Stun Shot Drills

[Pool Player]

Hi guys,

I would like to know if theres any drills which i can work on to improve my stun shot.

Would greatly appreciate any drills / ideas that you could share with.

Have a nice day, stephen

 

[Neil]

It's great that you want to practice stun shots! IMO, stun shots are the key to any position play. Just set up a straight in shot with the cb about a foot away from the ob. Pay attention to where you hit the cb, at a foot, and medium speed, you want a center ball hit. Shoot it until you can stop the cb dead 10 times in a row.

When you can do that, move the cb back another foot. Do the drill again. This time, you will find that you may have to hit the cb a little lower to get the cb to stop. Do it until you can stop the cb 10 times in a row.

Then, move the cb back another foot, and repeat. After about a week or less of doing this, you will have stun shots mastered, and will be able to stop the cb from any distance.

Now that you can do that, stun shots on an angle become easy. Just shoot it like you would for a stop shot, and look at where the 90 degree line is off the ob. That is the line that the cb will go down.

The farther away from the ob that you are, the lower you have to hit the cb. The long ones become a mixture of speed and hitting the cb low. You want the cb to be skidding when it hits the ob. Try practicing with a striped ball. With the striped ball, you can easily see where the ball is skidding, and where the forward roll picks up on it due to the friction with the cloth.

 

[Pool Player]

Will start working on it tomorrow! Kindly keep the advices coming

 

[teedotaj]

Hey Neil can you give advise regarding positional play with stun shots..

Say I want to stun a ball at a certain speed but there is distance between OB and CB. The distance will require me to put more speed than i wanted in order for the "stun" to take in effect (any more speed will be a draw or less would be follow which I don't ).

I'm not sure if you are getting what I'm trying to picture here but if you do, is there any way around this?

 

[teedotaj]

Btw that's how I would practice stun shots too. I think Bob Jewitt posted a similar drill here before.

 

[teedotaj]

Actually here's the thread I started a while back and I got good advise including the one from Bob Jewitt

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=115050

 

[Neil]

Hey Neil can you give advise regarding positional play with stun shots..

Say I want to stun a ball at a certain speed but there is distance between OB and CB. The distance will require me to put more speed than i wanted in order for the "stun" to take in effect (any more speed will be a draw or less would be follow which I don't ).

I'm not sure if you are getting what I'm trying to picture here but if you do, is there any way around this?

This is where practice and 'touch' come into play. Many think that you have to hit hard when you have a pretty good distance between the cb and the ob to get the cb to stop. You don't necessarily have to.

edit: The 'trick' to the shot, is that you have to come through the cb fast, but not hard. Many think the two go hand in hand, but that isn't necessarily so. It is rather hard to explain, but you want a lot of spin on the cb, but not much forward speed. If there are any good players around where you are, see if one of them will show you the shot if you can't seem to get it.

Ever hear of a 'draw-drag' shot? That is where the cb has draw on it until just before it hits the ob. You can do this over a pretty good distance to get a stun shot without hitting hard. You just need to get a lot of reverse spin on the cb. The spin friction on the cloth will slow down the cb on the way there. It requires practice, and really paying attention to just what you are doing, but is a shot that will pay great dividends.

Try just shooting a striped ball down the table between soft and medium speed with a lot of backspin on it. Watch to see where the backspin comes off, it slides, and where the forward roll on it starts. Play around with it at different speeds, and you will start to get a hang for what you need to do.

 

[pooltchr]

Hey Neil can you give advise regarding positional play with stun shots..

Say I want to stun a ball at a certain speed but there is distance between OB and CB. The distance will require me to put more speed than i wanted in order for the "stun" to take in effect (any more speed will be a draw or less would be follow which I don't ).

I'm not sure if you are getting what I'm trying to picture here but if you do, is there any way around this?

The result you are looking for is a combination of speed and spin. In many cases you can decrease your stroke speed, and increase your spin at the same time. By hitting lower and softer, you can still get the stop or stun effect on your shot. If you have had lessons from an SPF instructor, think of your speed drill. You will get just about the same result from a 3 speed shot hit 1 tip below center as you will a 1 speed shot hit 3 tips below center.
Steve

 

[Mathew]

The more you reduce the speed and increase the draw, the less margin for error on the stun and performing a perfect 90 degree tangent becomes increasingly difficult because of the increasing dependency on perfect speed.

However, its still very useful and doing it almost right is usually good enough for most position plays. Also you can increase your margin for error by making sure you only error on one side towards either draw or follow (usually on this play its draw as you are usually trying to reduce the cue ball movement to a minimum after impact with this play).

Likewise, your stock stun/stop should have at least medium speed and mimimal draw, as this increases your margin for error.