Practice Drills

L

Landplayer

Registered
Most of my practice times are used to practice two things: the fundamentals and “L-drill”.

I practice the fundamentals by shooting straight-in shoots. That’s fine and I have no questions for that. For the “L-drill”, I can see the improvement that I add more balls to the drill as I become good at it.

My question is, what should I practice NEXT? There are thousands of drills, but I believe the “quality” is much more important that the “quantity”, so I rather practice/focus on a few drills at one time than doing many together.

Can you give me just a couple of drills which are very important and can help to improve the game after I complete the L-drill? In other words, they're the "must-practice-drills".
 
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I'm not an expert , rather I'm in the beginner ranks. One thing I like to practice is getting the cue ball to center of table. I'll setup different shots that come up in games a lot and just practicing my cue ball control after pocketing the shot.

The L drill you use is one of my favorite.

Cheers,
Brad
 
Drills

Like you said, there are tons and tons of drills. Next thing to work on is whatever is your major weakness. Stroke, cue ball position, ball pocketing, or whatever it is. Always attack your weaknesses first.

Anyway, a couple of my favorite drills are:

Place a ball on the head spot and one ball on the foot spot. Now, with ball in hand, make one of them and get position on the other. Now, replace the ball you just pocketed. Shoot the other ball and get shape on the new ball. Replace the missing ball and continue on with this back and forth volley until you've gone through an entire rack of balls. Repeat as necessary.

Next drill will work for 9 or 10 ball.

Throw the 7, 8, 9 on the table. Give yourself ball in hand and runout. If you make them without missing, give yourself 1 'win' on the wire. If you miss, count it as 1 'loss' and start over. If you can get to 10 wins before 5 loses then add the 6 ball and start a new set. If you cannot, then stay with the 7,8,9 until you can. Continue adding balls until you can runout from the 1ball 10 times.

And definitely stick to your guns about practicing quality over quantity. Your improvement will be much faster that way.
 
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cyrex said:
Place on ball on the head spot and one ball on the foot spot. Now, with ball in hand, make one of them and get position on the other. Now, replace the ball you just pocketed. Shoot the other ball and get shape on the new ball. Replace the missing ball and continue on with this back and forth volley until you've gone through an entire rack of balls. Repeat as necessary.

Next drill will work for 9 or 10 ball.

Throw the 7, 8, 9 on the table. Give yourself ball in hand and runout. If you make them without missing, give yourself 1 'win' on the wire. If you miss, count it as 1 'loss' and start over. If you can get to 10 wins before 5 loses then add the 6 ball and start a new set. If you cannot, then stay with the 7,8,9 until you can. Continue adding balls until you can runout from the 1ball 10 times.
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Loving those. Off to the practice table.
 
Landplayer said:
... Can you give me just a couple of drills which are very important and can help to improve the game after I complete the L-drill? In other words, they're the "must-practice-drills".
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There are lots of drills on Dr. Dave's site (mentioned above) and in the articles on this page.
 Here is a booklet of basic drills.

Which drills you should practice depends on what you, personally, have trouble with. You have to figure this out on your own unless you want to go to an instructor. Notice which shots you screw up in competition. If the same sort of shot is a problem more than once, find a drill that will help fix that problem. If you find you simply can't do some shots that the pros do, make up a drill that starts from an easier position and works up to the pro shot. How to construct such a drill is covered in the booklet above.

Good luck.
 
Bob thank you for posting the links. I will be looking into them when I get home today. I have heard great things about you.

Thank you,

Paul
 
cyrex said:
Like you said, there are tons and tons of drills. Next thing to work on is whatever is your major weakness. Stroke, cue ball position, ball pocketing, or whatever it is. Always attack your weaknesses first.

Anyway, a couple of my favorite drills are:

Place a ball on the head spot and one ball on the foot spot. Now, with ball in hand, make one of them and get position on the other. Now, replace the ball you just pocketed. Shoot the other ball and get shape on the new ball. Replace the missing ball and continue on with this back and forth volley until you've gone through an entire rack of balls. Repeat as necessary.

Next drill will work for 9 or 10 ball.

Throw the 7, 8, 9 on the table. Give yourself ball in hand and runout. If you make them without missing, give yourself 1 'win' on the wire. If you miss, count it as 1 'loss' and start over. If you can get to 10 wins before 5 loses then add the 6 ball and start a new set. If you cannot, then stay with the 7,8,9 until you can. Continue adding balls until you can runout from the 1ball 10 times.

And definitely stick to your guns about practicing quality over quantity. Your improvement will be much faster that way.
Click to expand...

I tried the first drill that you instroduce to me today, I like that! I will set the new goal once I break my old record. So far I got 5 balls in a row today .
 
cyrex said:
Like you said, there are tons and tons of drills. Next thing to work on is whatever is your major weakness. Stroke, cue ball position, ball pocketing, or whatever it is. Always attack your weaknesses first.

Anyway, a couple of my favorite drills are:

Place a ball on the head spot and one ball on the foot spot. Now, with ball in hand, make one of them and get position on the other. Now, replace the ball you just pocketed. Shoot the other ball and get shape on the new ball. Replace the missing ball and continue on with this back and forth volley until you've gone through an entire rack of balls. Repeat as necessary.

Next drill will work for 9 or 10 ball.

Throw the 7, 8, 9 on the table. Give yourself ball in hand and runout. If you make them without missing, give yourself 1 'win' on the wire. If you miss, count it as 1 'loss' and start over. If you can get to 10 wins before 5 loses then add the 6 ball and start a new set. If you cannot, then stay with the 7,8,9 until you can. Continue adding balls until you can runout from the 1ball 10 times.

And definitely stick to your guns about practicing quality over quantity. Your improvement will be much faster that way.
Click to expand...

I tried the first drill that you instroduced to me today, I like that! I will set the new goal once I break my record. So far I got 5 balls in a row.
 
I would take a look at the PAT Training books/DVDs and Joe Tucker has some good drills that I enjoy. They're good for structured practice and tracking improvement.
 
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