This question I'm sure has been asked a bunch but...
...what is the best way to practice without doing the same
Boring drills over and over?
There really isn’t a “better” way; there are different components to a practice session other than the drill(s) that you do; but the drill(s) are just as much an important part of a practice session as any other.
Back to the question. I've done drills: circle drill, L drill, banking, kicking, breaking etc. Im getting better but I'm bored with the drills.
Sometimes in our quest to get better we miss the most obvious stuff. How many balls did you get up to in the circle drill? How many rounds (or balls) did you get through in the L drill? Did you succeed in doing your bank, kick or breaking drill? If not how close did you come to your goal? If you aced all 3 then your bank, kick and breaking drills are too easy for you so you need to make the criteria harder.
If it sounds like I am speaking Chinese to you your not alone. Drills are one of the key ways to get better at something from tidily-winks to chess, from football to figure skating and ballet to baseball; drills are one of the barometers by which you can track your progress effectively. You can get all the drills you need for free if you just do a search on pool practice; but you can do drills all day and all night and only get marginally better at the game you will probably get better but you will spend hours doing them and eventually they will probably start to work against you.
Many players think this:
Doing drills=playing better.
This is the formula lots of people have, they have no goals, no plans to increase difficulty over time, no idea where they started from or where they want to get to. They also think that if they want to chart their progress that they will have to write down every little thing they did and how many balls they made doing what, on what date, on what size table, at what time of day; (although keeping records could be very helpful) well I say NONSENSE!
The 1st thing you should probably do is change your attitude toward your practice sessions to this:
Getting better at, then getting my high score, then getting close to a perfect score, then a perfect one and then increase the difficulty of the drill(s) and go back to the beginning of this sentence=playing better.
I would also encourage you to get some structure to your practice sessions mine goes like this; 1st hour, warm-up 2nd hour drill(s) du jour; finish with some kind of “practice game”; fargo, bowlyards, ghost, Byrns practice game (I added 7 shots to it over the years), run an open table (or several) etc.. etc..
I also am a big advocate of taping the sessions every 3, 4 or 6 months, there really isn’t anything more humbling than seeing what you really look like when you play, and you will see yourself get better over time. The 1st couple of years you do this will make you sick though; just deal with reality. Cameras are dirt cheap these days so get a good one and buy a good tripod to, don’t skimp on this.
You don’t have to keep specific records (although I am pretty sure this would help) to get better. You know the difference between bad, good, really good and perfect. And to get to be a good pool player you have to be a little obsessive about doing everything perfectly from your initial walk around the table to your last ball on the table going down.
I have yet to have a “perfect” run, in other words not every break (initial or secondary), every address, warm-up stroke, delivery stroke, eye pattern, object or cue-ball leave has gone “PERFECTLY AND EXACTLY AS PLANNED” I have had perfect innings; but to my recollection never an “ABSOLUTELY PERFECT” inning of even 8 or 9 balls let alone 15, if I have I was in dead stroke so I wouldn’t remember anyway.
Do I play the ghost now? Break, ball in hand? No ball in hand?
You practice with ball in hand and run as many racks as you can.
No one to practice with close by thats better than me.
They don’t have to be better than you are; although that helps it isn’t a must until you have gotten more than half as good as you are ever going to be. There are no world champs that have just emerged by themselves from their basement; it doesn’t work that way.
Lastly you should come up with your own drills to fix your specific problems and get some good instruction. At one point I had come up with so many of my own drills I had to separate my practice sessions into 2 groups 1. Shot making 2. Positional. There is no substitute for good instruction; seek and you shall find.
Good luck.
. Johnnyt
