I need help I hate my mental game..... I can't seem to get my head straight ill get mad when I lose even if I'm playing somebody that I have almost no chance at beating...... ill get excited when I'm almost.out and miss..... of I miss something easy... my game just goes down hill. I have tried to not get mad but ive been playing horrible..... but when I'm practiceing and not mad I can runout or play safe .... basically do watever I want to do.... do. Sooooo do u guys no anything to help me
And I guess I should add that I'm young..... and just started to play in tournaments a lot in this past year
Play the table. Be happy! Can you stand up and play? Some can't! Do you have brain cancer? Some do. Count your blessings. Play the game you love and learn to be gracious when you lose. Stop thinking when you are down on a shot. Execute. You have the rest of your life to figure out your mental game. Work on your skills.
Playing in tournaments, gambling, reading and watching videos are all great ways to develop nerve. However, we generally play like we practice. There is one drill I have my students do every day before they start practice to help them develop the ability to play under the pressure of trying to make balls. It is the best drill I know for developing mental toughness on a daily basis.
You move the cue ball after each shot to a straight in shot with the cue ball behind the line. The object of the drill is to make 20 straight in stop shots in a row from this distance. No gimme's, no I woulda's, no the pocket robbed me, no excuses. 20 balls in a row have to fall in the correct pocket! If you miss you start over. Simple drill with simple shots.
Listen to yourself when you do this, watch your frustration, your anger, your tightness and everything else about how you go at this, but keep at it. Do you quit and move on or do you just keep going. What are you saying to yourself? Are starting to breath fast, grip the cue stick too tightly? Feel the heat?
At some point you will start to focus more on your stroke and your mechanics and less on trying to make the ball. Once you get fully into the shot and out of the results, amazing things will happen to your game. This is something you can't read about but you have to experience. It might take you a year to develop this ability, but once you do, and you can, you have developed nerve, the ability to focus on the shot at hand and not the results you want or are afraid of.
If 20 in a row is too easy, do 30. If 20 is too hard, lower it to something just out of your reach.
Good luck.
PS. Since I really want you to improve your game, and doing this exercise is valuable to developing mental toughness, I did 51 in a row yesterday. Can you beat that?
Hopefully you will go out and try this and in the process develop that mental muscle that will help you win sets.
A lot will disagree with me on this but you need to learn how to lose before you can learn how to win, mentally speaking of coarse. I play better when I'm not to keyed up, I play better when I'm in a good mood. I know a guy who I have seen snap his cue in half at least 4 times in the past few years, he gets so mad he can't learn to win, he is stuck in the losing mentality. He isn't a bad player, he is a bad thinker. Even keel in losing or winning works for me.
Well I played the guy that works in the poolroom so he plays everyday.......:..... and me just playing on the weekends.... we won the same amount of games I learned staying calm helps u see more of the table...... but I didn't get mad even when the roles were not going my way.......... and pool seemed a lot more fun
Playing in tournaments, gambling, reading and watching videos are all great ways to develop nerve. However, we generally play like we practice. There is one drill I have my students do every day before they start practice to help them develop the ability to play under the pressure of trying to make balls. It is the best drill I know for developing mental toughness on a daily basis.
You move the cue ball after each shot to a straight in shot with the cue ball behind the line. The object of the drill is to make 20 straight in stop shots in a row from this distance. No gimme's, no I woulda's, no the pocket robbed me, no excuses. 20 balls in a row have to fall in the correct pocket! If you miss you start over. Simple drill with simple shots.
Listen to yourself when you do this, watch your frustration, your anger, your tightness and everything else about how you go at this, but keep at it. Do you quit and move on or do you just keep going. What are you saying to yourself? Are starting to breath fast, grip the cue stick too tightly? Feel the heat?
At some point you will start to focus more on your stroke and your mechanics and less on trying to make the ball. Once you get fully into the shot and out of the results, amazing things will happen to your game. This is something you can't read about but you have to experience. It might take you a year to develop this ability, but once you do, and you can, you have developed nerve, the ability to focus on the shot at hand and not the results you want or are afraid of.
If 20 in a row is too easy, do 30. If 20 is too hard, lower it to something just out of your reach.
Good luck.
PS. Since I really want you to improve your game, and doing this exercise is valuable to developing mental toughness, I did 51 in a row yesterday. Can you beat that?
Hopefully you will go out and try this and in the process develop that mental muscle that will help you win sets.
I like to read all the suggestions to a thread before I post. The reason is not to be redundant. Of everything I have read the one thing that I missed or didn't see was the word attitude. You attitude affects ALL aspects of your life not just pool. You used the word "mad" many times. Is it just playing pool that you find yourself like this ? I am not a counselor but have ministered. I like what one person said about looking at your blessings.
Attitude. Thankfulness. Joy. Find joy and attitude will change. God bless.
I think some of the advice here is good. However, one of the things that attracts me to pool the most is the idea that I can become a better player by becoming a better person.
Learning to regulate yourself and "be in the drivers seat" is a skill that can help your entire life. Don't take this this wrong way, but one of the defining qualities of being young is that this skill is not well developed. You want to bring yourself to a place in which you are doing and thinking what you do because *that is what you meant to do*, not because you are *reacting* and sort of operating out of reflex. You need to drive your body and mind, not let it drive you. The very best foundation for letting this happen is calmness and alertness.
At your next practice session, try spending some energy simply observing what you are doing. Pay as close attention as possible. Try to avoid *evaluating* (meaning saying that was good, that was stupid, I should have done this or that). Instead, just focus on paying attention to exactly what it is that you DO. Not what you should do or could do. This also applies to your emotions and mental calmness. Do not try and control your attitude. Simple pay attention to it. Before each shot, really observe if you are calm and relaxed. You ideally want to feel a simultaneous feeling of alertness and mental arousal, but a lack of anxiety and concern about what is about to happen. This may sound contradictory, but it isn't.
I am a person who had faced a really bad temper my whole life. There are times playing pool even just practicing in which I just want to smash my cue and break everything in the room. This is usually because I feel bewildered and just can't understand why it feels like I am doing what I am supposed to do, and I still screw up. 99 out of 100 times, I *wasn't* doing what I was supposed to do, and only thought I was because I was too upset to really pay attention to exactly what I was doing. Training the mind to be very alert and active, paying extreme attention to the little details, yet not getting sidetracked with worry, anger, anxiety, etc. This is the challenge of pool for me. Try to make your mind as quiet as possible. Just like in a stroke...when you clench your grip and jerk the cue, you lose your fluidness, your power, your accuracy. Its the same idea. You need to learn which muscles in the mind you need to relax, so that your *mind* is not clenching, steering, imposing itself. Watch out, because a calm quite mind can easily be confused with a tired, foggy, uninterested mind. You want to be focused like a laser beam, just don't clench that laser beam. Let it sit there, and pay attention to where it is pointing.
A bit vague I know, but hopefully there is a phrase in there that you can take to the table, and practice being at ease!
Good luck...I'm on the same road with you for sure!
I think Eddie said it right. It is all about attitude and control. An excellent example is to have watched Tiger Woods in the past. He was under enormous pressure when he was on top of his came, but he played it straight. If you ever watched him in person, you would see what a zone he puts himself in.
Hard work practicing will give you the mechanical ability and muscle memory to execute the shots, you just need to keep yourself in the zone to "see" the shots, and be able to clock out everything else. Tiger could execute as a machine.
There's been a lot of talk about Pleasures of Small Motions recently but I will add my support for this book. Some people swear by it, some don't like it, some don't "get it", but at the very least I think everyone can get something useful from the book.
For me, the fact that it gave me a new way to look at practicing, which I always had trouble focusing on, made it well worth the money. If you are constantly concerned about winning, this book may help reset your mind around different types of motivations. You will not win every game you play, you will not always play people that you can beat, you will not always beat the people that you technically "should be able to" beat. This book gave me the ability to practice with a new mindset that keeps me focused and interested in practicing and also gave me new insight into playing with one particular friend of mine that can usually kick my butt. Instead of worrying about trying to win against him as my only motivation, I focus on things that are more in my control, and not only do I find myself playing MUCH better against him, but no matter how it goes, I don't leave the table all frustrated.
Very good advice indeed. I think, however, that this applies mostly to people that don't have that rare gift for excelling at something without trying too hard. There are definitely people out there that live a bit of a trainwreck for a life, but somehow instantly pop into the zone as soon as they are on the table. For most of us, I think what you say is 100% accurate.
