I wish aliens could come down and study pool players, and let them know how many balls they miss precisley because they started changing their aiming.
Actually, you are selling something, like I said, so you will argue that aiming systems work.
To be fair, they will put you in the relative ballpark on which side of the ball to hit (when you first start to learn pool), but if you ever use an aiming system after you have played for any period of time, you are fooling yourself.
I compete, as well as teach, but I don't teach aiming systems. I know the majority of them and they all require "adjustments" for everything.. This is a failure of the system as you can just guess at a spot, then make adjustments.
You can show me any aiming system and I can choose virtually any shot and make it fail. If its unreliable, its no better than a crooked stroke..
There are too may variables for a system to work, and there is no short cut to increasing your skill at pool other than time.
The stroke is more important and that should be the focus. The "other stuff" is learned as you go.
I don't want this to become an argument aiming vs no aiming systems, but I am trying to provide a method for the OP to learn what they can do...
This is sort of trial and error, as you put it, but its not derogatory. You learn to do everything in life by trial and error, even if someone shows you some "system", it won't work until you make subconscious adjustments each time you miss.
This isn't exactly true either. It's not just that they don't work for all shots and situations, it is that none of them work even a significant portion of the time without subconscious adjustments based on experience--otherwise known as "feel". Some of them, like ghost ball, typically need smaller amounts of subconscious adjustments in regards to how much you need and how often you need it, and others, like some of those that are being sold and have gotten somewhat of a cult following among a few in recent years, require very significant amounts of subconscious adjustments almost all of the time and in fact are really just a series of steps that serve to disguise that you are actually playing almost solely by feel because you are in fact forced to be for the system to "work". Bottom line is that feel (subconscious adjustments) is involved with all of them but it is much more extensively involved and has to work much harder with some "systems" because they feed much higher levels of inaccurate info which has to be overcome so you don't miss so many shots as a result.
Actually, you are selling something, like I said, so you will argue that aiming systems work.
To be fair, they will put you in the relative ballpark on which side of the ball to hit (when you first start to learn pool), but if you ever use an aiming system after you have played for any period of time, you are fooling yourself.
I compete, as well as teach, but I don't teach aiming systems. I know the majority of them and they all require "adjustments" for everything.. This is a failure of the system as you can just guess at a spot, then make adjustments.
You can show me any aiming system and I can choose virtually any shot and make it fail. If its unreliable, its no better than a crooked stroke..
There are too may variables for a system to work, and there is no short cut to increasing your skill at pool other than time.
The stroke is more important and that should be the focus. The "other stuff" is learned as you go.
I don't want this to become an argument aiming vs no aiming systems, but I am trying to provide a method for the OP to learn what they can do...
This is sort of trial and error, as you put it, but its not derogatory. You learn to do everything in life by trial and error, even if someone shows you some "system", it won't work until you make subconscious adjustments each time you miss.
Nice post.
In my opinion, the more you teach a player how to aim, the more you are head****ing him. I am not saying you agree with that, but that's how I see it. If I had a kid and he wanted to be a pro pool player and looked to me for advice pretty much the only thing I'd ever tell him is "you should either be practicing, and when you're not practicing you should be in some sort of challenging competitive matchup". Rinse and repeat. That's it, that's all there is to it. I agree people who say otherwise are selling something.
That isn't what I said. Before you can attempt to debate someone, you first have to able and willing to carefully read what they have said, and then make sure you have also comprehended it correctly. What I said was that "none of them work even a significant portion of the time without subconscious adjustments based on experience--otherwise known as 'feel'".To say unilaterally that none work even a substantial portion of the time is ignorant.
No, it shows how little you know about aiming systems. What I said is not opinion but is absolute fact, and the proof has been shown time and time again. Sadly, a real catch 22 situation is caused by the fact that most simply don't possess the intellect required to understand the proof.This just shows how little you know about "aiming systems" and how they work for many players, including pros. That's, of course, okay, because everyone is entitled to their own opinions.
What you have essentially said is that you cannot learn anything on your own and you can only learn what has been taught to you by somebody else. If you can't understand how ludicrous that statement is....actually I know you can see how silly that was if you think about it, you just didn't think about it before posting it.Unless you have a coach or a fellow pool player to correct your stroke, all these millions of strokes only enhance and ingrained all the bad habits that you had when you first started playing.
You would be wrong on that one. Most great pool players are mostly or exclusively self taught. I agree that good coaching can definitely shorten a learning curve, but even that doesn't make a difference if the student isn't receptive to it, or if it isn't really good coaching (because bad advice would actually be a detriment that would cause a setback and would be worse than no advice at all).Is it possible for newbie to be an excellent/pro player after hitting a million balls (all self taught, with no new knowledge from internet, friends, etc)? Only on pure talent alone? I don't think so.
Again, the ignorance is astounding here. We have disagreed before, and certainly do again on this subject. So...exactly what and how should they be practicing? Playing the ghost? random shooting? playing sets for money? None of those are disciplined practice...structured, organized, with ways to measure your success, and improvement. So you're also disagreeing with the successful training methods of every top professional instructor on the planet! Nice to know that you guys know so much more than everybody else! LOL
Scott Lee
http://poolknowledge.com
I do something different. But discussing here is fruitless.
If I read 336Robin correctly, I do and teach basically the same thing. I think it's all fine and good that so many people can subconsciously aim for all kinds of English at various speeds and distances. For those that can't, and especially for those that are going the wrong direction in their compensation, they might want to have a discussion with people who have an organized instruction method for teaching English.
Everyone is different in how they learn. We live in a beautiful time where we have so many options.
Freddie <~~~ before and after
Again, the ignorance is astounding here. We have disagreed before, and certainly do again on this subject. So...exactly what and how should they be practicing? Playing the ghost? random shooting? playing sets for money? None of those are disciplined practice...structured, organized, with ways to measure your success, and improvement. So you're also disagreeing with the successful training methods of every top professional instructor on the planet! Nice to know that you guys know so much more than everybody else! LOL
Scott Lee
http://poolknowledge.com
I am curious as to whether you compensate your shot (when you have to, for some of us) before you go down for your shot or after - assuming you know which side to compensate.
If before you go down for your shot, where do you look at when you aimed? At a spot on the object ball or just guesswork?
If after you go down for your shot, then how do you make the adjustment so as to aim off? Sideways, or rotate your bridge hand or simply by moving your thumb?
Those are excellent videos. And for those interested, many more videos and articles dealing with the topics in this thread can be found on the following resource pages:Colin Colenso and Joe Tucker are the BHE guys.
JT BHE instruction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwVBh73s9js
JT shooting Colin's workout shots (nice guitar background):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj98db58bbc