Elbow drop neccessary or good?

M

Makey98

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I posted this on the 14.1 forum and got some good info, but suggested I put it here as well. Basically, I was saying I have NO elbow drop and was wondering if that was something I should work on.


Just got my own table and getting back into the game after not playing consistently since high school. My stroke is getting there but i am noticing my follow thru is not as long as some of the pros. i notice a lot of guys drop their elbow on a lot od shots after contact amd really extend their stroke. It is very obvious in this Corey Deuel video.

http://vimeo.com/19354477

Is this something one should emulate?
i love this video. So smooth.

My high run is around 12. Never made it through a whole rack and mostly it is ball pocketing so i am spending a lot of time on my stroke an pocketing drills.
 
Not necessary. Tony Robles is an example of someone who keeps his elbow still on even power shots. Mechanically, it is a simple way to play and simplicity is often the right way to go.

Good? Hard to give any "scientific" answer to this one. To the best of my knowledge, no sports physiologist/kinesiologist has ever done a study of this. The lack of any authoritative result doesn't keep us from speculating, though.

The simplicity argument says elbow drop is bad.

Observing good players shows that many of them have two distinct strokes: on soft shots the elbow does not move. On power shots, the elbow drops by about the thickness of the upper arm at the end of the shot. And one top player, Mike Davis, strokes mostly from the shoulder.

Observe snooker players -- who as a group spend far more time worrying about their fundamentals than pool players -- and you will see far more elbow motion as many of them use a piston stroke. For that stroke, the cue stick moves along its axis without any teeter-totter as in the pendulum stroke. Their elbow drops as the stick comes back, rises on the forward stroke until about the time the tip hits the ball, and then falls again as the tip follows through past where the cue ball was. It is difficult to argue with the consistency and precision they get.
 
Quite a topic you ask about. Here's my opinion.

First off the elbow drops because of shoulder involvement. Shoulder steady, elbow steady.

Dropping the elbow before the hit is not very common..... One of the major reasons why, is that it's hard to reproduce the same stroke with all those muscles moving around. Repeatable is our answer here, repeatable. Pool is finesse not power. Striking the cue ball accurately is 1/2 of the pool game. It's also just that much easier/simpler to keep the shoulder steady into the hit.

Dropping the elbow at time of hit.......good luck!

Dropping the elbow after the hit has occurred.....
Well if the cue ball is gone, (in 1/1000 second) then any shoulder/elbow movement would have no bearing on the hit. So now it becomes a personal thing.

My choice? I like to keep my elbow steady all the way through my stroke. That way I have a Start & Finish Position in my stroke on every shot. My brain likes that. This makes it very repeatable and easy to manage. All my normal strokes have about a 6 inch follow through which is natural for my body.



NOTE: In the previous post the mention was power. A few amateur players confuse POWER with VELOCITY....two different things and feelings.

Be carefull.
randyg
 
Since we often seem to compare pool and golf (I'm not sure why, but it does seem to get done a lot) let's think about a golf swing. When a golfer is at address, the head of the club is at the point where it needs to be when it comes back through on the swing. That would suggest that we need to be in the same position at that point of a golf swing that we were at address.

Now, if we are in our Set (address) position and the tip of the cue is where we want it to be at contact, what is the easiest way to make sure that happens? The easiest way is to use a pendilum stroke that will allow our arm to pass right through the set position as we make contact with the cue ball. If you were to video yourself stroking, and could pull two frames from the video, ideally, the frame at your set position, and the frame when you make contact should be nearly identical. That is how you can know you are making contact the way you intended to when you set up for the shot.

Steve
 
randyg said:
Quite a topic you ask about. Here's my opinion.

First off the elbow drops because of shoulder involvement. Shoulder steady, elbow steady.

Dropping the elbow before the hit is not very common..... One of the major reasons why, is that it's hard to reproduce the same stroke with all those muscles moving around. Repeatable is our answer here, repeatable. Pool is finesse not power. Striking the cue ball accurately is 1/2 of the pool game. It's also just that much easier/simpler to keep the shoulder steady into the hit.

Dropping the elbow at time of hit.......good luck!

Dropping the elbow after the hit has occurred.....
Well if the cue ball is gone, (in 1/1000 second) then any shoulder/elbow movement would have no bearing on the hit. So now it becomes a personal thing.

My choice? I like to keep my elbow steady all the way through my stroke. That way I have a Start & Finish Position in my stroke on every shot. My brain likes that. This makes it very repeatable and easy to manage. All my normal strokes have about a 6 inch follow through which is natural for my body.



NOTE: In the previous post the mention was power. A few amateur players confuse POWER with VELOCITY....two different things and feelings.

Be carefull.
randyg
Click to expand...
Great answer as usually Randy!
 
pooltchr said:
Since we often seem to compare pool and golf (I'm not sure why, but it does seem to get done a lot) let's think about a golf swing. When a golfer is at address, the head of the club is at the point where it needs to be when it comes back through on the swing. That would suggest that we need to be in the same position at that point of a golf swing that we were at address.

Now, if we are in our Set (address) position and the tip of the cue is where we want it to be at contact, what is the easiest way to make sure that happens? The easiest way is to use a pendilum stroke that will allow our arm to pass right through the set position as we make contact with the cue ball. If you were to video yourself stroking, and could pull two frames from the video, ideally, the frame at your set position, and the frame when you make contact should be nearly identical. That is how you can know you are making contact the way you intended to when you set up for the shot.

Steve
Click to expand...

Nice. Gonna work on this first thing tomorrow. BTW, is it to answer op questions if you're not officially an instructor?
 
Everyone is welcome to participate. I have been a professional instructor for about 10 years now, and it is a rare class I conduct where I don't learn something from the students.

Steve
 
thanks for all the replies! i had no idea this was such a common issue and feel a little silly. There is tons of info on this. thanks!!
 
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