When Working on Your Fundamentals - Maximum Number of Key Thoughts You Can Work On at One Time

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ChrisinNC

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I’m thinking 2 or 3 at the most, even for experience players who have played for years trying to make changes. Otherwise your brain / thoughts can get overloaded while you are set up over the ball.

For beginner level players, even more than one change at time might be too much to handle. Opinions?
 
I have been playing about 20 years. I recently have been trying to concentrate on 2 things at once, keeping my elbow straight when following through, and keeping as loose a grip on the cue as possible. These both increase my general accuracy. But it is very difficult to keep remembering and applying them on every shot every time.

-dj
 
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DJKeys said:
I have been playing about 20 years. I recently have been trying to concentrate on 2 things at once, keeping my elbow straight when following through, and keeping as loose a grip on the cue as possible. These both increase my general accuracy. But it is very difficult to keep remembering and applying them on every shot every time.

-dj
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Same.
I have a few things I think about during the PSR process and the stroke.
After a miss, I will often remember what I forgot to do.
It is maddening when this happens, because my pocketing success is easily twice as high when I focus on the things on my mental checklist. My first rack or two at the table are typically my best because my focus is at its highest point at the start. It is after, when I get comfortable, that I skip steps and take things for granted. This is when I invite mistakes into my game.
 
ChrisinNC said:
I’m thinking 2 or 3 at the most, even for experience players who have played for years trying to make changes. Otherwise your brain / thoughts can get overloaded while you are set up over the ball.

For beginner level players, even more than one change at time might be too much to handle. Opinions?
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The main things I am focusing on now is "stay completely still, think about shooting straight while shooting the cue ball and no elbow drop.
 
I firmly believe if you wanna work to improve your game you should always focus only one thing at time. Everything else you kinda give polite nod but they should fall to background.

Let´s say as example you are doing basic line up drill where 15 balls are in row. You have decided you want to improve 3 things mostly. Speed, staying still on shot and stroking.
Then I believe you should try run all balls like normally you would do, but it should not be goal. Success would be to focus that one thing at any shot you want work.
Staying still. Before you go down you should think your plan to next shot and think speed and spin to get there. Then when you go down and are ready to pull trigger just put all your focus to monitor yourself. "See" and feel how well you did stay still. Every time you get a pass from yourself from staying still = success. Drill outcome is not important. You just use the drill distract yourself a little so it is more game like situation.

Ok. You now done drill(or whatever you do, anyways it should be easyish so you can focus just one main thing) many times just staying still and notice a lot of improvement. You then do same thing but not stop thinking about your body movement but now last thing you focus on shot is only speed. and most important when learning speed is to also get feedback from shot to brain.

and so on.

Also in game it is good thing to just choose what is most important thing in your next shot?
Focus on that and let everything else kinda fade to background. I learned this from one 3-cushion master player.
 
It depends on what you're trying to change. Some things work together which makes it unrealistic to change one without the other. For example: Feet position and balance (how you're leaning) go together. You can't fix one without fixing the other. Another example: Arm swing, grip and eyes go together.

Then sometimes you have to leave a major problem alone because another problem takes priority. I have often let beginners stay with a bad bridge for a while, because I'm already taking them out of their comfort zone by adjusting their stance, which may take priority for that person. Too much discomfort and unfamiliarity has diminishing returns.
 
One thing at a time unless they are interconnected like Fran mentions about stance and balance.

I think we have all heard the story about somebody only being allowed to have the cue ball for the first month of teaching. Few have the patience for that but spending fifteen minutes or so just hitting the cue ball at the beginning of the session has value.

Another trick, hit the cue ball without having a target. This will make you more aware of your stance and stroke while shooting and you may find flaws you never noticed in normal play. I stole this from shooting a magazine or two of bullets at the berm with no target. You notice things you never notice when focused on a target.

Hu
 
ShootingArts said:
One thing at a time unless they are interconnected like Fran mentions about stance and balance.

I think we have all heard the story about somebody only being allowed to have the cue ball for the first month of teaching. Few have the patience for that but spending fifteen minutes or so just hitting the cue ball at the beginning of the session has value.

Another trick, hit the cue ball without having a target. This will make you more aware of your stance and stroke while shooting and you may find flaws you never noticed in normal play. I stole this from shooting a magazine or two of bullets at the berm with no target. You notice things you never notice when focused on a target.

Hu
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I start every practice with hitting the cue ball the length of the table and back to the tip of my cue. It’s all about fundamentals.
 
After years and years of study and practice my main observation concerning sports fundamentals regarding high skill achievement is that the ability to have a relaxed body and a focused eye at the point of execution are the main elements of successful sports mechanic fundamentals.

If you can master just those two - and if it is not natural to you - this is very very difficult to achieve with total consistency - you will only then play your best on a consistent basis. All the other fundamental stuff are add- ons that most can achieve to an acceptable degree.
 
In my experience, more than one works fine as long as they don't occur during the same point in time. For example, anything before going down will not intercept with something that you do during the final stroke, so it doesn't hinder you to focus on two changes like that when they never overlap.
 
When practicing I work on 4.....IMO they all tie together so you have to work on all of them together.....Grip, Stance, Posture, Alignment.

My "goal" is to get to where I don't have to think about any of them....and dedicate my focus on the shot and speed when playing.
 
slow backswing and smooth transition
would you separate those when practicing?
 
I saw this in a golf meme a while back. It’s attributed to Sam Snead: "Standing over the shot, put everything out of your mind except one key technical thought and a "feel" for timing."
 
bbb said:
slow backswing and smooth transition
would you separate those when practicing?
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to me that just means working on you stroke. its all one fluid motion imo. don't try to separate the two unless you have some big flaws like a super quik transition. if so go watch some good snooker, those guys draw it ALL the way back/pause/send it.
 
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garczar said:
A lot of top golf teachers will only allow a student to work on one thing when at the range. Humans are great multi-taskers but not when trying to learn something. I think shorter sessions working on one, possibly two, things are more effective than long ones trying to work on too much stuff.
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That is so they can get more lessons.....;)...JK.....Actually what you want is to focus on one "change" at a time........Changing more than one thing at a time you lose you reference to what actually helped or hindered.... You still have all 4 "static" parts of your set up routine that need to be consistent in your practice routine....so you still have to think about all 4 of them.....

But change only 1 at a time so you can track results.

Some will say to use one "key" swing thought while playing a match....IMO doing that will help distract you from thinking about everything else going on and allow you to focus more on the shot at hand.
 
BRKNRUN said:
That is so they can get more lessons.....;)...JK.....Actually what you want is to focus on one "change" at a time........Changing more than one thing at a time you lose you reference to what actually helped or hindered.... You still have all 4 "static" parts of your set up routine that need to be consistent in your practice routine....so you still have to think about all 4 of them.....

But change only 1 at a time so you can track results.

Some will say to use one "key" swing thought while playing a match....IMO doing that will help distract you from thinking about everything else going on and allow you to focus more on the shot at hand.
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I think about bacon. That's it. That's my new key, just think about bacon. All else is secondary. ;)
 
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