Old dogs & new tricks!

[Jodacus]

This is in conjunction with another thread about getting lessons.

For those of us who have been playing many years change comes with greater difficulty. I do develop bad habits over time that have to be corrected and if the "fix" lowers my performance I drag my feet starting the practice for the correction. The correction then has to be integrated into my competitive game with either conscious effort or I can hope for the integration to occur naturally over time as practice makes comfort.
How much time does it take for you old dogs to affect substantive changes to your game and how do you do it. I realize by now we all play perfectly but I would like to hear every ones thoughts and/or experience on this.

 

[smoooothstroke]

Great question Jodacus.

Been through the same thing myself.The key for me is to be relaxed even when competing,this helps me to use what I have been practicing. But I have to accept that I will make mistakes that will look terrible and may have dire consequences (when competing).

 

[Donny Lutz]

Old Dogs?

This is in conjunction with another thread about getting lessons.

For those of us who have been playing many years change comes with greater difficulty. I do develop bad habits over time that have to be corrected and if the "fix" lowers my performance I drag my feet starting the practice for the correction. The correction then has to be integrated into my competitive game with either conscious effort or I can hope for the integration to occur naturally over time as practice makes comfort.
How much time does it take for you old dogs to affect substantive changes to your game and how do you do it. I realize by now we all play perfectly but I would like to hear every ones thoughts and/or experience on this.

In the past several years, I find more and more "older" players coming to me for instruction. I like working with them, as they are usually patient, attentive and mature in their attitude.
It's really difficult to remove long-term bad habits, but it can be done. Proper instruction really helps. To "un-learn" a negative habit requires focusing ONLY on that specific habit until it is eliminated from one's game. Example: If you have head motion in your delivery, you must think about this on EVERY shot until the habit is no longer a part your "normal" routine. You will never remove the error completely from your memory bank, but you can bury it deep enough so that your "normal" (I like to call it your "default") delivery is without the flaw.
Donny L
BCA/ACS Instructor
Gainesville, Fl

 

[Cuebuddy]

With myself it depends on what bad habit it is I am trying to change. Some of my bad habits work quite well for me like my open bridge, I know that many top players use an open bridge but mine is very open and only supported with my curled index finger on one side of the shaft. My thumb is underneath the shaft but horizontal and not cradling it at all.

I have shot against BCA instructors and they marvel at how the cue even stays on my bridge hand but they have also told me I shoot good like that and to leave it alone.

I decided to start using a closed bridge on power draw shots and follow shots and it took me several months before I would trust it in a match but it's there now!

 

[lfigueroa]

This is in conjunction with another thread about getting lessons.

For those of us who have been playing many years change comes with greater difficulty. I do develop bad habits over time that have to be corrected and if the "fix" lowers my performance I drag my feet starting the practice for the correction. The correction then has to be integrated into my competitive game with either conscious effort or I can hope for the integration to occur naturally over time as practice makes comfort.
How much time does it take for you old dogs to affect substantive changes to your game and how do you do it. I realize by now we all play perfectly but I would like to hear every ones thoughts and/or experience on this.

I think there are a number of important factors to be aware of anytime you "tinker."

First off, there is the issue of whether or not a particular change is actually an improvement. Just this week, in practice, I made a minor adjustment to my PSR. In practice I thought that this "refinement" was an improvement. The next day I had a money match and played poorly the entire time. So the next practice session I'm playing with the two versions and realize that, for a number of reasons, the original is actually the better version. (It also reconfirmed my long standing belief that, in practice, you can convince yourself of almost anything -- but under the heat you learn what really works.)

Which leads me to a second issue: rarely, if ever, does a change to your mechanics not change something else in your PSR. And that makes it tough to isolate what is actually causing an improvement, or degradation, to your game. Change a grip and it probably changes your alignment. Change a stance and it probably modifies your footwork. Change a bridge and could alter your set up sequence. And all of those down stream alterations are often difficult to detect and evaluate.

A third issue is that it is often difficult to clearly identify the exact parameters of a change to produce consistent results. IOW, it is very easy to misinterpret the exact nature of a change. One day you may decide that a shorter (or longer) grip makes your stroke more accurate, powerful, gives you better touch, whatever, when it could easily be that the grip change was altering something else like the elevation or alignment of your cue, or setting you up further or closer to the cue ball, or even just causing you to move more slowly or faster, and one of them things was actually the root cause of the change in your performance.

Lastly, because we are not robots, changes tend to migrate. We start out paying careful attention to a change and then, over time, or in the heat of battle, we pay far less attention to it and the change erodes into something else and we wonder why our "fix" is fixing any more.

So, change is tough. You have to nail down a number of issues that are not so obvious. But then, no one said this was an easy game.

Lou Figueroa

 

[jrhendy]

This is in conjunction with another thread about getting lessons.

For those of us who have been playing many years change comes with greater difficulty. I do develop bad habits over time that have to be corrected and if the "fix" lowers my performance I drag my feet starting the practice for the correction. The correction then has to be integrated into my competitive game with either conscious effort or I can hope for the integration to occur naturally over time as practice makes comfort.
How much time does it take for you old dogs to affect substantive changes to your game and how do you do it. I realize by now we all play perfectly but I would like to hear every ones thoughts and/or experience on this.

I came back from the US Open one pocket tournament last May full of confidence in my game and immediately went into a terrible slump that I am just now coming out of.

I get lazy and won't line up on the shots correctly. I don't follow through and stay down and miss easy shots. Somedays I was ok and felt like the slump was over but old bad habits kept creeping back in.

Sometimes, even when you know what you are doing wrong, the harder you try to fix it, the worse it gets.

I finally realized I needed a methodical pre-shot routine to line up correctly and if I do that, the other bad habits are not as much a problem.

I have been a naysayer on aiming systems for many years. The lining up and then pivoting was the main criticism I had and still do on systems. BUT, I purchased the SEE System and use recommended shot alignment and it has helped.

At my age (72) there are always going to be physical problems going on, but taking on a new more methodical approach has helped.