Hitch in the Stroke

[victorl]

Hey all,

I had a friend tell me recently that I have a hitch in my stroke. I was shocked to hear it and I decided to take a video and I can see a pretty pronounced hitch on my final stroke on some shots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXC_CApMc7s
It looks like its causing me to underhit shots, leaving myself longer than I should be. In just 3 racks I counted about 4 times where I hitched and then underhit the shot (not to mention a horribly rushed break). I'm thinking I need to slow down and work on SPF again.
Anyone have a similar problem and how did you overcome it? Any other advice would be appreciated as well

 

[BasementDweller]

Hey all,

I had a friend tell me recently that I have a hitch in my stroke. I was shocked to hear it and I decided to take a video and I can see a pretty pronounced hitch on my final stroke on some shots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXC_CApMc7s
It looks like its causing me to underhit shots, leaving myself longer than I should be. In just 3 racks I counted about 4 times where I hitched and then underhit the shot (not to mention a horribly rushed break). I'm thinking I need to slow down and work on SPF again.
Anyone have a similar problem and how did you overcome it? Any other advice would be appreciated as well

Looks like you are shooting pretty good if you ask me. I think I see the hitch you are talking about but I'm not all that experienced with dissecting other player’s strokes. So take this for what it's worth: The one thing that I noticed is you like to get going pretty fast with your warm-up strokes and at times this carries over to your final backstroke. Then your final backstroke is going too fast and you then try to slow down on your final forward stroke through the cue ball. This is what is causing the "hitch" that I think you are referring to. I saw this at 3:18 and again at 6:41.

I would recommend you try slowing down your cueing action, especially that final backstroke. Then after finishing your final backstroke, you can accelerate the cue if need be. I think slowing the cue down after it is going fast will always feel much more unnatural than the other way around. I've also found that the slower cue action allows me to "feel" my cue better and it becomes much easier to diagnose what I'm doing wrong.

Take it or leave it.

Good luck.

 

[victorl]

Thanks dweller, I think you're right about my backstroke being way too fast. Its like I'm trying to stop myself in the middle of the shot and then shooting. It feels really awkward.

 

[Neil]

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[Andrew Manning]

Thanks dweller, I think you're right about my backstroke being way too fast. Its like I'm trying to stop myself in the middle of the shot and then shooting. It feels really awkward.

It helps to take a shorter backswing on softer shots, as well. If you want to hit a medium-speed shot, and you take the same backswing you would for a hard shot, you have to rein in your cue speed on the way forward. If you take a shorter backswing, you can accelerate naturally through the ball and still hit with a controlled speed.

In terms of mechanics, you do a lot of things very unconventionally (elbow movement all over the place, head positioned next the cue), but you seem to play well with those idiosyncracies, so I wouldn't necessarily say you'd benefit any from trying to "fix" them.

-Andrew