Follow through and elbow drop

[CoachGavin]

Hello,

What do you guys consider a good follow through? I know it depends on whether a player drops his elbow but for instance I wondered if anyone knew how much some of the top professionals follow through ie ronnie, selby, murphy etc.

I know from coaching that most people who come to me start off with a short follow through of 1-3 inches and that made me consider how far was a really good cueist following through.

I also wondered whether you could have too much follow through or is it always good as long as you finish at the chest and dont play using the shoulder?

[abhi147]

The lengths of my arms is pretty small though I am 5'11
a 57.5 inch cue seems a tad longer to me so you could guess

Anyawys I get about 3-4 inches of follow through and finish on chest to get anymore than that I will need to literally sleep on the table
Even then I still do quite well with the white ball

[Terry Davidson]

Gavin:

From watching the pros on DVDs here and being able to do slow motion and stop action shots I've determined that most of the pros generally follow-through 5-6 inches with (as far as I can determine) Ronnie and Mark Selby going through on some shots 7-8 inches.

After having done that analysis I've gone down and done a measurement with myself and on a low power shot I get about 6 inches and on a higher power shot like deep screw I get up to 8 inches.

So obviously I'm dropping my elbow more when I use a longer backswing for more power and also because the weight of the cue alone is taking my grip further.

However, I will admit I've been working on getting my chest (pectoral muscle) out of the way of the grip hand so I can get more follow-through.

I have also noticed with my students they normally start out with 1-3 inches of follow through (generally) and just can't do a deep screw. I've found the first problem they ALL have is they are more than 1in from the cueball in the address position so that takes that distance right off the amout of follow-through they can get anyways.

The next issue is the length of backswing. Once I get them to increase that for a power shot (although initially their accuracy goes down of course) then automatically their follow-through increases.

The last item I teach is to get them to drive their grip hand through to their chest on EVERY shot, no matter what the power. At first this seems unnatural to them but inside of a 2hr lesson they will normally get it.

As an example, I had 'waynnc' from here in for a 2hr lesson this week and he wasn't able to do a deep screw at all. I got him to where he could screw back to the baulk line on the long straight blues from the baulk line and that is a difficult shot on my table (I will admit the accuracy suffered initially).

To answer your question, in order to give a player the most options in positional play and allow him to use any amount of power required I would say follow-through should be 5-6 inches for normal power shots and up to 9 inches on higher power shots (with a larger elbow drop thrown in of course).

Terry

[CoachGavin]

Thanks Terry.

Would have to agree with you on your points. I have found the same with most students coming with short follow throughs.

How are you trying to get your pectoral muscle out of the way. Are you turning more?

Would you ever say that your follow through can be too long to lose accuracy because there will be a point when you go completely under the chest and the grip will be under the chin. when working on your follow through did you measure out your 8 inches or whatever and find where you grip needed to finish to achieve this or did you play the shots and just see how much follow through you had afterwards?

[checkSide]

Would you ever say that your follow through can be too long to lose accuracy because there will be a point when you go completely under the chest and the grip will be under the chin. when working on your follow through did you measure out your 8 inches or whatever and find where you grip needed to finish to achieve this or did you play the shots and just see how much follow through you had afterwards?

I think if you follow through too much you start throwing yourself into the shot, and there is a lot of movement.

I think there is an optimal amount of controllable follow through. After elbow drop it is around 8 inches.

You will never feel as though you are playing the shot as hard as you can, but accuracy suffers greatly the more you follow through.

If you watch Robertson, his bridge is very close to the cueball, and his follow through isn't that big.

Cheers

[Freddie Ng]

Gavin:

From watching the pros on DVDs here and being able to do slow motion and stop action shots I've determined that most of the pros generally follow-through 5-6 inches with (as far as I can determine) Ronnie and Mark Selby going through on some shots 7-8 inches.

After having done that analysis I've gone down and done a measurement with myself and on a low power shot I get about 6 inches and on a higher power shot like deep screw I get up to 8 inches.

So obviously I'm dropping my elbow more when I use a longer backswing for more power and also because the weight of the cue alone is taking my grip further.

However, I will admit I've been working on getting my chest (pectoral muscle) out of the way of the grip hand so I can get more follow-through.

I have also noticed with my students they normally start out with 1-3 inches of follow through (generally) and just can't do a deep screw. I've found the first problem they ALL have is they are more than 1in from the cueball in the address position so that takes that distance right off the amout of follow-through they can get anyways.

The next issue is the length of backswing. Once I get them to increase that for a power shot (although initially their accuracy goes down of course) then automatically their follow-through increases.

The last item I teach is to get them to drive their grip hand through to their chest on EVERY shot, no matter what the power. At first this seems unnatural to them but inside of a 2hr lesson they will normally get it.

As an example, I had 'waynnc' from here in for a 2hr lesson this week and he wasn't able to do a deep screw at all. I got him to where he could screw back to the baulk line on the long straight blues from the baulk line and that is a difficult shot on my table (I will admit the accuracy suffered initially).

To answer your question, in order to give a player the most options in positional play and allow him to use any amount of power required I would say follow-through should be 5-6 inches for normal power shots and up to 9 inches on higher power shots (with a larger elbow drop thrown in of course).

Terry

Thanks for the great advise again Terry

[Terry Davidson]

Gavin:

I get my cue more under my right armpit (and thus the pectoral muscle out of the way) by pushing my right hip over to the left a bit more and I achieve this by bending the left leg a touch more. I've found I can comfortably move the cue to about 2in to the right of my nipple and off the swell of the pectoral.

On the follow-through measurements, when I try a long blue with deep screw and video myself (plus drop the cue and check distance past baulkline) I normally get about 8in of follow-through and am able to easily screw back to the baulk line with accuracy on every shot. I drop the elbow about 2in although this is hard to measure accurately and I'm guesstimating there.

My backswing for a power shot is around 7-8in however if I really try and push the limits and backswing long, bringing the ferrule back to my 'V' and then 'driving' the cue through and really dropping the elbow about 4in I find I get tremendous scew, getting the cueball to rocket into the yellow pocket (sometimes) but my accuracy suffers big-time on this kind of power shot and besides which I doubt I would ever use it in a frame.

This is with a reasonably paced 6811 cloth and tournament balls. I have a new #10 cloth here which I will be putting on the table in a few months so I will try these deep screw shots again with a very fast cloth and see what happens. When I was at Terry Griffiths' room in Llanelli and practiced on his match table (Hainsworth Super Fine) I found I really had to back off on my power when screwing a shot as it would go at least 1.5 times the distance on my own table, maybe more.

But...I still can't duplicate that screw shot Neil Robertson did for 'Shot of the Tournament' in the 2008? Worlds where he screwed an 11ft shot back to behind the brown ball. Maybe with a new #10 cloth perhaps

Terry

[CoachGavin]

Thats what I thought you were going to say. I have tried doing the same thing and foound that my follow through is less restricted. On the follow through I have found that if you start at address with your cue very parallel it is very difficult to drop the elbow. Perhaps this is why Selby and Ronnie both have long follow throughs because they both seem to have more of a slope down to the white on address. If you watch the video posted of Del coaching he advocates a slight downward slope so that there is room for cue to go through the white parallel. To me it seems a bit of a balance. If you start off completely parallel then your follow through will be shorter whereas start with too high a slope and you will end up just dropping the butt down instead of actually playing through the white.

I have also tried experimenting with a very long follow through and have found that you can get a huge amount of spin but accuracy does seem to drop once you get past the 8 inches sort of mark. However sometimes I have found it useful in matches when the pot is fairly easy and I need a lot of cue power to move the white. This is really the only time I would use it.

[Terry Davidson]

Gavin:

On that 'angle of attack' of the cue I've found that I do have my cue very close to the cushion, expecially on screw shots.

I believe I saw something with Del where he recommended at least one chalk piece height off the cushion and Nic Barrow recommends the same thing.

I also notice my cue butt does touch the cushion when I follow through on a deep screw shot, with or without power.

Terry