Revelations..

Y

Yokel

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
So after another week, I think I'm starting to get slower in my learning speed.

I've been practicing again for about three months, and I've re-learned alot quick... but it's starting to come to the point where I'm getting stagnant. Not to say that in a bad way, just that I am coming to a point where I have to try a new shot 20-30 times before I figure out where the angle is that I am looking for. After that I can usually judge a similar shot relatively well, but the hours it takes in practice to get it right is valuable time.

I'm starting to think it might be time to call in a professional. At the rate I am learning new angles and new shots, it would be just as viable to pay for instruction.

It's not that I don't have faith that I can learn it myself, just that between work and home life, it might be better for me to look to an instructor to better utilize my practice time... opinioins?
 
lessons are definitely worth it! the problem with practicing is you dont always know what you need to work on. "you dont know what you dont know". you may be missing a shots for other reasons just not being able to figure out an angle. a knowledgeble instructor can diagnose your issues after watching shoot for 5 minutes. give you drills to fix the problem and show you how to train (different from practicing) and show you how to self diagnose you own problems to a certain degree. i'd highly recommend scott lee (posts on this forum) if he makes it out to your neck of the woods, or any other spf instructor.

brian
 
Yokel said:
So after another week, I think I'm starting to get slower in my learning speed.

I've been practicing again for about three months, and I've re-learned alot quick... but it's starting to come to the point where I'm getting stagnant. Not to say that in a bad way, just that I am coming to a point where I have to try a new shot 20-30 times before I figure out where the angle is that I am looking for. After that I can usually judge a similar shot relatively well, but the hours it takes in practice to get it right is valuable time.

I'm starting to think it might be time to call in a professional. At the rate I am learning new angles and new shots, it would be just as viable to pay for instruction.

It's not that I don't have faith that I can learn it myself, just that between work and home life, it might be better for me to look to an instructor to better utilize my practice time... opinioins?
Click to expand...


I will be traveling through Mempis around the 3-4th of July. I'm traveling back to Dallas from two Pool Schools on the East Coast. Scott Lee works with me in those schools. If interested call me at 1 800 707-0158....randyg
 
The learning curve rate goes up and down. What you are experiencing is perfectly normal. After a few more months (years, weeks, etc. depending on how you learn/motivated) it will go up again. So for example, you can learn 100 new things one week, but then only learn 2 or 3 new things the following week, (or might even not do some things as well) but then you will go back up to like 80 or so.

Part of the reason is this.. you learn so much so quickly (in the beginning) just learning the basics. Then you learn more complicated things and start to practice that. But then eventually you are concentrating on the new stuff and forget the basics. After a few weeks you are back to basics while working on the new things. Eventually you do both equally. But then you add some advanced stuff and start concentrating on that. And you learn a lot more. BUT then you start concentrating on that and the new stuff you learned before starts to suffer. And this keeps going until your basically as good at basics as you are the new stuff and the advanced stuff.

But its really hard to go from basics, to new stuff, to advanced stuff all one after the other without levels and plateaus in your learning curve.

I hope this kind of makes sense. Here is what happened to me when I learned and you might relate (yes I wrote it down to help track my progress)





Week 1: basic stroke, tangent lines, basic angles
Week 2: Speed control
Week 3: Top and bottom english, how it effects the tangent line of the cue, follow, and draw

(And I learned these pretty quickly)

Week4: Left and right English, squirt, deflection, english transfer

Week5-8: My learning started to stagnate and I started to miss shots I normally made before, my speed control needed work again, my stroke was sometimes off.

(See I was trying to learn all this new stuff before making sure I knew all the stuff from week 1-3 expertly. This is why I stalled in my learning for a while.)

Week 8-11: Practiced everything I learned weeks 1-3
Week12: Practiced Left and right English, squirt, deflection, english transfer
Week 13: Banks and kicks, with top, bottom, english etc.
Week 14: Basic position play

(I started to learn fast again)

Week 15: I started to stall out again. Concentrating on position and things made me forget to concentrate on earlier things. SO again I went back to things I learned earlier.



So I know this is a long post. But basically what you are going though is normal. Keep at it and things will suddenly "click" and you will learn faster again.

Vic
 
Yokel said:
So after another week, I think I'm starting to get slower in my learning speed.

I've been practicing again for about three months, and I've re-learned alot quick... but it's starting to come to the point where I'm getting stagnant. Not to say that in a bad way, just that I am coming to a point where I have to try a new shot 20-30 times before I figure out where the angle is that I am looking for. After that I can usually judge a similar shot relatively well, but the hours it takes in practice to get it right is valuable time.

I'm starting to think it might be time to call in a professional. At the rate I am learning new angles and new shots, it would be just as viable to pay for instruction.

It's not that I don't have faith that I can learn it myself, just that between work and home life, it might be better for me to look to an instructor to better utilize my practice time... opinioins?
Click to expand...

Thats probably the best choice if you want to keep improving. But then again, its really hard to see improvment in yourself, this is because you are playing yourself hours on end and its hard to see. You will see your improvment when you face someone who used to beat you a ton, now your beating them!

I wish I could get instruction, so if you have the means go for it.

Just my 2 cents.

Good Luck!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top