I find thiss funny because I see many of the filipino players actually decelerating at the point of impact on a lot of their shots.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Ideally as a beginner or slightly better, it makes alot of sense to learn the fundamentals from a skilled standard form tyype instructer. Then I would say the key is to form that pattern through concentration. Eventually, this deep concentration should be unnecessary because you will have formed muscle memory of "your" stroke, stance, bridge, patterns. . .
Surely these are good patterns to build into your stroke early, but I see good shooter's revisiting this stuff repeatedly and all I can say is maybe that doesn't make your stroke. Stroke kind of depends who teaches you whether in person, by video or however. . .The thing I would say is don't spend 5 weeks building an Efren Reyes stroke pattern and then try to shoot like Nick Varner the next week and so on. Any stroke pattern which allows you quicck success is a good fit for you. Perfect it and move on. It iss far more important to make your stroke, stance, aim, alignment automatic than it is for you to match some instructor's ideal. That said a knowledgible person watching you can help you stroke tune, IMO.
I think if I were teaching beginners again, I would spend more time on finding a way for them to get a loose natural stroke going. I ccould teeach them bridges in my day, but strroke was kind of a mystery to me. I had an ok one, but I couldn't make all my students loosen up and find a stroke.
That said, I believe these are important, but not absolute musts:
- Learn the 5 or so bridges and emulate someone who is top flight perfectly for each one. I think that Mosconi's book is the best instrruction I have read on this. There are others.
- Find a comfortable position where your stroke arm can swing free with the eye over the cue. I seriously would just pick a pro, try to match their body position and see how it feels. Eventually, you will find something which works to build your pool skill on top of.
- Really understand what you want to do in a preshot routine, figure out how you are going to do it and write it down. Then do it purposefully like 1000 times in a row. After that, you should transition to doing it naturally.
- Buid confidence. Maintain the confidence you have built. You should be pretty good at this point. Play every game like it is for 1 million dollars. Don't see misses and poor position as bad things, but as overagression and a chance to improve.
- Balance offense vs. defense. This balance is hard to strike. When practicing, play slightly more agressive to see how much better you are getting. In more important games play to win, not to make that hard shot which will make the run out happen. I always see amatuers go for hard shots, when they have a way to safe the best pro just looking at them. It is the mark of an amatuer to not play within one's self. Watch the pros on TV. In general, this causes the loss. Never think, "I'm playing <insert player's name here>, I gotta run out." Hell, the women rarely run over 7 balls in 9 ball!
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