, PSR, and stroke timing in general.

HTH,
-Sean
 
Brandon,

Regarding your grip. As you know, at address, your wrist is cocked in I guess what would be considered a reverse wrist- cock position. However, at the end of your stroke, your wrist is no longer cocked.

So that would mean that somewhere during your stroke, you are uncocking your wrist. Is it on the way back? On the way forward? One slow, gradual uncocking motion? Hard to tell.

I think it's a quirk in your grip and that it really isn't necessary, although it doesn't appear to be hurting your game at this point. My concern is that the uncocking wrist motion is now built into your stroke timing.

It's hard to recommend that you change something when it's not doing you any particular harm at this point. But I really do think it is a quirk that might jump up and bite you at some point in the future as your game and your stroke continue to improve.

You might want to watch a few videos of Bustamante play. He does a little of the reverse cock too, but I'm pretty sure in his waggle as he sets up, and not in his final stroke.
 
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Nice poolroom, and nice dog, too! My dog Rosie would not be that well behaved at the table.

It's hard to see in the video because of lighting, but on the big follow stroke, it looked like you aimed very high on the cue ball and then struck it lower down. Also, did you notice how on certain shots you move your whole head rather than your eyes when looking from cue ball to object ball?

Both the above indicate some aim or visioning issues to me. You've got to train yourself to move your eyes only and not your stick or head on shots--on another shot you rush and move very quickly before the balls come to rest--and give yourself permission to miss in this manner until you lock in the discipline and aim both.
 
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