The importance of warming up

BRussell

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I’ve been playing the ghost and recording the results, hoping to see a trend upwards over time.

But one thing I’ve noticed for sure is that I improve as I play a couple sets, over the course of an hour or so.

It sounds obvious, but it’s the degree to which I improve that‘s been surprising. It’s not uncommon for me to lose the first set 5-0 or 5-1, and win the 4th or 5th set 5-0 or 5-1. It doesn’t seem to help if I shoot for 5 minutes first, I need to play a couple sets.

Anyone else find that you need a significant warm-up?
 

skiergd011013

Well-known member
yes. I always feel tight, jittery and shaky the first few racks i play. After a few practice racks just throwing the balls on the table and shooting them in, i settle right into it. I also dont play nearly enough because i live in an absolute pool desert. Nearest pool hall is one hour away. All my area has is bars, and they are not my thing.
 

gregcantrall

Center Ball
Silver Member
That effect was something I used. If I went to a new tavern table it took about 45 minutes to get tuned to the table. If by chance there was a house player that I hooked up with at $5 a game I could be stuck up to $40. So when I get settled and start shooting back, they might be inclined to raise the bet. Ok!
 

Cuedup

Well-known member
Absolutely.

The score sheet on league night shows the nights I walk straight into a match vs nights I'm able to show up an hour early and get a few racks in.
 

TheBasics

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
yes. I always feel tight, jittery and shaky the first few racks i play. After a few practice racks just throwing the balls on the table and shooting them in, i settle right into it. I also dont play nearly enough because i live in an absolute pool desert. Nearest pool hall is one hour away. All my area has is bars, and they are not my thing.
skiergd011013, Howdy;
Know that of which you speak. 60 miles to Las Cruces, NM and nearest pool hall (Olhausen/Jerry O's).
The rest are Private Clubs which allow smoking or 1 or 2 bars with fights. Can't wash the smoke smell
outta my clothes so I don't go to the clubs. My choice.

hank
 

ak1975

Active member
pool reminds me of the day of long distance cycling. Some days you feel like crap out of the gates, and come on to have a great day. Or sometime you kill it to start and fade to the pack. So when I did long rides for time, I would do a 5 mile warm up for a 60 mile ride and failure to do that led to other issues of not being ready to go.
 

skiergd011013

Well-known member
skiergd011013, Howdy;
Know that of which you speak. 60 miles to Las Cruces, NM and nearest pool hall (Olhausen/Jerry O's).
The rest are Private Clubs which allow smoking or 1 or 2 bars with fights. Can't wash the smoke smell
outta my clothes so I don't go to the clubs. My choice.

hank
cig smoke would be an instant deal breaker with me as well
 

ShootingArts

Smorg is giving St Peter the 7!
Gold Member
Silver Member
I rarely got to warm up when I was gambling around town or on short road trips. Often the action was a challenge table so I never even got to hit a ball until my challenge was up to play. My preference was to spend a couple hours on a nine foot table or snooker table in my favorite quiet old pool hall then I would go down the road to rock and roll but that wasn't always possible.

The most amazing cold performance I have seen is when I worked all day with a guy, brutally hard work, pulling wrenches to take a transmission out of a ten wheel over the road tractor, no air tools or jack to lift the whole truck, gravel parking lot and an old sheet of plywood to put the jack under the transmission on.

Now I had to drive twenty to thirty miles each way out of my way to drop him off. Came to a bar, time for a cold RC. We had batted balls around together in a social setting, nothing serious. Now when I started to rack the balls a guy and his partner wanted to play partners for a beer. No idea how Bobby can shoot but I figured I could carry him if need be.

They won the coin toss and the break, barbox eight ball. One of them broke dry and dead cold after a day working on diesels I saw Bobby run out from their dry break then lay down seven more legitimate break and runs. I had eight beers of my own in front of me before I got up to clean up a few balls and the eight. My turn to break dry, they shot, Bobby cleaned up. In very short order I had thirteen beers in front of me and had gotten out of my chair twice and pocketed a half-dozen balls or so.

Looking back, that was the best I ever saw Bobby shoot. When we hit the road two days later I thought Bobby would carry the big end of the stick and I would bat clean-up. Turned out the other way around but we did OK.

I favor a warm-up. When I couldn't without looking like a pool player in a strange place in the old days I would take half the speed off of my stroke, then half again. I had a bad habit of letting the ponies run if I started batting balls for dollars when I was cold.

Hu
 

Lynch

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I’ve been playing the ghost and recording the results, hoping to see a trend upwards over time.

But one thing I’ve noticed for sure is that I improve as I play a couple sets, over the course of an hour or so.

It sounds obvious, but it’s the degree to which I improve that‘s been surprising. It’s not uncommon for me to lose the first set 5-0 or 5-1, and win the 4th or 5th set 5-0 or 5-1. It doesn’t seem to help if I shoot for 5 minutes first, I need to play a couple sets.

Anyone else find that you need a significant warm-up?
I often play 10 ahead sets vs the ghost and often have a similar experience. For myself, although I tend to be a little sloppier in the first hour or two, the biggest difference is the break. Many times it takes me a couple hours to really get it dialed in. When I first get started, I'm often breaking dry, getting a cluster (playing on bar box), or just tricky racks in general. That's real tough action for me. Typically after a while, the silly mistakes go away, I get more and more in stroke, dial in a consistent pace and cadence, and almost always start breaking much better. The tricky racks seem few and far between and everything is just easier and more fluid. I have a scoreboard on the wall, so rarely finish in a day and basically have action whenever I want. It's very typical for me to get to negative 4-6 at some point. Then I'll set a goal to try to get it back to even or plus 1 by the time I quit and most times can do that.
 

BRussell

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I often play 10 ahead sets vs the ghost and often have a similar experience. For myself, although I tend to be a little sloppier in the first hour or two, the biggest difference is the break. Many times it takes me a couple hours to really get it dialed in. When I first get started, I'm often breaking dry, getting a cluster (playing on bar box), or just tricky racks in general. That's real tough action for me. Typically after a while, the silly mistakes go away, I get more and more in stroke, dial in a consistent pace and cadence, and almost always start breaking much better. The tricky racks seem few and far between and everything is just easier and more fluid. I have a scoreboard on the wall, so rarely finish in a day and basically have action whenever I want. It's very typical for me to get to negative 4-6 at some point. Then I'll set a goal to try to get it back to even or plus 1 by the time I quit and most times can do that.
10-ahead ghost, pretty impressive practice session.

I agree that my break improves a lot as well.
 

gregcantrall

Center Ball
Silver Member
This is the key.

All mental distractions are gone.
Swinging the cue with focus and pleasure.
Having fun.

Close to Flow
👍
The cloth , cue ball, rails and environment are variables that make for adjustment to calculations for taking the cueball to it's final destination.
Those calculations adjustments are much harder if my opponent is flawless. 10 games was my time out to ask self if I can get out of this hole I have dug. I have 2 escapes that come to mind. The first was at $10 a game I was down 10 games and he was just not giving me a breath. I offered the option of quiting or going to the adjacent table that had different cloth for $20. That slowed him enough that I could get settled and recover my money plus a $160 iou as he was flat broke. Guess he should have been happy with the 100.🤷
 

Lynch

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
It's something I like a lot and started doing during covid. However, since I have a scoreboard of sorts on the wall with multiple categories with beads, I only play when I want and have enough time to at least play for a couple hours. I keep lots of stats too, which makes it a little funner, since I have so many categories. Like I keep track of break n runs, number of attempted break and runs, and streaks in general and things like that. Ive also done races to 100 playing a variation of the 8ball ghost and keep track on wet breaks without scratching, dry breaks, scratches, misses, streaks, etc. The key is to never touch the scoreboard or at least mess with the categories that I'm playing for the current game. I almost exclusively play alone, have little kids, etc., so it's just stuff that I can do to keep myself sharp and interested in general. So I've had sets take 3-5 months for example, where I play for a few hours, resume in a day, week, month, etc. I have a little notebook where I typically write at least a paragraph each night and log the score, so if it's been 2 months and I can't remember what's going on, I just look there lol. Then I can still hit balls a few days a week, for 20 minutes here and there, doing whatever and not worry about the current set, until I feel up for it.
 

The_JV

'AZB_Combat Certified'
Two aspects to requiring a warm up:

1: You're physically tight so you need to stretch through your playing mechanics until your muscles relax. You don't actually need game play for this. Try yoga ;)

2: You're unaccustomed to the table your playing on and the time you take to figure it out is the equivalent of a "lengthy warm up". A smart player should approach the game differently when the table is foreign to them. Your patterns should be more basic, use more natural angles and utilize less action on the CB. As you 'figure it out' you can begin to introduce more of normal play. If you don't throttle back your game in the earlier stages and struggle, the session, as a whole, will appear to have a lengthy 'warm up' period.

Number 2, is the reason why pros on the circuit have such an advantage over the dead money in Open events. Nearly all bangers are 'local pros' because they are dialed in to their room's tables, but can't string together 4 balls on new cloth / rails / tight pockets.
 

ChrisinNC

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I’ve been playing the ghost and recording the results, hoping to see a trend upwards over time.

But one thing I’ve noticed for sure is that I improve as I play a couple sets, over the course of an hour or so.

It sounds obvious, but it’s the degree to which I improve that‘s been surprising. It’s not uncommon for me to lose the first set 5-0 or 5-1, and win the 4th or 5th set 5-0 or 5-1. It doesn’t seem to help if I shoot for 5 minutes first, I need to play a couple sets.

Anyone else find that you need a significant warm-up?
Yes, and it gets worse the older we get. I often get knocked out of our weekly double elimination tournaments before I have a chance to find my stroke. If I can hang in there long enough, I generally play much better in the later rounds. That didn’t used to be the case even 10 years ago, but now at age 66, it’s completely different.

That’s why I much prefer a heads up $ session to a tournament. In a heads up session against a player of close to equal skill level, you might start out slow the first set or two, but in constant play you’ll eventually settle in and find your game/stroke. If you don’t and dig too deep of a hole, you need to pull up and cut your losses.
 
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DynoDan

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Yes, and it gets worse the older we get. I often get knocked out of our weekly double elimination tournaments before I have a chance to find my stroke. If I can hang in there long enough, I generally play much better in the later rounds. That didn’t used to be the case even 10 years ago, but now at age 66, it’s completely different.

That’s why I much prefer a heads up $ session to a tournament. In a heads up session against a player of close to equal skill level, you might start out slow the first set or two, but in constant play you’ll eventually settle in and find your game/stroke. If you don’t and dig too deep of a hole, you need to pull up and cut your losses.
Even worse, I‘m such a night owl, by the the time I get to the room, line up a match, and finally get into the zone, they close the place & throw us out.
 

Tennesseejoe

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I found it hard to loosen up for league play because there is very little warm up time. Drinking a couple bottles of water turned the tide for me. Try it.
 

Chili Palmer

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
skiergd011013, Howdy;
Know that of which you speak. 60 miles to Las Cruces, NM and nearest pool hall (Olhausen/Jerry O's).
The rest are Private Clubs which allow smoking or 1 or 2 bars with fights. Can't wash the smoke smell
outta my clothes so I don't go to the clubs. My choice.

hank

Alamogordo, T&C, Silver City? Just curious, I've spent a lot of time in NM and love the country, the bars, not so much.
 
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