I understand your desire, and I am making the same effort for myself. The thing that I have done this summer is to create a personal training workbook that for me I will work through to the end of the year. In my workbook I pulled material from all the key books that I have in my own pool libary. I pulled material from my Phil Capelle books, The Pro Skill Drill volumes that I have, and The Pro Books by Bob Hemming. I analyzed for myself those skill areas that I felt I still needed to greatly improve upon, and at the same time still strengthen and refine my strongest skill sets. I organized my practice material into a 3 inch binder and broke it down into 31 days of specific subject material. Mind you this is material to cover for 5 months of practice.
I also chose to incorporate the PAT 1 testing materials into my 31 day system.
Bear in mind though that no matter what material you choose to practice and work on, the practice itself isnt going to be sufficient without some means of measuring your own performance from one practice session to another. Record keeping is a key element to my own training regimen. Each day that I am in the pool room, I have my selected set of drill and practice material to work that day. But I keep a log of how successful my practice efforts are from drill to drill.
Every drill is different, and every drill involves a set number of balls that your trying to successfully pocket. Most players do a drill and they may do it for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, maybe more. But how many attempts were actually completed? And how many balls were succesfully pocketed in the practice effort? By what percentage of success did you achieve in balls pocketed versus your failed shots? If you did the same drill last week, and again this week, what percentage improvement did you record if any between the 2 attempts?
Gurantee that nearly every player that practices drills cannot answer any of those kinds of questions regarding their drill practice. Because no one makes an effort to 1) set a define number of attempts on a given drill, 2) caluclate the maximum number of makeable balls in a set number of attempts on the drill, and 3) keep track of balls pocketed on each drill attempt for the total number of defined attempts to be made, and thus be able to calculate a percentage of success achieved. Thats what it takes to know how you are performing.
By keeping a record of performance during each practice session and for each drill your practice by, you give yourself the means of knowing what your performance is. And when you come back around to make another attempt on a drill that you have done before, you now have the means to set a goal so that you can attempt to improve upon a previous known level of performance.
If your goal is to become an elite athlete in the sport of pocket billiards, then you have to begin to adopt an attitude and discipline regarding your training, that is no different than the the same attitude and discipline that any other top athlete would take on in any other professional sport. And if you look at the training methods used by other athletes in other sports, you will find that a key element of those training methods is the recording of personal peformance, for whatever is appropriate for those sports. That means defining some basic forms for the record keeping of your practice efforts.
When I do a drill, and depending on what source the drill is coming from, I will generally do 10 attempts on a drill. But on occasion, particualarly for PAT 1 series testing material, I will practice those particular shots as many as 25, 50 or 100 times. And I keep a record of performance for each shot attempt made. When you start this kind of record keeping habit, you will find it hard to have to write in your log book a low level of performance. But you have to be honest in the record keeping. And know that down the road your numbers will go up. Its been frustrating having to write in some low number, like a 1, 2, 3, or heaven forbid a ZERO. But its going to happen, and you have to accept that it will occur, and occur alot at the begining of the process.
I personally am now just entering the 2nd month of my 5 month training regimen that I created for myself. As I entered the 2nd week of the 1st month I began to get a feeling that some small improvement was taking place in my overall game. And a couple of my playing buddies started to comment on seeing some improvement. At the end of the 1st month , I started to see more success in my placing in the money in the local tournaments, and hearing more complaints about my overall improvement from some of my local competitors. So I know I am making an impact on my game. That success has helped to reinforce my committment to my training process. And that's what its going to take, a committment of discipline to your training.
It does not mean you have to spend 8 hours a day at the table. But it does require at least 1 to 2 hours a day committed to practicing under an organized structured system of practice and record keeping. Do it long enough and you will see some serious improvement in your game.
I will also tell you that if you compete in a regular schedule of local tournaments, and play in any leagues, then use that competitive schedule to define a set of competitive goals that you want to achieve. For myself I have a dozen different competitive goals for the last half of this year. I have a certain number of tournament vicotories I want to achieve by the end of the year, I have a percentage of win/loss I am wanting to achieve in my BCA league, and some other goals as well. But those goals help to foster another level of committment to the playing effort, as I work on my daily training regimen.
So if your serious about wanting to improve your game, then make the effort to analyze the areas you need to both strengthen and refine, organize some appropriate instructional material, commit to a schedule of practice, and be discipline in your record keeping efforts each day that you do your practice.
Apply that kind of commitment and discipline to your practice efforts and you will see the improvement that your seeking in time.
David "Glamour Dave" Nienow
