Instructors and Instruction

[Fore Rail]

My 2 ¢ worth using k.i.s.s. methodology.

IMHO whether it be golf or pool, a good instructor is one who teaches his/her own students to be their own "coach."

 

[LastTwo]

If you play at "D" level then an instuctor who can get you to "C" level might be the best thing for you. Never mind that this instructor can't compete with the pros, he may be the best for you. Then once you reach "C" level find an instructor who can get you to "B" level. A few years back I did take a block of 20 hours over 5 weeks but I wouldn't recommend him to anyone. And, unfortunately, he is the only one I could find within 50 miles of here.


Jake

The problem with having many different instructors, is that many of them teach mechanics in different ways. Lets say you're a D player, you spend a year with him, he changes your mechanics, and you practice and practice, and you become a C player. Then you get another instructor, he again changes your mechanics, and then you become a B player. Then you get a different instructor, same thing, now you're an A player, and lets say you plateau here. Now you try 10 different instructors, and none of them can make your game get any better. If you often keep making drastic changes to your mechanics, your game is definately going to plateau.

I think it is absoloutely NECESSARY to find an instructor who plays just as good or almost as good as a pro when you are just starting out. The reason why, is he can teach you mechanics that works for him, and if you stick with it for years, it's gonna work for you. Basically you will be learning the foundation of a great player. Would you rather learn the foundation of a mediocre player, or a great player?

A good example of this is a friend of mine who I shall not name. His father is an amazing player. In a span of 1 year, that's right, 1 year, his son went from being a D player to a very strong A.

Meanwhile, I know countless people who take lessons from instructors who play pool decent, but nowhere near champion status, and it's literally been 3-4 years of working with these guys, and their games went from D players to C players.

Of course alot of it depends on the instructor, but you really want a teacher who is or was a pro, or at least a shortstop to teach you, IMO.

 

[FoRGotTeN]

i think it depends on the student as well.

 

[jjinfla]

Well, it must be nice to pick and choose which instructor you want to use.

How do you find them? In the last 6 1/2 years I have been playing I have yet to find one around here.

And how much do you want to pay for instructions? How much should a person pay? After all, other than self satisfaction there is not much reward to excelling in pool.

And how many hours of instruction do you want to take?

Will it be an ongoing process that can last for years? Or are you just looking for 2-10 hours?

Jake

 

[CaptainJR]

These are quotes from the thread 'The Perfect Pool Instuctor' So I just copy and pasted rather than writing again. So some of this may seem a little out of context, but I think there are some good points.

This is a subject that I'm rather familiar with. I'm going to talk at instruction regardless of what the instruction is for, but I am talking about physical instruction (golf, tennis, DANCING, pool, etc.) rather than something like math.

First I think you have to divide the students into two categories. Professional and non-professional. I've taught both and that is one reason I said I'm 'rather familiar' with this subject. I was known for being able to adjust my teaching to fit whomever I was teaching at the moment.

The key in non-professional instruction is communication. The key in professional instruction is subject knowledge. An instructor(coach) for a pro doesn't need to be as good at communication because the student will most times immediately know what the teacher is getting at. A lot of times saying to themselves, 'I knew that'!

On the other hand, an instructor for a non-pro needs to be able to get across what he is trying to say in 'layman's' terms. Much more easily said than done. (Of course there is a cross-over point where a student is on the edge of getting good enough to be a pro.)

Knowledge of the subject is very important. You can't have a teacher that is good at communication teaching incorrect technique, and you'd be surprised how often this happens. The number of times I've said 'who the hell taught you to do that like that'! Please take what I just said with a grain of salt, because I'm sure somewhere along the way, someone said the same thing about something I taught.

Another extremely important issue, and this can decide if a person can teach at any level, is if they can see what is wrong. At the pro level, seeing what the problem is can take a very keen eye.

So, If you can find a teacher with enough knowledge to teach a pro, can communicate well enough that a non-pro can understand it, and can see immediately what the problem is, expect to pay a little more for there instruction. It will be worth it.

The student factor.
Yes, there is such a thing. You might think it doesn't have much of an impact. After all, they have come and paid good money to have you teach them so there is a good possibility that they are serious and are going to make an effort to get value for their money. In the student factor is a thing called talent. I think it is kind of curious that the less talent a student has the more important it is to get an excellent teacher, but most times it is the talented student that gets a better teacher. The less talented students end up struggling and a teacher with maybe not up to par communication skills gets frustrated with that student. (Fred, just to make sure you know, I'm not talking about us. I'm just dense, your doing GREAT.)

If your a teacher and want a challenge, you should try what I use to do. I haven't mentioned what it was that I taught, but I did leave a clue. In my first post on this thread I mentioned some different things that can be taught and I capitalized DANCE. Ballroom dancing in particular. Although I spent most of my time teaching other teachers, I also had beginning students. What was so challenging about this? As I mentioned above, most times a student that is paying good money will make an effort to learn. You should try teaching a couple to dance when the wife is dragging the husband in by the ear. LOL

Teaching good learning habits. You have to be SPECIFIC. In this type of thing (a skill rather than book learning) there is only one learning habit. Practice, in practice there are two parts. Amount and What. Give assignments, with amounts of time you expect to be spent on it. Important! - Don't forget to check out how they did on the next lesson. Not only to see how they did, but most importantly to impress on them that it was important and you expected them to do it. Other wise the next assignment may not be taken seriously.

New and exciting things! If your having problems motivating a student, there is nothing like something new to get them going. A great teacher should have a lot of these little things laying around in their head. In dancing it was very easy to come up with something new. New steps. I must have known a couple thousand and variations on most of them. I'm not coming up with the answer for a pool instructor though. Maybe there aren't enough new things in pool to use this way or motivating. Then again maybe there are and I just don't know them. Another important thing about motivating is pointing out improvement or something done well. You must be saying 'Well done' or 'you are making progress there' more than you say 'we need to work on that'. You can always find something to say something good about even if you have to take in consideration the students ability or the amount of time spent. Find the positive.

 

[Bob Jewett]

.... I think it is absoloutely NECESSARY to find an instructor who plays just as good or almost as good as a pro when you are just starting out. The reason why, is he can teach you mechanics that works for him, and if you stick with it for years, it's gonna work for you. Basically you will be learning the foundation of a great player. Would you rather learn the foundation of a mediocre player, or a great player?
...

I think it's far more important to find an instructor who can teach well. The vast majority of pool students can't run five balls. They need someone patient who can get their arm moving in a straight line, show them something about how to aim, and a little about how to move the cue ball around. Once that's accomplished, they can start to work on other parts of their game. Most shortstops/pros I know have neither the patience nor the other teaching tools to do that sort of instruction. There are some who do an excellent job with beginners, but that is because they are good teachers and not because they are good players.

 

[Rickw]

TAP TAP TAP

a great instructor doesn't teach you to shoot HIS WAY. he should be able to spot your weaknesses, and correct them within the framework of YOUR style and YOUR abilities. if he's teaching you to play a game, he should know what your limits are, and provide you with a plan of execution that best suits your game.

if you don't understand, he must try different tacts. if you STILL don't understand, you are not ready for him or visa versa. it is a two way street.

 

[Rickw]

Jake,

I had one two hour instruction and the instructor used a video camera. He told me what I was doing wrong and I didn't really agree with him. He then played the tape of me shooting and I quickly realized that what he said was painfully obvious. It was probably the best piece of instruction I ever got.

Well, it must be nice to pick and choose which instructor you want to use.

How do you find them? In the last 6 1/2 years I have been playing I have yet to find one around here.

And how much do you want to pay for instructions? How much should a person pay? After all, other than self satisfaction there is not much reward to excelling in pool.

And how many hours of instruction do you want to take?

Will it be an ongoing process that can last for years? Or are you just looking for 2-10 hours?

Jake

 

[chefjeff]

My 2 ¢ worth using k.i.s.s. methodology.

IMHO whether it be golf or pool, a good instructor is one who teaches his/her own students to be their own "coach."

Bruce Lee (again) said, when asked to teach someone, "I cannot teach you; I can only help you explore yourself."

This is why the "why" comes first. Not "why shoot this shot instead of that shot," but why shoot a pool shot at all? Why not bowl, for example? The "why" question appears along with the desire to play. By nature, it must. Therefore, consciously knowing and desiring the "why" will ensure that what is then learned holds real value.

I mean, for example, what good is becoming as good as a pro, if it doesn't make you happy? So why be taught how to become a pro? That would be the wrong road to travel, would it not?

And so what if others can beat you? That will hold true forever for 99.99999% of us. So should we be unhappy not playing as well as that one and only top guy? Not me, man, I've got too much life to live to fall for that 'comparison with others' trap.

So should I chose a pro level teacher or a teacher that will help me fulfill MY goals and MY dreams, regardless of his pool abilities? I choose the latter, and am happier for it---and therefore, I play better than before, as a RESULT of my using pool to help acheive my goals. That is, there's no contradiction between what I really want and what I really do at the table.

Jeff Livingston

 

[drivermaker]

This is why the "why" comes first. Not "why shoot this shot instead of that shot," but why shoot a pool shot at all? Why not bowl, for example? The "why" question appears along with the desire to play. By nature, it must. Therefore, consciously knowing and desiring the "why" will ensure that what is then learned holds real value.
Jeff Livingston

I think we need to go back to Bill Clinton when he was being questioned about his affair with Monica Lewinsky when he said "that depends on what the definition of is...is".

We're talking about a lot of different "why"s in various posts, and it seems like "why" the definition of "why" needs to be determined.
"WHY the f*#k does anybody really care"?

 

[chefjeff]

I think we need to go back to Bill Clinton when he was being questioned about his affair with Monica Lewinsky when he said "that depends on what the definition of is...is".

We're talking about a lot of different "why"s in various posts, and it seems like "why" the definition of "why" needs to be determined.
"WHY the f*#k does anybody really care"?

Because, that's why...

Actually, the thread that Williebetmore started about his DCC dilemma deleved into the "why" subject as much as any thread yet. This is a good thing and hopefully will help others decide their happiness paths before they build their games to whatever level their little pool-potting hearts desire.

And back to the science thingy for a minute....You've got me thinking about that (this is good) and I've clarified my thoughts somewhat to where I'd say that the reason I use the science/physics stuff that Bob, et al write about is to provide my mind with faith that I'm "feeling" the right things the right way. Pretty strange to use science for increasing faith, but there ya go!

Jeff Livingston

 

[drivermaker]

Because, that's why...

Actually, the thread that Williebetmore started about his DCC dilemma deleved into the "why" subject as much as any thread yet. This is a good thing and hopefully will help others decide their happiness paths before they build their games to whatever level their little pool-potting hearts desire.

And back to the science thingy for a minute....You've got me thinking about that (this is good) and I've clarified my thoughts somewhat to where I'd say that the reason I use the science/physics stuff that Bob, et al write about is to provide my mind with faith that I'm "feeling" the right things the right way. Pretty strange to use science for increasing faith, but there ya go!

Jeff Livingston

Guess you haven't tried Jesus yet...huh?