How I brought my break from 17mph to 21mph

Plz PM me the wrist snap info.

Hello Thank you so much for your detailed explanation on your breaking technique. Could you plz send me the info you have on the wrist snap. Thanks
Chris
 
some good info here, thanks :)

I know my break is something that needs serious work, there's nothing consistent about it at all :embarrassed2:

I've always been the 'grab the heaviest house cue I can find and swing away' type. But after some reading I want to try some lower weights and try for speed instead of brute force....for me I think that will help with the accuracy. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm probably only hitting the cb in the same spot about 4 out of 10 breaks :rolleyes:


As long as you're offering, I wouldn't mind getting that PM with your description of the wrist action :thumbup:
 
8onthebreak said:
Journey with me on my break stroke advancement.
After 25 yrs of playing pool, I decided to really work on my break.
I was breaking at about 17-18 with limited accuracy, but keeping the ball on the table. Clusters were common, and making a ball was a coin toss at best.

I have bought and been using the BreakRak to hone my break, and here's what I found that helped me raise my break speed, AND MY ACCURACY.

I also found that when I slowed down my break speed, and focused on accuracy ...that I was actually recording HIGHER...MUCH HIGHER BREAK SPEEDS!!!!!!!!!!

Here goes...here's the list of things I found that made the difference.

1. Accuracy...use a cue ball and mark it with a smiley face and point the smiley face up, in a certain reproduce able way, chalk the cue every break, and pick up the cue ball after each break and inspect where your hitting the cue ball...I've found that you'll pick up 1-2 mph just hitting the cueball in the center instead of off center. Hitting so much as 1 tip off center really lowered my speed of break. Maybe a 14mm tip would have merit here ???

2. Anchored my left arm down onto table, and RAISED my body as high as I can, but still leaving my left arm hunkered down for stability and accuracy.

3. Raised my body to create a longer arm on the swing.

4. Raised my bridge...when I raised my body I was miscueing due to elevated butt end, so I raised my bridge too.

5. Leaned forward to accommodate a longer rear arm and keeping stability with front arm on table.

6. Eyes dead on head ball for ultimate accuracy hit on head ball...once you've ironed out the kinks in where your tip is hitting the cueball, you can focus your eyes onto the head ball with assurance that your gonna hit dead center on cueball.

7. Wrist snap. I've been trying to understand how to snap my wrist on the break to increase speed, and despite so many people trying to explain it to me, I finally was able to figure out how to do it...WOW-makes a big difference!
PM me if you need help with this like I did, I was able to quickly explain it to a few buddies over the phone in 3 minutes and they are crushing the break now :-)

8. I learned that I'm fat, lol. No, seriously, I have noticed after practicing break shot for an hour that my hand was hitting my stomache on follow thru, I suck it in on the delivery stroke...cause I get better response than if I contort my body to move my gut out of the way. Only took a little, and my hand misses it :-)

9. I found today in practice, that I was using my non-dominant eye on the break, I was hitting the rack off center a bit here and there, when I figured it out, I lined up thru my left...dominant eye, and was hitting the cue ball and the rack dead nuts every time !!!!!

My 21 mph break shot now is consistent, deadly accurate, reproduce able, and devastates a rack. Ball almost every time. Startles anyone standing by pool table, it's not that it's so fast, but it's what it impacts the rack with thru accuracy.

I believe that a 21 mph square hit break will do as much damage as a 24mph break, hit just off center...or delivered to the head ball just off center.

Cool thing is that this 21 mph break is very controllable. It seems almost effortless...I found that its about technique, not power...and technique I found, is what actually delivers power !!!

Hope it helps someone out there-always open to addl pointers, anyone with advice on improvement, I'd love to hear more.

My goal is to get to be able to put it in there at 24mph with dead accuracy and dead clean hit on head ball-consistently. I can put 22's in there now, but not clean. Not consistent.
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Great post. I like how you get the correlation between power and accuracy. When you hit the cue ball dead center then the majority of your energy/power is going into the cue ball. If you are inaccurate and hit off center on the cue ball than some power is lost.
I think of it like hitting a baseball. When you hit the ball square it will go farther, but if you swing as hard as you can, your accuracy suffers and you hit a foul ball.

Sounds like your on the right path to me. Nice job.
 
8onthebreak said:
Thx, and yes, I'll send you the info...
Are you sure your break speed app was set up...you have to set it up with the correct table size, and set up exactly where the cue ball is getting shot from.

I would be surprised if A/B players would be consistently hitting 21-22...I don't think more than 1 in 5 B players would be capable of a 22mph break at all...it would be interesting to see.

I'm sending info now, hope it helps, thx for the words.
Click to expand...

Thanks; I am looking forward to giving it a try.

I'm sure the break speed app was set up correctly. Handicaps vary based on areas of the country. Here in NYC, I was not at all surprised to see our As and Bs posting those numbers in a match. When we cranked up the break as hard as we could hit it, we were getting up to 23 or 24 but with significantly decreased accuracy.

Considering that big-breaking pros can max out at 30-31 or so, this doesn't surprise me at all.
 
all PM's replied to

TSW said:
Thanks; I am looking forward to giving it a try.

I'm sure the break speed app was set up correctly. Handicaps vary based on areas of the country. Here in NYC, I was not at all surprised to see our As and Bs posting those numbers in a match. When we cranked up the break as hard as we could hit it, we were getting up to 23 or 24 but with significantly decreased accuracy.

Considering that big-breaking pros can max out at 30-31 or so, this doesn't surprise me at all.
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great, like I said, watch what happens when u contact the cue ball AND the rack square at 20-22 !!!!!!!!
 
Some questions... for me, it's really hard to break from the line and get good speed and accuracy.

Like I can break from the rail and hit very square all day, and top 20. And I feel like there's so little friction when I just let the cue slide on the hard rail surface vs. my hands (open or closed bridge).

From the line, I have to strain to pass 20 and cue ball is wild.

Do you do this from the line, and do you use a glove? closed or open bridge?
I've heard advice to just "do what works best for you" but I've also heard advice that I need to learn to break from the line because the added distance is hurting my speed,
and there's no reason I can't break reasonably hard from the line.
 
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CreeDo said:
Some questions... for me, it's really hard to break from the line and get good speed and accuracy.

Like I can break from the rail and hit very square all day, and top 20. And I feel like there's so little friction when I just let the cue slide on the hard rail surface vs. my hands (open or closed bridge).

From the line, I have to strain to pass 20 and cue ball is wild.

Do you do this from the line, and do you use a glove? closed or open bridge?
I've heard advice to just "do what works best for you" but I've also heard advice that I need to learn to break from the line because the added distance is hurting my speed,
and there's no reason I can't break reasonably hard from the line.
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Hi Creedo,

I hear ya,

PM SENT BUDDY-hope the info helps you

But to answer ur questions,
From the line, 1 diamond over
Closed bridge, no glove...
Break from the line, and then do whatever feels good :grin-square:

Squatch83...PM SENT :-)
 
8onthebreak said:
From the line, 1 diamond over
Closed bridge, no glove...
Break from the line, and then do whatever feels good :grin-square:
Click to expand...

I do the same.

Closed bridge on the line, one diamond from the side rail. I play C+, maybe B speed if I'm in stroke. I break consistently around 21-22mph and have surpassed 24mph.
 
EXCELLENT thread and post. Where's the "Like" button?
There's a whole lot to like in your post, especially since I have been struggling with my break speed.

thanks,
JoeyA
 
Great information!!! I also noticed that by slowing down and focusing more on accuracy that my speed may actually pick up, but thats guessing by sound, I have an Android, checked the break app awhile back but it was not available then, I will need to check again. I was also thinking about a Breakrak to improve my break. Would you be kind enough to pm me your wrist snap info? Thank you in advance.
 
Thank you for the PM, and Information.

I'm working on the wrist snap, but, if you don't mind, I may need to give you a call.

Thank you, again.

Josh
 
So, last night I went out and broke around 25 racks, I still need to work on the timing of the wrist snap, but here's what I think so far


On the times I hit the cb accurately with the snap, I definitely saw an immediate improvement, even though I'm sure my "arm speed" was lower than normal while focusing on my wrist. So I'm sure once I get those two things in sync, once it all becomes muscle memory and everything comes together naturally, the improvement is going to be massive :thumbup:

I was practicing with an 8ball layout on a 7 foot table. Overall I was spreading the balls across the table, cue ball somewhere near the middle(ish), rarely ever any clusters, but only made balls a handful of times. Again, this was probably due to the lower stroke speed while working out the timing.
However....twice, when things went just right, the mark on the cb showed I hit dead center and the wrist snap came at the right moment, still not stroking very hard I made not one, but 3 balls

A closed bridge hand is definitely required. The wrist snap won't be controlled otherwise (try it without hitting a ball and just watch the tip, you'll see what I mean)


Just a couple of questions for clarification:
When you say your left arm is anchored down...can you be more specific?
In a follow up you said you shoot from the line about a diamond in....so, are we talking hand on the table surface, elbow on the rail? Or just your hand on the table?

And, how far back are you holding your bridge hand and still maintaining accuracy? Obviously I can hit more accurately with a shorter bridge, but that limits the length of the stroke. I'm thinking I'll keep it shorter and more accurate for now and work up to keeping a longer stroke as steady through the snap


thanks again for the help :grin:
 
Mr 8onthebreak, this is a good post. I see that you have gotten peoples attention about the break shot & how repetition got you into form, rather quickly. Very Good.

That's the thing about repetition, it has been the vehicle for mankind to learn muscle memory, for as long as mankind has been learning precision skills.

There's no substitute for perfect practice or the attempt to do so. It shows up in the performance arena.

Thanks for the kinds words about my product.
 
Great job !!!

kavik79 said:
So, last night I went out and broke around 25 racks, I still need to work on the timing of the wrist snap, but here's what I think so far


On the times I hit the cb accurately with the snap, I definitely saw an immediate improvement, even though I'm sure my "arm speed" was lower than normal while focusing on my wrist. So I'm sure once I get those two things in sync, once it all becomes muscle memory and everything comes together naturally, the improvement is going to be massive :thumbup:

I was practicing with an 8ball layout on a 7 foot table. Overall I was spreading the balls across the table, cue ball somewhere near the middle(ish), rarely ever any clusters, but only made balls a handful of times. Again, this was probably due to the lower stroke speed while working out the timing.
However....twice, when things went just right, the mark on the cb showed I hit dead center and the wrist snap came at the right moment, still not stroking very hard I made not one, but 3 balls

A closed bridge hand is definitely required. The wrist snap won't be controlled otherwise (try it without hitting a ball and just watch the tip, you'll see what I mean)


Just a couple of questions for clarification:
When you say your left arm is anchored down...can you be more specific?
In a follow up you said you shoot from the line about a diamond in....so, are we talking hand on the table surface, elbow on the rail? Or just your hand on the table?

And, how far back are you holding your bridge hand and still maintaining accuracy? Obviously I can hit more accurately with a shorter bridge, but that limits the length of the stroke. I'm thinking I'll keep it shorter and more accurate for now and work up to keeping a longer stroke as steady through the snap


thanks again for the help :grin:
Click to expand...

Glad your enjoying the info,

To answer your question,
I break at the line, tall bridge, ...on edge of hand, arm on rail...hunkered down, so I can control accuracy. I'm finding that the more I focus on accuracy, the faster recorded speeds. I slow down, just to get higher readings. Slow the arm, quicken the snap. The snap is so much more accurate and easy to pinpoint than 2' moving arm and shoulder.

I have found that as I use more wrist, and less arm...I don't need to have as long of a bridge as I used to have. So I now have my bridge closer, about 1 diamond away, or less, and I'm focused on accuracy. The closer my bridge, the more center I hit the cue ball, and the higher speeds I'm posting. I don't use a lot of arm anymore, so the long bridge is just a waste of accuracy. I guess I'm being more efficient now. I just can't control a long arm swinging full speed, down to 1/4" tolerance.

ThE times when you hit the cueball dead center and dropped 3 balls on a slow break..is exactly what I'm referring to. Pinpoint that accuracy, replicate and duplicate. Until its consistent and duplicatable every time. ...by the way, ...that wasn't a slow break...those two breaks that seamed slow, where you hit dead center cueball, were almost certainly your highest recorded speed breaks! The ones that seem the slowest are the fastest.

That's the secret. Watch SVB...he doesn't crush it...he controls it. He doesn't lunge, jump, or do anything crazy...but he's deadly accurate.

I was practicing tonight with a buddy, I told him to slow down, and focus dead center cue ball and dead center head ball hit...and he posted about 2 mph gain immediately.

1 tip off center on cue ball is too much. Also, If the cue ball hits the side rail, you've given up a LOT of impact energy.

Slow it down, get the cue ball to hit the rack dead nuts and come back slow, never hitting a rail, do that, and watch that rack explode. 3 balls almost for sure!!!
 
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All PM's replied to.

ceebee said:
Mr 8onthebreak, this is a good post. I see that you have gotten peoples attention about the break shot & how repetition got you into form, rather quickly. Very Good.

That's the thing about repetition, it has been the vehicle for mankind to learn muscle memory, for as long as mankind has been learning precision skills.

There's no substitute for perfect practice or the attempt to do so. It shows up in the performance arena.

Thanks for the kinds words about my product.
Click to expand...

Thanks Charley, I appreciate it-I'm beating the hell out of that thing !!!
It's like therapy, smashing cue balls into it. I don't know how it takes it, lol.
IM ENJOYING PRACTICING MY BREAK NOW MORE THAN PRACTICING TRADITIONAL SHOOTING.
 
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