Pause Pause Push, but how far?

[EvilDealer]

Sorry if this kind of thing has been asked before but I would like to tell my own story...
When I was a nipper I had a coaching session off Graham Miles, the old pot black champion from years ago. He was insistent the the pause-pause-push method was the way to go and gave consistent results. At the time I didn't take this method to seriously, but over the years I have changed and tinkered with my style and use it a lot now.
I tend not to have to long a pause on my back swing, in fact hardly any. but my question is more about the speed of the back swing and how far it should go back as a rule.
I'm currently trying to keep the back swing moderately slow and extending the back swing. Its working ok, apart from the odd shot which I time really badly.

Would like to hear your views, especial from the coaches amongst us.
:snooker:
Cheers
D

[Terry Davidson]

evil:

There are 2 different thoughts on backswing length amongst all the coaches I know and have studied.

One school of thought (advocated by Terry Griffiths) is the final backswing should be proportional to the power required. This one makes sense to me for those who haven't started out with the second method below because it means you use around the same acceleration for every shot and develop the power from the length of backswing.

The second school advocates using a long backswing all the time for every shot. (See Mark Selby as one of the prime examples along with O'Sullivan, Higgins, Murphy, Maguire and most of the other top 16 except maybe Graeme Dott). This means for low power shots you are actually accelerating the cue less or in other words changing the way you play various shots.

Although I use the first method and I've noticed that the top pros also use a shorter backswing on very low power shots I'm of 2 minds becasue ALL the top players use the long backswing all the time method.

I believe if you can master the long backswing method you will be more accurate and consistent however if you learned using the proportional method then it's harder to change.

Good luck

Terry

[Theguywithaplan]

evil:

There are 2 different thoughts on backswing length amongst all the coaches I know and have studied.

One school of thought (advocated by Terry Griffiths) is the final backswing should be proportional to the power required. This one makes sense to me for those who haven't started out with the second method below because it means you use around the same acceleration for every shot and develop the power from the length of backswing.

The second school advocates using a long backswing all the time for every shot. (See Mark Selby as one of the prime examples along with O'Sullivan, Higgins, Murphy, Maguire and most of the other top 16 except maybe Graeme Dott). This means for low power shots you are actually accelerating the cue less or in other words changing the way you play various shots.

Although I use the first method and I've noticed that the top pros also use a shorter backswing on very low power shots I'm of 2 minds becasue ALL the top players use the long backswing all the time method.

I believe if you can master the long backswing method you will be more accurate and consistent however if you learned using the proportional method then it's harder to change.

Good luck

Terry

Another member of the top 16 who uses the proportional backswing is Ding. It's about with what's more natural and comfortable for you personally I think.

[888]

http://www.snookergames.co.uk/glossary1.html

[The Doctor]

Its been discussed several times before but i would advocate a backswing proportional to the strength of shot(as described by Terry).
A long backswing will result in the need to control the speed of the follow through(as opposed to a constant cue speed), this is much tougher to do, especially constantly.
As for the pause, i would encourage a front pause after initial feathers, with the controlled SLOW backswing to calculate pace/speed of shot. and final pause at end of backswing to allow the eyes to focus on object ball before delivery of the cue.
This method is the easiest to repeat and therefor to brings more consistent results.
The long backswing does appear to give a smooth delivery of the cue but is far more difficult to repeat and does not give any advantage over method 1 IMO.