I know eye dominance and head position has been a very common topic and starting a new thread may be considered unneeded but I have some observations that may help some people that are not cut from the normal cut of cloth....
Several years ago my eye doctor clued me in on a problem I had had for years and years and was unaware of... He handed me a magazine and asked me to read an article as quickly as I could... I immediately took my right pointer finger and stuck it to the page and started.... He laughed at that point and asked me if I knew why I usually read using my finger? I really had never noticed I did it and most other people didn't.... He explained I had convergence insufficiency.... The inability to cross my eyes in layman's terms... Turns out not everyone's eye work the same way.
I knew that I had taken eye dominance tests and that I had no specific dominance but I had no idea it was because of this issue. Basically my brain decided which eye to use and it did not have to do so in a consistent fashion.
In some ways there seemed to be advantages, I could shoot pool and if my brain was consistently using the eye I was sighting with I could cut the paint of the balls and would very seldom have aiming issues, I immediately jumped over players who had been at it for years and reached low A speed in about 3 years....
That was 18 years ago now and I still range from B to AA depending on how I am seeing the balls. Sadly the AA periods are showing up less often and staying around for less and less time these days. So after all this time I decided to actually do something different.
I decided to actually work on my game instead of just showing up and relying on nothing but talent and hand eye coordination. 2 years ago I started working on stroke fundamentals, rolling the cueball, adding more defense, and focused practice utilizing drills... About 6months into the process I started pushing thru plateaus and playing at higher levels. I would play flawless for a week or 2 and then fall back under the plateau and then stick my head back above it a few weeks later.
Last year right before I went to the Open I was playing well enough that I had it in my mind that it was close to time for me to test everything under the fires of a professional tournament... and then it hit... A major slump....
I checked everything I had worked on and nothing had changed in my stroke. I videotaped and I looked the same as when I was playing my best. As hard as I tried I just couldn't make shots. After some observation I realized I was missing everything to the left. Easy fix I figured and just started aiming right of the pocket. Balls started flying in again...
I showed up to the Music City Open in January and was starting to play a little better. I lost the lag and first game in my first match and proceeded to run 6 racks off my opponents dry break winning 11-2 when the dust cleared.
My 2nd match was against Max Eberle and the combination of pressure of playing a known pro and having to compensate in my aim proved lethal. I won the lag and ran the first rack and held the only lead I would have at 1 -0 at 4-4 I broke perfect had a straight in shot on the 1 and missed it dead left... Max closed me out 11-6....
3rd match was more of the same except that at around 4-4 with me and my opponent playing sub par I started making 3 balls off my break and managed to run out a few racks in a row a couple of times to win 11-6.
Next match I get Rob Saez on the TV table... Nerves are shot already so I didn't need the TV table or a known pro... Rob beats me 11-6... I have my chances but just cannot get it done... The only thing that I recall from the match was that I had a friend in the stands who was woofing at me at one point when I was getting ready to break. I broke made a ball and started running out while woofing back. I shot the perfect pattern get down to a 3 foot straight in shot on the 9 and miss the pocket 2 inches to the left after aiming right...
Something had to give... I had broke as close to perfect as was possible. Out of my 32 breaks I had scratched once and failed to make a ball once. On every other break I had made a ball and had a shot at the 1.... The break is supposed to be the crap shoot... Not shooting straight in shots...
My pride is stinging and I take a break... I start back again in March and in April they close the pool room so I am forced into a longer break.
I do have an 8' table at home and I start shooting only shots. 100s a night and each night is a crap shoot... I shoot no shots harder than a spot shot but my percentage makes can range from 70% to 90%... I am still missing to the left except for the nights where I am missing right, exactly where I am aiming....
A month or so ago I started thinking again about head position and dominance and decided to do some research on how vision actually works for people with convergence insufficiency and lack of dominance.
With insufficient convergence 2 different images are sent to the brain but there is in essence no parallax as both eyes cannot focus at one time on a specific point. Basically what the brain does due to this issue is that it disregards what it feels is the wrong image.
As long as there is enough of a difference between the proper image and the improper image the brain does a pretty good job. The problem is that if your head position varies or if the position puts both eyes in a good position your brain cannot make an accurate discard and process the information from both eyes. Since there is no true parallax it has to take a guess. Since it will guess in a consistent fashion it may guess consistently wrong or right.....
I am currently working on 2 different methods of helping my brain make the right guess.
1) I am rifle sighting the cue with my right eye with my left eye closed. I stay down and open the left eye at which point the shot no longer looks correct because of the attempted parallax. I can then raise my head and at some point the shot will look correct again. There are 2 issues with this technique. If I do not raise up completely on plane the shot may never look 100% and cue steering will occur. Different length shots require a different head heights.
2) By moving my head position closer to the cueball with the right eye rifle sighting, the difference in the information sent by the eyes is substantial enough that the brain will totally disregard the left eye even with both eyes open. There are also 2 main issues with this technique. On long reach shots where you have to stretch to reach the cueball it is difficult to get the eyes close enough to the cueball to ensure the brain disregards the left image. Staying that low and close to the cueball may cause stress to the back and neck and make the stroke feel confined.
I will post more observations as I get further along experimenting with both techniques.... Any thoughts on either technique would be appreciated... I may post video of both approaches... currently I have not recorder either of them but if there is interest I will do that this weekend....
Several years ago my eye doctor clued me in on a problem I had had for years and years and was unaware of... He handed me a magazine and asked me to read an article as quickly as I could... I immediately took my right pointer finger and stuck it to the page and started.... He laughed at that point and asked me if I knew why I usually read using my finger? I really had never noticed I did it and most other people didn't.... He explained I had convergence insufficiency.... The inability to cross my eyes in layman's terms... Turns out not everyone's eye work the same way.
I knew that I had taken eye dominance tests and that I had no specific dominance but I had no idea it was because of this issue. Basically my brain decided which eye to use and it did not have to do so in a consistent fashion.
In some ways there seemed to be advantages, I could shoot pool and if my brain was consistently using the eye I was sighting with I could cut the paint of the balls and would very seldom have aiming issues, I immediately jumped over players who had been at it for years and reached low A speed in about 3 years....
That was 18 years ago now and I still range from B to AA depending on how I am seeing the balls. Sadly the AA periods are showing up less often and staying around for less and less time these days. So after all this time I decided to actually do something different.
I decided to actually work on my game instead of just showing up and relying on nothing but talent and hand eye coordination. 2 years ago I started working on stroke fundamentals, rolling the cueball, adding more defense, and focused practice utilizing drills... About 6months into the process I started pushing thru plateaus and playing at higher levels. I would play flawless for a week or 2 and then fall back under the plateau and then stick my head back above it a few weeks later.
Last year right before I went to the Open I was playing well enough that I had it in my mind that it was close to time for me to test everything under the fires of a professional tournament... and then it hit... A major slump....
I checked everything I had worked on and nothing had changed in my stroke. I videotaped and I looked the same as when I was playing my best. As hard as I tried I just couldn't make shots. After some observation I realized I was missing everything to the left. Easy fix I figured and just started aiming right of the pocket. Balls started flying in again...
I showed up to the Music City Open in January and was starting to play a little better. I lost the lag and first game in my first match and proceeded to run 6 racks off my opponents dry break winning 11-2 when the dust cleared.
My 2nd match was against Max Eberle and the combination of pressure of playing a known pro and having to compensate in my aim proved lethal. I won the lag and ran the first rack and held the only lead I would have at 1 -0 at 4-4 I broke perfect had a straight in shot on the 1 and missed it dead left... Max closed me out 11-6....
3rd match was more of the same except that at around 4-4 with me and my opponent playing sub par I started making 3 balls off my break and managed to run out a few racks in a row a couple of times to win 11-6.
Next match I get Rob Saez on the TV table... Nerves are shot already so I didn't need the TV table or a known pro... Rob beats me 11-6... I have my chances but just cannot get it done... The only thing that I recall from the match was that I had a friend in the stands who was woofing at me at one point when I was getting ready to break. I broke made a ball and started running out while woofing back. I shot the perfect pattern get down to a 3 foot straight in shot on the 9 and miss the pocket 2 inches to the left after aiming right...
Something had to give... I had broke as close to perfect as was possible. Out of my 32 breaks I had scratched once and failed to make a ball once. On every other break I had made a ball and had a shot at the 1.... The break is supposed to be the crap shoot... Not shooting straight in shots...
My pride is stinging and I take a break... I start back again in March and in April they close the pool room so I am forced into a longer break.
I do have an 8' table at home and I start shooting only shots. 100s a night and each night is a crap shoot... I shoot no shots harder than a spot shot but my percentage makes can range from 70% to 90%... I am still missing to the left except for the nights where I am missing right, exactly where I am aiming....
A month or so ago I started thinking again about head position and dominance and decided to do some research on how vision actually works for people with convergence insufficiency and lack of dominance.
With insufficient convergence 2 different images are sent to the brain but there is in essence no parallax as both eyes cannot focus at one time on a specific point. Basically what the brain does due to this issue is that it disregards what it feels is the wrong image.
As long as there is enough of a difference between the proper image and the improper image the brain does a pretty good job. The problem is that if your head position varies or if the position puts both eyes in a good position your brain cannot make an accurate discard and process the information from both eyes. Since there is no true parallax it has to take a guess. Since it will guess in a consistent fashion it may guess consistently wrong or right.....
I am currently working on 2 different methods of helping my brain make the right guess.
1) I am rifle sighting the cue with my right eye with my left eye closed. I stay down and open the left eye at which point the shot no longer looks correct because of the attempted parallax. I can then raise my head and at some point the shot will look correct again. There are 2 issues with this technique. If I do not raise up completely on plane the shot may never look 100% and cue steering will occur. Different length shots require a different head heights.
2) By moving my head position closer to the cueball with the right eye rifle sighting, the difference in the information sent by the eyes is substantial enough that the brain will totally disregard the left eye even with both eyes open. There are also 2 main issues with this technique. On long reach shots where you have to stretch to reach the cueball it is difficult to get the eyes close enough to the cueball to ensure the brain disregards the left image. Staying that low and close to the cueball may cause stress to the back and neck and make the stroke feel confined.
I will post more observations as I get further along experimenting with both techniques.... Any thoughts on either technique would be appreciated... I may post video of both approaches... currently I have not recorder either of them but if there is interest I will do that this weekend....
Last edited: