Right handed, left leg moves naturally and immediately after a shot

[mchpddl1]

Has anyone experience this i am having:

Right handed, left leg moves naturally and immediately after a shot. My leg seems to move naturally i have no ideas why, very strange. Seems my leg moves for adjusting the alignement or something

[nrage]

By "moving" you mean bending/straightening, or does the foot shift on the floor? Does it happen with shots of all different power levels, or just hard ones for example?

[mchpddl1]

left leg shift across the floor. on most shots

[nrage]

left leg shift across the floor. on most shots

In which direction? How much weight are you putting on each foot. What sort of footwear are you wearing and what is the floor covering?

[Terry Davidson]

In approximate terms, the weight should be around 45% evenly shared between both legs and feet and the remaining 10% by the right elbow, forearm and bridge.

If you had 45% or so of your body weight on the left foot it would be unable to move so I assume you are placing most of your weight on the straight right leg. Move some of your body weight to the left side for more stability.

If this is happening after the shot then I don't expect in itself it is causing problems however there may be something called 'anticipatory movement' in which your brain unconciously plans or sets up the move and the danger with this kind of thing is it usually gets earlier and earlier in the delivery until it starts happening as you are delivering the cue so the most important thing is to put a stop to it

Terry

[TomBombd]

In approximate terms, the weight should be around 45% evenly shared between both legs and feet and the remaining 10% by the right elbow, forearm and bridge.

Interesting! I always thought the straight leg should be weight-dominant. I'm probably like 70%-20%-10%. That's not even close to the textbook weight distribution then! I lock my right knee in my stance, and I did actually notice it getting sore when doing work + practice in a single day.

Gotta look into this.

[DeanH]

... the remaining 10% by the right elbow, forearm and bridge.

Obvious I know but just to clarify:
Right elbow, forearm and bridge for a Left Handed Player
Left elbow, forearm and bridge for a Right Handed Player

[DeanH]

I lock my right knee in my stance, and I did actually notice it getting sore when doing work + practice in a single day.

Many, many years ago, I used to "lock" my right knee, even to extent of a painfully-looking "flick to lock", this was all unintentional and as you say it would be very sore the next day, or even later that same day.
After a friend brought my attention to what I was doing, I consciously did not "lock" the knee but just have the leg in a straight position that is very comfortable and ever since I have not had the discomfort
As a result of this, natuarlly my weight distribution is fairly balanced between the legs, but if truth be known and put figures on it, I probably have 95% in the legs and only 5% in the bridge arm.
When I went to Wayne Griffith (some years ago) we looked at how little weight I had on the arm/hand and I have increased this (to the ~5%) not by forcing the weight to the arm/hand but a small adjustment in my stance which naturally adds weight due to a greater "lean" into the shot.
Cheers

[Terry Davidson]

DeanH has it correct, I meant to say the LEFT forearm, elbow and bridge hand (for a right-hander). Just to make sure we don't end up with anyone twisted like a pretzel let me re-state.

Weight should be distributed approximately 45% on each leg/foot with the back leg straight (if locking the knee causes discomfort then ease off on the lock as discomfort is the FIRST ENEMY of the set-up). The remaining 10% (or so) should be on the BRIDGE ARM elbow, forearm and bridge for greater stability on the shot.

I'm just going into my third day of doing video analysis as my game has developed a few glitches over the past 6 months or so. First thing I noticed was my upper body moving to the right about 1/4" before I strike the cueball which is causing me to cue right-to-left and missing a lot of long pots. Then I noticed I was not putting any weight at all onto the left elbow, forearm and bridge. I also noticed I was ending up with left-hand side on most power shots like a straight black but screwing back off the cushion and out to the middle of the table.

This developed through a slow alteration in my weight distribution on my legs where I was trying to put more weight on my straight leg for more stability however I've discovered that is the absolute WRONG way to go! As soon as I altered and put a little more weight on the left side of my body by swinging the hips perhaps another 1-2 inches to the left and ensuring I had some weight on my left elbow I noticed the problem was NEARLY solved (reason is I've been playing this way every day for so long that this little movement to the right has become NATURAL in my delivery and I'm going to have to work really hard to stay absolutely still during the delivery).

Let me emphasize THIS IS NOT AN EASY THING TO DO as once an error in technique becomes ingrained it is a real b*tch to get rid of and will take me a lot of solo practice until I can hit that cueball at P10 (maximum power) and not have my head/shoulder/upper body move at all.

The real eye-opener was watching my delivery using Kinovea and frame-by-frame and I could actually see the tip of the cue going very slightly right (perhaps 2mm) but that is more than enough to get unintentional side and causes the brain to attempt to correct and I ended up striking the cueball right-to-left with the tip ending up around 10mm to the left or so at the end of the delivery. Then the worst thing is I was unconciously moving the cue back online at the very end of the delivery and the only way I could see that was the frame-by-frame analysis.

My recomnmendation to anyone who is serious about improving (not necessarily to turn pro, just get the game standard up a bit) is to invest in a decent video camera (maybe 200quid max, but they're useful for a lot of other things too) and a tripod and video yourself. It's a little handier for me as I have my computer right here beside the table and can do almost real-time analysis whereas if you have to go to a club that may be a little more difficult but you can watch in slow-mo on a good camera (don't know about frame-by-frame). Upper body movement is sometimes hard to see but even if it's only 2-3mm like mine is right now it will cause missed pots or too thick/thin on a safety shot and it should be eliminated to the point where if you could set a brimming full glass of water on your head you won't spill a drop with a P5-6 power shot (doing that at P10 would be beyond almost anyone except maybe a very top pro, for instance Steve Davis in his prime - although these days he does have a little upper body movement and it is costing him)

Terry