Minimum Days/Sessions/Hours Per Week Needed to Improve

[iusedtoberich]

IMO:

If you've been playing 5 years, and I mean playing (gambling your brains out, or non stop tournaments, or non-stop drills plus competition), then that is your speed for life. You MIGHT improve one ball over that in the next 20 years, but that is the max. Where as in those first 5 years, you probably improved 10 balls.

For practice time to maintain current speed, I think you can take off for 6 months, pick a cue up and play 10 hours in one day, and be back at your speed.

For improving your speed, see the first paragraph.

YMMV, and this is my opinion, after being in pool halls for 25 years now, and seeing all the players come and go

 

[Cardigan Kid]

I work a full time job and have three children between age 7-13. They are with me 50% of the time, so two days during the week and every other weekend.

I generally average about an hour of practice a day. The weekends I don't have my kids I am often playing a tournament or if there's none going on I put in at least one all day session at the pool hall.

This has been enough for me to get to playing the best pool of my life. Of course to get to a strong level I played for years as a kid where I played 10-12 hours a day, and throughout my 20s put in many gambling sessions and played many tournaments. But where I'm at now these frequent bursts of daily practice and getting into regular competition on my weekends without the kids has been enough for me to feel I can keep getting better.

When I practice during the week it's generally after I tuck my kids in at 9:30. I usually spend around 45 minutes working on a certain shot or a certain drill. For those who haven't done this it is very hard. I have a 9' table and the shot I've been obsessed with lately is a long diagonal with the object ball in the middle of the table and the cue ball deep in the corner jaws requiring me to elevate to shoot a stop shot. I've been hitting this shot for 30-60 minutes most days for several weeks now. Before that I was working on shots off the end rail.

By the end of 45 minutes or so of working on one difficult shot I feel that I've put in a good workout session. Then I just hit some balls. Practice is good to strengthen your 'grind' muscle, but you need to shoot open racks to keep your rhythm and flow. For a while it was straight pool, I was determined to put up some good runs. Now I'm playing mostly 10 ball to let me stroke out and make sure my pocketing stays strong and I keep working on moving the cue ball around. I switched from the ghost to practice games as I needed to keep hitting safeties, kicks, etc.

Oh, I forgot, I am putting in some sessions with the break rak as well.

My resources may be limited, but I am confident I can keep getting better. I make it a point to hit balls nearly every day. I put in highly focused work on certain shots, long enough to make improvements, short enough to hold my interest and cover a wide array of selections. I get into stroke each night playing open racks at the end of my sessions. And I constantly test myself in competition on my free weekends to put those skills to use, get pushed to my highest levels, and uncover opportunities that I am inspired to improve when I get back to the practice table.

By the way, a few days before a competition I tend to steer more towards working on just my break and open pool to get in stroke, then right after a tournament I tend to focus more on the grind drills. I don't like working on shots in the days just before a tournament because I want to stop thinking about how I'm doing things and just start letting it happen.

With young kids myself, I sometimes only can get to 1 hour a day and it's late into the night. But if it's effective training, like focusing on 1 drill, after that hour (like you said) you will feel that you put in a good workout.

In the very least, I'll do this random rotation drill for an hour....

https://youtu.be/2acglHbvo0s

And it shows my flaws, so I can repeat until I figure it out and move on to the next random placement set. I recently started a progressive variation, where you add a ball after completing 6, then go to 7, and try to get to 10 (5 on each side).

My experience has been that if you’re truly concentrating during your practice sessions the insights come about the three or four hour mark. I don’t know if that’s a Zen thing or something else but that’s just been my personal experience.

I have also found that practice alone is not the best path towards improvement, because frankly, you can convince yourself of some pretty crazy things practicing by yourself. So you need a mix of practice and competition to improve, IMO.

Lou Figueroa

Some of my longest training sessions have been around 3 to 4 hours, and mentally I'm a mess by the end. Completely exhausted.
It's as if you are conditioning your mind on long distance marathon pool. For the monster players to reach the 8-10 hour mark is certainly impressive and a testament to the work they put in to get to that level.

And yes, after 1.5 year of drills drills and drills to build my fundamentals, I went to competition and realized the combination of both is the most effective way to improvement.

 

[Cardigan Kid]

For any level of player, assuming every session/hour of play/practice is a quality session, and you have a fairly solid base of fundamentals, how many days/sessions/hours per week is the minimum amount most of you feel is realistically needed to maintain, and how many more is needed to improve?

I realize everyone is different, and at lower skill levels you have to put in more time to get to the higher skill levels, but that once you get to a certain skill level, it becomes increasingly harder to continue to improve without a lot of time put in. Obviously age is a factor as well - particularly beyond 50.

I'm feeling like 2-3 sessions a week for say 3 hours per session - 6-9 hours total, might be enough to at least maintain my current level, but is probably not enough, at least for me, at 60, to improve my game beyond my current level.

Most all of us have priorities and time constraints as to how much we can play/practice, but my goal is to try to get to an average of 2 hours per day (14 hours a week). As I can't play every day, I'm hoping to do it by averaging 3-1/2 hours per session, 4 days per week.

At least half of those sessions, I'd prefer to play in match races against other players of similar or better skill levels, as I feel that's the best quality practice. The sessions I practice by myself, I like to practice the L drill making balls in any order, or playing the 9 or 10 ball ghost, or playing straight pool.

Just curious as to others on here that have that burning passion to improve, but have limited time to spend on the table, how much time at the table do you feel is needed to realistically keep that dream alive of making it to the next level.

Darren Appleton has said that he maintains with 1-2 hours every day but with effective and challenging drills. Therefore he puts in the work in short sets but more frequently.
I recently started a thread with one of his drills for az members to try...

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=469270

 

[chefjeff]

I disagree about drills...I think when someone asked Shane about drills he said he doesn't do drills. The reason drills are not as productive is because they do not replicate real game situations. Also, 10 minutes spent on fundamentals is better than 10 hours doing drills or banging balls around. You are only as good as your fundamentals.

Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/billiards/...en_know_what_a_drill/?st=jdkitx87&sh=bc29dc59

It's like practicing trick shots...they help you get good at trick shots...drills will help you get good at drills.

Fyi, I have a video of Shane at Big Dog's hitting the same shot a million times on big and small tables....ok, not a million times but he repeated it a lot longer than I videoed it. Btw, he missed it more than he made it but he kept going with it. He obviously had something in mind as he shot.

He did not stop hitting balls throughout the day, though, no matter what. He just kept playing and practicing and never quit. Maybe that's a clue as to what it takes?

I'm 64 and it takes me at least 2 hours a day of practice to get in stroke and stay there. I find the older I get, the longer it takes. fwiw



Jeff Livingston

 

[ceebee]

When I made my move in skill level, I was doing Drills every day, practicing my rails & hitting the Break Shot. I also found a great pair of glasses & got a new cue. I was ready to play some tournaments. I was 58 years old & feeling good. I won quite a few tournaments & some money too. It was fun. My tournament days are over, because I'm getting old (75), but I still enjoy playing Golf on a Snooker Table with some friendly guys.

Knowledge is power, structured practice hones your stroke & your skill level.

 

[Hobo]

Fyi, I have a video of Shane at Big Dog's hitting the same shot a million times on big and small tables....ok, not a million times but he repeated it a lot longer than I videoed it. Btw, he missed it more than he made it but he kept going with it. He obviously had something in mind as he shot.

He did not stop hitting balls throughout the day, though, no matter what. He just kept playing and practicing and never quit. Maybe that's a clue as to what it takes?

I'm 64 and it takes me at least 2 hours a day of practice to get in stroke and stay there. I find the older I get, the longer it takes. fwiw



Jeff Livingston

You can practice a shot all day long...that's good for fundamentals...better to practice it and get position...not just pot it. But that's not the same as doing drills that have artificial setups you never see in an actual game.

 

[Jimmorrison]

When I made my move in skill level, I was doing Drills every day, practicing my rails & hitting the Break Shot. I also found a great pair of glasses & got a new cue. I was ready to play some tournaments. I was 58 years old & feeling good. I won quite a few tournaments & some money too. It was fun. My tournament days are over, because I'm getting old (75), but I still enjoy playing Golf on a Snooker Table with some friendly guys.

Knowledge is power, structured practice hones your stroke & your skill level.

Thanks for this, very encouraging. Exactly my situation, goals. I’m about half way there. It’s become obvious to me that drills, practice, tournaments, heads up matches, etc. are all important. Which ones need to be emphasized over others, varies with the individual.

 

[mikepage]

[...] how many days/sessions/hours per week is the minimum amount most of you feel is realistically needed to maintain, and how many more is needed to improve?

I think most players can improve with as little as 10-12 hours per week. This plan assumes you have a table at home.

You CAN play productively by yourself, and there is an advantage to doing that for time-limited players. Think about it. If you hit ALL the shots rather than half the shots, you shoot in one hour by yourself as many shots as you shoot in two hours against competition.

Though I know a lot of people find value in them, I am not generally a big fan of drills and repetitive shots.

Also, imo, most people will realize more benefit from shooting the easy shots a little better that they will from shooting the hard shots a little better. But practicing the easy shots is difficult because there is not a good feedback mechanism. Because you succeed most of the time there is not much corrective learning going on. Practicing that long tough cut down the rail SEEMS like good practice because you're getting lots of feed back and perhaps can see some progress, but, once again, I don't think it is the best practice, particularly for a time-limited person.

Most of us make the same errors over and over again. We overcut or undercut the same shots. We come up short with the cueball on the same sorts of shots. We get a little too straight or not straight enough on the same sorts of shots, and so forth. So when practicing it is important to develop a TRAINING MEMORY---when you overcut a ball or come up a little short or think after a shot maybe you should have gone one rail rather than two, make a brief little mental note of it and move on....

So what is the plan?

Take an hour every morning (or whenever) and do the exact same thing. This accounts for 7 of the 10-12 hours. The first rack is warmup. Bust open the 15 balls and hit them all in being sure to let out your stroke a couple times. Not two racks; not half a rack; exactly one rack.

For the next 50 minutes or so, do Equal Offense (EO). Modest open break of a 15-ball rack, spotting any balls that go in. Start each inning with ball in hand behind the headstring. Run balls like in straight pool. Though the maximum score for an inning is 20, keep going until you miss. You will probably get through about 10-12 innings a day. EO is scored by adding up 10 innings, so the maximum score is 200. Don't worry about how many innings you do, you are just keeping a running score, like this

Monday 10
Monday 2
Monday 0
Monday 6
Monday 14
Monday 7
Monday 19
Monday 5
Monday 20 (23)
Monday 10 --- 93
Monday 7 --- 90
Tuesday 11 --- 99
Tuesday 5 ---104
Tuesday 9 ---107
Tuesday 14 ---107
Tuesday 0 ---100
Tuesday 16 ---97
...

So everytime you score an inning you are adding a new score (16 for the last inning) and taking away an inning score from 10 innings ago (19 for the last one). So your total went down by 3.

Plotting these totals versus time you will see a lot of scatter, but if there is improvement over the course of months or a year you will see it.

Every inning you do, you know from the start what score you are dropping off your total. So you know what is possible. For instance, the next inning will be dropping off a 5, and so if you score 20 your new total will be 15 more than 97, i.e., 113. That would be a new record.

You will be amazed how much this matters to you, and you will be amazed how much you start paying attention to the little things and how much better you get at those little 3-ball patterns near the bottom rail. And you will be amazed how bummed you get when you miss your first shot--knowing that ZERO will be on your back for 10 innings....

The other 3-5 hours? A competition session with someone at your speed or up to about 50 points better. The key is not so much learning from that person as it is that person being able to capitalize to the right degree on your mistakes. You missing a safety versus getting a modest hook should matter. You getting a modest hook versus a better hook should matter. If you play too good a player who can kick to the right side of the ball from either of your safeties, that doesn't help you much. Plus you shoot less.

 

[chefjeff]

Thanks for this, very encouraging. Exactly my situation, goals. I’m about half way there. It’s become obvious to me that drills, practice, tournaments, heads up matches, etc. are all important. Which ones need to be emphasized over others, varies with the individual.

Call it what you want...he was shooting a shot over and over and over.

For some reason.



Jeff Livingston

 

[Cameron Smith]

You can practice a shot all day long...that's good for fundamentals...better to practice it and get position...not just pot it. But that's not the same as doing drills that have artificial setups you never see in an actual game.

It depends on what you do with those drills. The key is practicing with purpose. There are players who play drills all day but never get any better and this happens for two reasons I think. If you aren't making adjustments to your technique, nothing will change.

Drills aren't about hoping that a particular weird set up will come up some day, it's more about the positional shots that it forces you to play. For example, there are some drills that will have you taking the cue ball two rails to the centre of the table every shot. So the player needs to recognize that two rail positional shot in a game which they have been practicing. Some of Darren Appleton's drills has you practicing playing for balls on opposite ends of the table. So the next time the player is in a 9 ball match and they see the 2 and 3 on opposite ends of the table, they should know what to do since they have been practicing that in the drill.

My advice is to finish a practice session with a handful of solo games and pay particular attention to identifying the shots from the drills that you are playing.

Drills may not be for everyone, but the key is to practice purposefully and not just hit balls. Shane may not have been doing drills, but his hours of breaking and practicing specific shots have the same effect. I know many professional snooker players use drills, but I've also been told by a former professional not to bother with them.

Probably the worst application of drills I've seen is when players set it up and either don't reset after a miss (sometimes several misses) or they get progressively way out of position but still run it out. It kind of misses the point of the exercise.

I would also agree with other assertions that 10-15 hours per week is probably plenty. I think there is probably a point of diminishing returns in a lengthy practice session. I'm not sure where that exactly is, but it's probably before the 6 hour mark. Ideally, if you have 10-15 hours to practice each week, it's best to play 2-3 hours a day for 5 days rather than 5-7.5 hours twice a week.

 

[book collector]

For any level of player, assuming every session/hour of play/practice is a quality session, and you have a fairly solid base of fundamentals, how many days/sessions/hours per week is the minimum amount most of you feel is realistically needed to maintain, and how many more is needed to improve?

I realize everyone is different, and at lower skill levels you have to put in more time to get to the higher skill levels, but that once you get to a certain skill level, it becomes increasingly harder to continue to improve without a lot of time put in. Obviously age is a factor as well - particularly beyond 50.

I'm feeling like 2-3 sessions a week for say 3 hours per session - 6-9 hours total, might be enough to at least maintain my current level, but is probably not enough, at least for me, at 60, to improve my game beyond my current level.

Most all of us have priorities and time constraints as to how much we can play/practice, but my goal is to try to get to an average of 2 hours per day (14 hours a week). As I can't play every day, I'm hoping to do it by averaging 3-1/2 hours per session, 4 days per week.

At least half of those sessions, I'd prefer to play in match races against other players of similar or better skill levels, as I feel that's the best quality practice. The sessions I practice by myself, I like to practice the L drill making balls in any order, or playing the 9 or 10 ball ghost, or playing straight pool.

Just curious as to others on here that have that burning passion to improve, but have limited time to spend on the table, how much time at the table do you feel is needed to realistically keep that dream alive of making it to the next level.

Haven't you seen any of Jay Helferts posts about when the Pinoys come to stay at his house? They practice with each other 8 to 10 hours a day every day and they are at the top of the food chain.
I doubt that anything less is going to be as effective.

 

[ChrisinNC]

IMO:

If you've been playing 5 years, and I mean playing (gambling your brains out, or non stop tournaments, or non-stop drills plus competition), then that is your speed for life. You MIGHT improve one ball over that in the next 20 years, but that is the max. Where as in those first 5 years, you probably improved 10 balls.

For practice time to maintain current speed, I think you can take off for 6 months, pick a cue up and play 10 hours in one day, and be back at your speed.

For improving your speed, see the first paragraph.

YMMV, and this is my opinion, after being in pool halls for 25 years now, and seeing all the players come and go

You are on the money with this assessment, although many players who have played 10+ years don't want to hear or accept this truth. Every really good player in our room over the last 22 years who started young, even as young as 11 or 12, became extremely good within the first 2-4 years. They all got obsessed and put in a lot of hours, even by themselves when there was no one to play with.

In our case, all of them have moved on to other interests and not stuck with it, to see how good they could have become, although for naturally talented players like that who are still in their 20s or 30s, it doesn't take much effort for them to get 90+% of their game back, even if they've gone a number of years without playing.

 

[Low500]

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[Ched]

IMO it all depends on several factors - but I'll mention the three I think are most relevant:
1. An individuals god-given talent level.
2. At what level they are currently shooting (at some point it's A VERY small scale of improvement - i.e.: SVB, Alex, Efren, etc.)
3. HOW you spend those hours - if you're just banging balls around - the hours won't matter much. If you're learning and honestly trying to get better - then every little bit helps.

 

[ceebee]

IMO it all depends on several factors - but I'll mention the three I think are most relevant:
1. An individuals god-given talent level.
2. At what level they are currently shooting (at some point it's A VERY small scale of improvement - i.e.: SVB, Alex, Efren, etc.)
3. HOW you spend those hours - if you're just banging balls around - the hours won't matter much. If you're learning and honestly trying to get better - then every little bit helps.

I agree with this person's synopsis. To me knowledge means a great deal & the application of that knowledge, even more. Do you know where the cue ball will hit the first rail, 2nd rail & 3rd rail... ? No...., well you've got some learning to do. Myself, I believe in the drills, learning the rails & the Break Shot. I've played thousands & thousands of Ring Games. When it's your shot, you have to "come with it" or wait til next time.

Good Luck...