New player -- cross eye dominant

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surffisher2a

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I have a brand new player on my team that we figured out is 100% cross eye dominant. She is right handed, bridging with her left hand (normal). However when she aims she is crossing her head over her pool stick and then tilting her head back and twisting it to naturally get her dominant eye over the cue stick.

What is an acceptable way to help her get lined up correctly? Should she just close her dominant eye ? Put a patch over it pirate style. Learn to deal with contorting her body/neck to get her dominant eye over the shot line?

I really want to help her get this figured out as early as possible, so she doesn't have to break a bad habit later.
 
I shoot right handed and am left eye dominate.
I shoot a little side armed.
Try a little side arm stroke to comfortably get the left eye over the shaft.
No need for contortions.
See my avatar.
 
She will have to face her torso towards her cue a little more rather than face front to allow for her dominant eye over her cue while allowing her arm to move freely without her torso obstructing her arm's movement. Tell her to turn slightly towards her cue in small increments at a time until she can swing her arm freely while having her dominant eye over the cue. If she turns too much then she will be shooting pool by looking over her shoulder.
 
FranCrimi said:
She will have to face her torso towards her cue a little more rather than face front to allow for her dominant eye over her cue while allowing her arm to move freely without her torso obstructing her arm's movement. Tell her to turn slightly towards her cue in small increments at a time. If she turns too much then she will be shooting pool by looking over her shoulder.
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Well said,that's what I meant by shooting a little side arm.
Like my avatar,that's me.
 
Since she is new, it may be easier to switch to shooting left handed than contorting to shoot right handed, left eyed.
 
measureman said:
Well said,that's what I meant by shooting a little side arm.
Like my avatar,that's me.
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Oh, I see what you mean now. You have to be careful with that term because it usually means extending your arm out from your elbow sideways. You see that sometimes with players who start young and can't reach the table with a traditional stance and then the stance stays with them as they grow. Keith McCready is a classic side-arm player.
 
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This guy was left-eye dominant and (mostly) right handed. He played OK and looked OK at the table. You might want to start with his stance. Go in 18 minutes for a good overhead view. The video is available but you have to watch it on YouTube.

 
surffisher2a said:
I have a brand new player on my team that we figured out is 100% cross eye dominant. She is right handed, bridging with her left hand (normal). However when she aims she is crossing her head over her pool stick and then tilting her head back and twisting it to naturally get her dominant eye over the cue stick.

What is an acceptable way to help her get lined up correctly? Should she just close her dominant eye ? Put a patch over it pirate style. Learn to deal with contorting her body/neck to get her dominant eye over the shot line?

I really want to help her get this figured out as early as possible, so she doesn't have to break a bad habit later.
Click to expand...
Hmmm... let me suggest that before we move her head and body to get her over the cue in a certain way, that you test her line of sight/vision center. How did you "figure out" her eye dominance, and do you realize that eye dominance does not guarantee the optimal place for sighting the balls without further review?

Put differently, if she scores like a son-of-a-gun with her head crossed and tilted, sure. But if she doesn't have a significant improvement, her vision center may be elsewhere.

And for the others reading this post, please before you direct someone's stance position, start by ensuring the contrived stance is putting the head somewhere needful. :)

Let me clarify, please, not trying to start an argument. I've had students come to me with glass eyes who assume their working eye has to go atop the cue. They were amazed to find their vision center was the same spot on their face as before they lost the sight in one eye! I care far less about eye dominance than getting the VC on the line, and making sure the vertical height and head rotation, etc. are consistent. VERY few people are wholly monicular or ambiocular, meaning one eye over the cue or cue dead center under the nose/chin is perfect. Most people have a pure sighting line between one eye and their nose regardless of eye dominance or cross-dominance.
 
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I'm left-eye, right handed. This video helped me, a lot, on lining up the shot. After lining up the shot, I lift my cue tip and use it as a pointer to keep lined up as I step in to the shot (I think I picked this up in Championship Pool, Mac Neill). Finally, shot a lot (hundreds) of diagonal, across the table, follow-shots to tune head position and "learn" the behavior (shot 3 Byrne's Complete Book). A combination of all the above, plus a few sessions with Dr. Dave, worked for me.
 
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Contra-lateral dominance is an advantage in billiards, so nothing to worry about.

A new player will likely look and/or feel awkward initially because his or her body will not have become used to twisting into the shooting position that will eventually become natural. I would not recommend too much coaching on how to physically into the shot - it is likely to do more harm than good imo.

The important thing is to stand behind the shot until you can see the shot line and then, all the time your are getting down, make sure that you keep concentrating on the shot you are about to play (and not on what your body is doing!. This is probably the best way of ensuring that your eyes end up in the right position, which is what matters.
 
Siz said:
Contra-lateral dominance is an advantage in billiards, so nothing to worry about.

A new player will likely look and/or feel awkward initially because his or her body will not have become used to twisting into the shooting position that will eventually become natural. I would not recommend too much coaching on how to physically into the shot - it is likely to do more harm than good imo.

The important thing is to stand behind the shot until you can see the shot line and then, all the time your are getting down, make sure that you keep concentrating on the shot you are about to play (and not on what your body is doing!. This is probably the best way of ensuring that your eyes end up in the right position, which is what matters.
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How is it an advantage?
 
FranCrimi said:
How is it an advantage?
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In short, I am sure that it is and advantage, but I am not 100% why. I have some ideas though.

I was looking into this some years ago, but never actually finished my research and wrote up my findings. I now have more time on my hands and am considering picking this up again. But from memory (and I need to look up my notes and references etc) the thought process is this:
  • Published research indicates that ipsi-lateral dominance is the most common type in the population as a whole

  • However, from my inspection of videos of expert snooker players, it is clear to me that contra-lateral dominance is far more common (there are plenty of videos of top players in which you can see the position of the eyes in relation to the cue when playing a shot)

  • There are two explanations for this discrepancy. One is that playing as much snooker as the pro's do has the effect of shifting the vision center away from the dominant hand. I find this so implausible that I have not considered it further. The only other explanation I can come up with is that contra-lateral dominance conveys a significant competitive advantage to the billiard player.
It remains to be shown why this should be the case. The theory that I was working on some years ago can be outlined as follows:
  1. I think that there is broad consensus that it is important for a billiards player's vision center to be above the shot line (qv for example Dr Dave's publications)

  2. There is academic research showing that an individual's eye dominance is not fixed; there are a number of factors that change it temporarily. one of these factors is an object moving laterally across the visual field. This can either be where the individual is still and an external object moves, or where the environment is still and the individual moves somewhat sideways in relation to it.

  3. The research shows further that the amount of this shift is greater when the object comes from the non-dominant side (or equivalently, where the individual's head moves towards the non-dominant side)

  4. I believe that any temporary shift in a billiards player's vision center in the course of making a shot is likely to have a significant adverse affect on performance: if the shot 'looks wrong' coming up to the point the trigger is pulled, this will manifest in any number of nasties, as the player subconsciously tries to adjust (eg steering the cue off line, snatching, letting the cue go too early, tightening the grip, moving the head/body on the shot etc)

  5. I identified two movements that can result in this sort of performance destroying temporary vision center shift. One can occur as the player walks into the shot. This is fairly easy to manage, so I won't consider it further here.
  6. The other distracting motion occurs as the cue stick is brought onto the shot line. Here, the cue is swung in across the player's visual field from direction of the non-dominant hand. If this is also the side of the player's non-dominant eye, then the shift is big and you have a problem. But if instead the cue comes in from the side the player's dominant eye is on, then the effect is not as great (see 3. above). In other words, players with contra-lateral dominance would be expected to be less severely impacted by this problem than those with ipsi-lateral dominance.

  7. There are ways of managing the problem in 6. above (and something that I am currently interested in). But it seems likely that when learning the game, those with ipsi-lateral dominance are more likely to fall by the wayside, and those with contra-lateral dominance stand a greater chance of rising to the top.
For various reasons my research involved snooker players. However I should think that similar results would apply to other cue sports (although there are differences that could conceivably be material in terms of stance and table dimensions).

Happy to receive your thoughts.
 
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