dealing with swings

C

Cruisin1271

New member
hey guys im new to the forum and fairly new to playing, but making very good progress so im told so far. lately i've been having a problem with my game taking drastic swings. one week i will play great to the point where im hanging with the best players where i play at...and other weeks its like i forget everything and then lose all confidence in my game. any advice? i would just like to stay consistant so i dont leave feeling like i wasted the time practicing.
 
Cruisin1271 said:
hey guys im new to the forum and fairly new to playing, but making very good progress so im told so far. lately i've been having a problem with my game taking drastic swings. one week i will play great to the point where im hanging with the best players where i play at...and other weeks its like i forget everything and then lose all confidence in my game. any advice? i would just like to stay consistant so i dont leave feeling like i wasted the time practicing.
Click to expand...

Do you have any instructional material ?
 
Swings are usually caused by weaknesses in your fundamentals. Stance and Head position can totally wreck havoc if you are not solid on them.

I would work on some long straight ins until you get your head and body lined up to see the shot and keep the cue ball online first and ingrain that head and body position/relationship.

I would then suggest working on a preshot routine that gets you down on the shot the same way every time and then work on your visual patterns.

If you are playing good one day and bad the next I am discounting a major stroke flaw because of the good days. I am saying days tho and not weeks..

If you are in the early learning curve you will want to hit balls every day if that is not what you are doing already. In the early curve I think practice will pay better dividends down the road than playing. I'd likely practice twice as much as I played for a month or 2 and then see if your consistency smooths out.

I would also schedule a lesson or 2 with a qualified instructor and get yourself on video. It's easier to see what you are doing wrong on film sometimes than it is for someone to tell you....
 
The Renfro said:
Swings are usually caused by weaknesses in your fundamentals. Stance and Head position can totally wreck havoc if you are not solid on them.

I would work on some long straight ins until you get your head and body lined up to see the shot and keep the cue ball online first and ingrain that head and body position/relationship.

I would then suggest working on a preshot routine that gets you down on the shot the same way every time and then work on your visual patterns.

If you are playing good one day and bad the next I am discounting a major stroke flaw because of the good days. I am saying days tho and not weeks..

If you are in the early learning curve you will want to hit balls every day if that is not what you are doing already. In the early curve I think practice will pay better dividends down the road than playing. I'd likely practice twice as much as I played for a month or 2 and then see if your consistency smooths out.

I would also schedule a lesson or 2 with a qualified instructor and get yourself on video. It's easier to see what you are doing wrong on film sometimes than it is for someone to tell you....
Click to expand...

Good post and information Renfro
 
If you are haveing swings during nightly play or day to day might not be a bad idea to get your blood sugar checked out. I am Diabetic and if I dont eat correctly I have hugh swings in my play. just a thought.
 
Richm said:
If you are haveing swings during nightly play or day to day might not be a bad idea to get your blood sugar checked out. I am Diabetic and if I dont eat correctly I have hugh swings in my play. just a thought.
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Rich that's a good idea as well.

I was friends with Earl "Red" Frye for years. Red was on the road with Billy Johnson in his younger days. Red started to carry around 6 pairs of glasses in his cue case as his blood sugar got harder to control. I never really thought about it until then. Miss the old guy.

R.I.P. Earl
 
I am in kinda the same boat, and just started seeing the light. My biggest jumps have been since I have started working with a couple good players that give lessons. Then once I got my stance and stroke in check the drills went easier and started seeing improvement. Get some help, and then practice.
 
I've gone through a similar thing recently. I too am new to the game. Had the usual ups and downs for the first 8-9 months that I played, then last summer started getting far more consistent. Not a world beater, but I won 11 straight weeks in my league, and over half of them were against people better than me. Also won a couple of our in-house tournaments. It was coming together, given the length of time I had in the game to that point.

Then it went all to hell. It's been 3 months of trying to sort out exactly what I was doing differently. Not playing completely awful, but just not very well, certainly not to the level I had been at before.

I think I'm starting to "come out of it" now. Turns out is wasn't any one thing, but a number of little differences in several areas. What I've done to help with this, and hopefully reinforce it a bit, is to write down a short-ish list of the things that tend to get out-of-whack for my particular game. I'm trying to take a quick glance at my list before playing, so I "remember what to remember" that is specific to me.

Simple stuff, really. The usual concepts.

"Stay down, keep the cue-butt down."

"Follow through"

"Minimize practice shots, and do them slowly." (This was a BIG bugaboo for me, it turns out. Many of the players that I play with have a routine of several practice strokes, and making them rather quickly. Sub-conciously I began to adopt that practice, and when I figured out that wasn't helping me, my ball-pocketing went up immediately. Might not be the same for the next guy, but this one makes a big difference to me. Thus my point about the list being specific to "my game". Everybody is different, so there can't be a cookie-cutter list that will help everybody.)

I have another three or four more points to remind myself about. Just basics, and I don't go studying it all night. Just something to help me "find myself" every so often. So far, just once a night as I screw the cue together is how I'm trying to make it work. Hopefully I won't need it at all in the future, and I can safely stash it in the back pocket of the cue-case.

I know I saw someone here at AZB talk about such a list about a year ago, and never did anything about it. Now I'm wishing I did. I realize such a practice will seem silly to the advanced player, one who has many years of experience, and knows the feel of his stroke like the back of the proverbial hand. I'm not that person yet, so these reminders are helping me stay the course. Maybe it'll help our OP, too...?
 
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Cruisin1271 said:
hey guys im new to the forum and fairly new to playing, but making very good progress so im told so far. lately i've been having a problem with my game taking drastic swings. one week i will play great to the point where im hanging with the best players where i play at...and other weeks its like i forget everything and then lose all confidence in my game. any advice? i would just like to stay consistant so i dont leave feeling like i wasted the time practicing.
Click to expand...


When you are playing your best take a mental snapshot of what you are doing. Look at the way you hold your cue, look at the way you standing, look at the way you stroking the ball and pay close attention to way you are lining up your shots.

Then when things start going south, compare what you were doing before and what is happening when things are bad, this way you find out what is wrong so that you can correct it.

The biggest problem I see with new to intermediate players is that they can't diagnose what they are doing wrong.

Hope this helps
 
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