fti said:
I'm in need of some mental coaching.
I find that I play and perform much better in tournaments than I do when I play just for fun (free, for a drink, small wagers). In local and league tournaments I often (if not consistently) manage to get to the last eight at least.
I keep on telling myself to take the game serious enough so that I can play as good off as I do when I'm under pressure, but that doesn't help.
So what's the best approach?
fti
I play with my friends who are better than me. The pressure is off whether it is just games or even games with a small wager. To me, I just was not baring down as intense as in a real match.
I finally went to just practicing fundamentals and nothing else, that set, pause, finish, freeze and no lifting the head,stance, bridge, alignment. The goal is perfect perfect perfect in my fundamentals so that it will be automatic and I can play no other way.
This does seems to be working because now I am playing better, whether with my friends or in a tournament/match.
My husband said how I practice I will play. But I had gotten sloppy.
When I took karate, we drilled techniques to perfection. There was no judgment but if something was not perfect, we were gently correctly and then drilled some more. I had this ahhah experience where I wondered if there were some similarities between that way of practice and pool practice.
I do not know if mentally this is what is going on with you. I have seen the same stuff about playing the ghost. Then one day I remembered how hard I worked to become excellent in karate, always with perfect as the goal, no number of hours of this 'perfect' pracitice was too much, and wondered why I was so sloppy with my pool practice.
My karate instructor used to say 'practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect'. It was a sort of epiphany. I was either going to be no better in pool than mediocre at the best or I was going to go for perfection/excellence. The choice was mine to make.
Laura