Practise drill for long shots, Help!

[tomatoshooter]

Do the Mighty X drill

That drill has done so much for my game.

It is a good test and has its place, but one should definitely not get discouraged if it cant be done perfectly every time.

That is the toughest part. Many drills are very unforgiving and we usually don't have another player to compare to so the misses can get to you.

One thing I have been doing lately is putting a ball on the foot spot and shooting from the head string, working my way across the table, shooting into the same corner pocket. Then I go the other way. Then I move the object ball uptable about a diamond and repeat. I think it's a good idea to not be too precise with the ball placement, I'm trying to shoot a lot of shots in a range, but I don't want to learn that I can make a particular shot by aiming at the second brick on my fireplace.

Doing this drill regularly has really helped me. I'm taking many shots that are much harder than the majority of shots in a game. Probably a third of them would be a bad idea to shoot in most game situations. When someone leaves me long, I know I have practiced harder shots and my confidence level is great.

I don't worry about position but just shooting the shots reinforces the natural path and speed, and the improvement in shotmaking means I have extra capacity to play shape and I can sink balls even if the cue ball isn't where I wanted.

 

[dquarasr]

(Disclaimer: I am not an instructor.)

Many good ideas here on how to leverage the Mighty X drill. But, it might not help you correct flaws if you don't know what to fix. Here are some ideas on how to assess your fundamentals and stroke:

Alignment: I like to use the center dots to measure the accuracy of my step-in and alignment on the shot line. Put a reinforcing ring on the head spot. Go to the foot rail. Get down on your shot pretending the CB is on the foot spot. Look straight down. Your cue should be dead center over the center diamond of the foot rail. Adjust as necessary. You might be surprised at how often your alignment is just a smidge off in either direction. Practice this over and over until you can stand up looking at the shot, get down, and be dead center without fail, on auto-pilot. This exercise can help you if you experiment with positioning of feet, shoulder, elbow, and head. (I use a reinforcing donut on the head spot because the head rail has my table brand logo rather than a center diamond. It also provides a more visible spot to aim at.)

Cue delivery: using these same spots on the table, stroke through the foot spot. See if your cue deviates from straight ahead (you can mark your table with tailor's chalk if you haven't already done so to help with racking). If not, your stroke needs work. So many reasons stroke will be off, so I won't attempt to provide remedies here. Find a good fundamentals coach.

Cue delivery 2: same as above, but using the CB: hit it intending to go directly over the head spot. If you've hit it, great. For the second half of this exercise, gauge whether you've put unintended spin on the CB. If hit perfectly, the CB should run over the head spot, hit the head rail, run back over the head spot on its return trip directly to your cue tip, which should still be in place because you stayed down on the shot (right? ) If you've imparted unintended spin on the CB, another thing to work on with a coach.

EDIT: Try the last two with various speeds. I find I have more trouble when shot speed is increased.

Best of luck.

 

[Pool Hand Luke]

On occasion I would try making the long shot "shorter" by imagining an object ball on the same line a foot or two in front of the cue ball and aim for the imaginary ball instead of all the way down the table. The idea being to take away the thought of how far away the ball is and just hit a smooth stroke at pocket speed. As I improved, I used this idea less and less to where now I really don't think about how long the shot is and more about shape after. What still intimidates me is a long shot with the cue ball frozen to the rail. Still a work in progress.

 

[Tennesseejoe]

Last night i played on my local 9 ball league and my 2nd opponent adopted a simple but awesome strategy against me: every single ball he could not easily pot he got me far distant from it (from cue ball, of course!), and that worked very very good for him because i just missed every single shot on them... That uncovered my weakness that i didn't even knew it was so evident, the long shots. So, for long shots, what kind of routines or specific shots should one practise to get better at it?

This seems to help me. Set up a long straight in shot. Aim it as normal for the center of the pocket. Just stay down and pivot aim it for the left of the pocket. Now pivot aim it for the right of the pocket. Now pivot back to the center. Shoot the ball.

 

[Poolmanis]

Last night i played on my local 9 ball league and my 2nd opponent adopted a simple but awesome strategy against me: every single ball he could not easily pot he got me far distant from it (from cue ball, of course!), and that worked very very good for him because i just missed every single shot on them... That uncovered my weakness that i didn't even knew it was so evident, the long shots. So, for long shots, what kind of routines or specific shots should one practise to get better at it?

Check my post on "Doc got me thinking" thread. I posted my way to practice and aim longer(and thin also) shots.

 

[Flakeandrun]

I place balls along the head string, and line up long stop shots at various positions. Been doing this to 'grease the groove' before playing. short and effective. It's about the only warm up I do. Was chatting with a player knocked out of the China open, and he recommended doing this. He said the only other 'practice' he does besides playing games, was shown to him by Hossein Vafei, and involved ordering the balls top to bottom numerically. Cutting to play position on the next ball e.g. 1 at the top of the table, playing for 2 at the bottom, completing them 1, 2, 3, 4.... said he aims to do this 3 times or so before playing any competitive game. The guy was a whole other level to me (both at pool and snooker). I find this drill challenging/annoying, but doable if you have the patience to set the balls up and aren't easily frustrated... The long stop shot drill is something that is quick an easy to get that good feeling.
I do also quite like the X for an easy drill that makes a good feeling.