Reaching the top of your game
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I use the top of my game for a pillow.
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I started 'hanging' my arm loosely from the elbow when getting into my stance, which helped get a hinge action that gave a straight cue delivery.
I changed to a lower snooker stance with four points of contact on the cue, and looked at the object ball last.
I figured out how to apply sports psychology successfully to pool. This took many years and itself has several different components (and the exact solution is probably unique to everyone). To someone who's never dabbled, TBH I wouldn't even recommend trying, best left alone. Like fiddling with your car's engine.
I consider myself a good player, but I'm clearly not a great player. I'm sure there would be many more flaws to fix further up the food chain.
I changed to a lower snooker stance with four points of contact on the cue, and looked at the object ball last.
I figured out how to apply sports psychology successfully to pool. This took many years and itself has several different components (and the exact solution is probably unique to everyone). To someone who's never dabbled, TBH I wouldn't even recommend trying, best left alone. Like fiddling with your car's engine.
I consider myself a good player, but I'm clearly not a great player. I'm sure there would be many more flaws to fix further up the food chain.
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Also, I think for a certain type of person (myself included), it's very tempting to think of improvement as a series of quick fixes.
(This is especially tempting because there *are* some quick fixes.)
But in reality, you've got to put in the long hours of play/practice.
(This is especially difficult because adult life doesn't necessarily give you the opportunity to do so.)
(This is especially tempting because there *are* some quick fixes.)
But in reality, you've got to put in the long hours of play/practice.
(This is especially difficult because adult life doesn't necessarily give you the opportunity to do so.)
We have a seperate forum for failed attempts at humor.
BlueRaider
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Two big things for me.
1. Chin lock. The old Jerry Briesath advice. I did it before, but not really. I still had head movement. But once I started rigidly locking my head position on the shot line and then building my stance from that head position, my alignment improved big time. Turns out your body mostly knows where to go when your eyes are in the right place.
2. Total stillness, especially at the "pause" portion of my pre-shot routine, just before starting my backstroke. I had a tendency to subtly move or even tighten my grip at this point, pulling my tip almost imperceptibly to the left. The result was that I almost never hit stop shots with no spin. I still shot fairly well, but I knew I had a problem because my cue ball was always spinning at least a little. Once I relaxed everything and strived for total stillness, I was able to hit the cue ball with much greater accuracy and get those beautiful perfect stop shots with no sideways drift or spin.
1. Chin lock. The old Jerry Briesath advice. I did it before, but not really. I still had head movement. But once I started rigidly locking my head position on the shot line and then building my stance from that head position, my alignment improved big time. Turns out your body mostly knows where to go when your eyes are in the right place.
2. Total stillness, especially at the "pause" portion of my pre-shot routine, just before starting my backstroke. I had a tendency to subtly move or even tighten my grip at this point, pulling my tip almost imperceptibly to the left. The result was that I almost never hit stop shots with no spin. I still shot fairly well, but I knew I had a problem because my cue ball was always spinning at least a little. Once I relaxed everything and strived for total stillness, I was able to hit the cue ball with much greater accuracy and get those beautiful perfect stop shots with no sideways drift or spin.
After three years of intense practice and play I was dabbing the balls pretty fair. Then I saw some old video of a young Willie Mosconi. I had only thought I was playing shape! If I got in a general area that let me pocket the next ball I thought I had played shape, now I focused on spot shape. Another three years and I really was dabbing them pretty fair. A quiet mind and body, the mental game, all of these things are based on confidence and confidence comes from physical skills.
When I quit paying much attention to the object ball and focused on what I was doing with the cue ball is when I made huge gains, only took me around five thousand hours to make that cue ball work though, not an instant fix! Now there are great learning materials out there like Joe Villalpando's DVD's. Three to six months of really working with these would probably have cut my five thousand hours of HAMB to five hundred hours or less. Still isn't going to come easy but a buyer is paying a very cheap price for many years of experience put on a DVD and handed over without all of the bad habits you learn and have to unlearn before becoming a player!
Hu
What is HAMB?
I was obsessed with 'trick shots'.
Like most slightly above average to low level bangers, I sculpted my patterns with heavy helpings of stun and draw. I wouldn't give a second's thought to hitting with ridiculous amounts of spin and power to work the CB sideways and backward. One day after yet another healthy beating of my ego by one the top tier players. I was muttering to myself about how I could never quite manage to beat him, and how smooth his game was. He laughed and told me I played too many 'trick shots'. He briefly explained that in his opinion, any time you made the CB do something it didn't naturally want to do, you were playing a trick shot.
Making the switch from 'banger pool' to 'running english' patterns jumped me several links on the food chain.
Hit A Million Balls...
I started to play more how balls want to move. More natural shots.
To achieve that i did study physics of game A LOT..
Also my approach about aiming changed. I was just HAMB guy but after 7 year break from game I generated several ways to aim. Goal was trying to get as simple aiming as possible to overcome many visual tricks what ball shape do for us. Using sometimes different way but main theme go what works best and is most repeatable way to success. Also trying to streamline my play for more pressure holding packet.
To achieve that i did study physics of game A LOT..
Also my approach about aiming changed. I was just HAMB guy but after 7 year break from game I generated several ways to aim. Goal was trying to get as simple aiming as possible to overcome many visual tricks what ball shape do for us. Using sometimes different way but main theme go what works best and is most repeatable way to success. Also trying to streamline my play for more pressure holding packet.
Correct! Hit a Million Balls or Ye Old School of Hard Knocks which doesn't make nearly as nice an acronym!
You are also correct a thousand times over about "trick shots"! When you quit trying to force the cue ball to do what you want it to do and just help it along a path it was intended to go anyway with slight modifications if needed the game becomes much easier! More than one person has said they spent years learning to apply spin only to find they don't need it! A slight overstatement there but once you learn speed and angles much spin becomes a rare part of your game. While I might use it showboating a bit on a near empty table after working with speed and angles awhile I found I needed extreme spin a few times a night.(over half a tip of side) That led to another rule of thumb, always plan a pattern so at least one part of the shot is easy. Don't combine a tough ball to pocket with tough shape to get onto the next ball in the same shot. A simple rule that kept many a run going for me!
Hu
Paying attention to every single thing you do as you approach a shot - taking every component of a shot from initial approach to what happens when the object ball actually is IN the pocket and the cue ball is completely in motion to its final resting spot on the table.
Getting to the point that this entire process is consistent, repeatable, comfortable, dependable, and that you have complete confidence that it works.
Now do this on every shot without consciously trying to do it- then you are THERE!
Getting to the point that this entire process is consistent, repeatable, comfortable, dependable, and that you have complete confidence that it works.
Now do this on every shot without consciously trying to do it- then you are THERE!
My game jumped 3 balls when I improved my stance...specifically my foot placement. Somehow everything else became more automatic after that.
Well, it is your thread. The top of your game starts at the bottom and that's where I am.
Thing I struggled a REALLY long time with, was to find a way to position my body on the shot line when you transition from standing up to getting down on the shot. For the longest time, my stance was just off and I believe you subconsciously know that you're off, so I would then try to push my body into what I thought was the correct line while already down on the shot in an attempt to correct it. The result was more often than not, that I would either miss the shot or best case make the shot but butcher the position because of unwanted spin on the ball.
Other things I improved:
- more precise cue tip position, and therefore better position play
- smoother stroke, softer hit when possible (not every ball needs to smash the back of the pocket)
- learned to enjoy a good safety (both receiving and handing them out)
And aside from the technical part of pool, I learned to view the game more objectively after years and years of frustration and self-blaming when losing to opponents and playing badly. So I guess that's more the sport psychology side of the game. Gave me a lot of peace of mind, which in turn led me to improve my game.
Other things I improved:
- more precise cue tip position, and therefore better position play
- smoother stroke, softer hit when possible (not every ball needs to smash the back of the pocket)
- learned to enjoy a good safety (both receiving and handing them out)
And aside from the technical part of pool, I learned to view the game more objectively after years and years of frustration and self-blaming when losing to opponents and playing badly. So I guess that's more the sport psychology side of the game. Gave me a lot of peace of mind, which in turn led me to improve my game.
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Smutzc
Well-known member
I started 'hanging' my arm loosely from the elbow when getting into my stance, which helped get a hinge action that gave a straight cue delivery.
Where did you go to learn the sports psychology aspect of the game? I’ve been wanting to research a little about this. I feel once you have a solid foundation of fundamentals the psychology is the next bump in the road to overcome.
I got a lot from books like 'the inner game of tennis' and other materials, like the Attention Circles of Eberspacher. For those who are unfamiliar with this:
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Pin
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Honestly I've been working at it on and off since I was a kid, using it for basketball.
What was available at that time, IMHO, gave very little benefit and was a minor distraction from the skill development I "should" have been focusing on. (I would never have been anything special either way, as I'm short (by basketball standards), slow, and a bad shot!)
Most of what I've read since has also been of very little practical value.
And when you're thinking about where your head is, you're not concentrating on the table, so sports psychology becomes actively harmful to your performance.
A common thought pattern while playing, for me, would be to check in on how my focus was, then try to correct whatever was imperfect, then monitor myself to see whether it was working (and maybe also get frustrated when it wasn't), and in none of this time have you paid close attention to the balls!
That said, some of the things that I use now are developed from those unhelpful programs - but they've also been heavily modified and changed as I've figured out what works for me, over the course of many years.
If you insist on trying to learn some sports psychology (for pool), I'd start with The Inner Game of Golf. There's also a spin-off from the Inner Game of Tennis called "Inner Tennis: Playing the Game".
But I'd still recommend people don't bother. Why actively hurt your own game?