It doesn't matter what systems I use, you can't teach someone a perception of what the shot looks like to someone else. You can try to explain it but one must learn his own. It will always boil down to a certain look. The same shot with a different speed or spin will boil down to a certain look not like before. What I'm saying is center ball aiming is not the same as going outside the center aiming. To play good you must go away from trying connect the balls with most of your aiming methods, poor brain would explode.
You wanna up your game learn how to use the contact point and learn how to gear the balls. Long shots are done a certain way . (Easier to get a good shot picture ) Short shots a done a certain way. (Again Easier to see the shot picture.)
It does matter. Because humans are not unique. While each of us is a unique mixture of cells/bacteria/neural network/physical agility we are far more alike than we are different.
We have a very similar set of physical tools to make our way through the world and handle tasks that we are faced with.
That commonality allows us to create mental techniques to assist in tasks that require making a decision to physically act. There is plenty of research that shows that such tools improve the results.
Take ghost ball. Extremely simple to show or describe the concept to another person. Any pool player has two states of being in their pool knowledge. Before they learned ghost ball and after.
So when you teach someone the ghost ball concept and you know that before teaching it their pocketing ability was x% and immediately after teaching them that ability increases by y% then it is a reasonable conclusion that the application of that mental technique to aim is responsible for the increase in pocketing ability.
I read a comment about you where you were thanked for helping someone understand 90/90. Maybe I misunderstood the comment but if true then it means you learned 90/90 and figured it out well enough to help someone else to figure it out.
The very fact that you learned 90/90 is a testament to the fact that concepts can be transferred. If the premise is to visually line up the right edges, put your cue on that line, pivot to center and that will be the shot line then it is unlikely that the average human with two functioning eyes and no debilitating handicap will be so far off that they won't figure out the correct visual+physical motion with trial and error and perhaps a little instruction.
Some people get it right away and others need a little extra but it is the commonality between humans that makes this possible. The uniqueness of how people think is what causes dissonance between instructions and implementation. Take the exact same instructions and some people get it immediately, some people need to think about it a little more, some people really struggle. Change the instructions and which people get it in what amount of time changes.
I often talk about teaching jumping with a jump cue. The myth is that jump cues make it so easy that anyone can jump immediately but this is absolutely not true. I have five years of experience teaching jumping at major shows that proves this myth wrong. I had to have about five different ways to explain the concept and stroke techniques because it became super clear at the first show that one approach was not going to work for all users.
I had at times four people jumping at the same time on the same table. I say this so that everyone understands that this was a major thing for me. We sold a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of jump cues in the first two years. But when I got into it I was adamant that I should be able to not only demonstrate proficiency but also teach techniques that the purchaser could learn before leaving the booth and use to improve their skill.
I had help from a couple folks who were with me at that time to develop several ways of teaching the skill. Once the shooter understood the concept and the physical motion they all resolved to the same approach to the shot and their success rates improved accordingly. But getting them to that point was sometimes easy and sometimes incredibly frustrating.
And I am not talking about bangers. I taught, and still teach, players at all levels. Sometimes I would get a pretty decent shooter who just couldn't seem to understand what I was describing and they would say that they cue was no good. I would stick with it and at since point a light bulb would go off and they would "get it" and their eyes would light up and the frustration would be gone and they would go from struggling to discovering the limits of what was possible. I can't really explain the feeling of accomplishment every time that happened.
If I had simply demonstrated it, took their money and said "happy jumping" I am sure that some of them would have given up in disgust thinking they had been sold a gimmick instead of an actual tool.
And in fact our case booth was next to a seller of jump cues at a couple of shows in the past several years and that seller was exactly the type who thought that those trying his cue were just too stupid to perform with his cue and frequently harangued the potential buyers if they didn't perform successful jump shots right away. He would grab the cue do a few shots and hand it back and if they still didn't get it he would shoo them away. It was the craziest thing listening to this with my experience.
After two days I couldn't stand it and I talked to him when there was a slow period and explained my experience and approach with jump cue sales. I taught him several ways to identify issues and how to overcome them. Within an hour the whole tenor at his booth changed and he went from pushy salesman to patient teacher and sales went up immediately. At the end of the day he thanked me and ever since when I saw him at a show he was having a good show.
So, respectfully, I do disagree with your statement about shot pictures and not being able to teach someone what you see. The physical parameters of a shot are clear, there is a very small finite space which the cue has to be in to have any chance of making the ball with a center ball hit. I know that as a system user yourself you know full well that you have a good tool to aid your eyes/brain to get to that finite space consistently.
You might not agree with what some other teacher of any similar method says about their method but you have to know that the technique at it's core has validity.
Deciding not to teach what you use is of course your right. No one can force you to help others. But slamming others who are teaching aiming methods is not productive for the sport in my opinion. Saying or insinuating that people just need to figure things out all by themselves is equally counterproductive.
Nothing in this world today that humans do is a result of figuring it out by themselves. Everyone has some instructive influences to some degree or other. Some starting points where they said ok, if this works what about that?
Hal Houle specifically asked me to pass on what he taught me. I tried to pay him for his time and he refused. He told me just to pass it on in person. He also told me not to talk about it on the internet and I clearly screwed that up.
The point is that of anyone finds something that works then I think they should share with others and not only confirm that the technique works but also give others something to build on and maybe those others improve on it or even create something different and better based on the core properties of the technique.
No one knows what the brain is capable of. You have always been cryptic on here such as your advice above about contact points and gearing. You say do x but don't describe how to go about learning how to do x.
Dr. Dave on the other hand goes into great detail when explaining a technique.
You like to demonstrate proficiency and we all agree that you are a good player. But without any explanation of what you are doing your videos are literally just footage of a good player pocketing balls. No different than watching a pro run racks. Not any more help than willie mosconi's advice, "don't miss".
So I guess we just have different ideas about human capability and human cooperation. I want to help people aim better even if I am not the most proficient player. I spend my time thinking about how to explain the techniques that I know, and that you know, work extremely well in ways that different individuals can use to arrive at the same understanding and implementation.
I naively hope that everyone here could be operating in that space but I am unfortunately disappointed to see that this is not the situation.
