any coaching advice on these clips much appreciated

[snooks1000]

http://www.youtube.com/user/killamabob?feature=mhee

Hi all,

if any coaches could give me any advice on these clips it would be greatly appreciated. A couple of the clips are 3+ mins long, so i don't expect anyone to want to sit through every shot haha. Confidence is very low at times in practice right now, but every now and again something clicks and i knock in a nice break. Far too much lately though i'm just mucking up good chance after good chance.

[mattyshinobi22]

looked good to me mate, you have a solid stance, your cueing arm hangs vertical. cueing through ball. you pause etc.
something i think might help you is placing your cue in the line of aim and walking into shot. least this give you best chance of potting the ball as you know for certain you are in the line of aim for the shot. Also maybe do one more feather before final back swing. keep it to three feathers for every shot. so you have more of a routine. apart form that mate ya look to be doing everything right and am sure wont be too long before you are consistant in your breaks.

am no coach so take my info with a pinch of salt, Terry's the man on here for coaching. am sure he will have some info for you.

[hotpot]

Am a firm believer that if you can play to a certain standard on a quite a regular basis then its all in the mind . Your mindset controls how you play ie you go to the table one day feeling calm relaxed good in yourself , you tend to feel good on the table reaxed in control ofthe cue your mindset etc , other days your aggitated the slightest thing bothers you , your figgety looking for problems and dont feel comfortable , start doubting yourself , looking at your tip etc etc . Once you have the ability then its all in the head ,pheraps i,m barking up the wrong treee bu i firmly believe it . Its all about the inner game .

[stewart31]

all looks well to me, its practice and more practice and make it count

[snooks1000]

thanks for the feedback so far fellas. Would love to just have a bit of consistency!

[Terry Davidson]

snooks1000:

OK, I looked at 3 of your videos right through but by the time I got to video number 4 I was sea-sick from all the camera movement. Try and get a tripod for the camera. They are not too expensive and they are light enough the camera can be moved around easily, but mostly they are STABLE.

There's not an awful lot wrong with your technique but I did notice a couple of minor points:

1. You are standing just a bit too upright and this makes the butt of the cue off the cushion by 3-4" and that is a bit too high and also means you are 'scooping' into the cueball and unless your coordination is perfect you can't hit the cueball at the exact height you intended (although you weren't playing position on these videos).
2. I noticed some little bit of head movement on some shots, especially where you used some power. Stop the head movement which weirdly enough because it's pretty rare is your head goes DOWN sometimes too. Stop ALL head movement.
3. I think you might be limited with your power strokes as your elbow hardly moves at all in the backswing which appears to be only about 5" long and I think you should increase that to at least 8" for a power stroke BUT you have to remember to keep the cue on the same plane as much as possible so you will have to learn to drop the elbow at the end of the backswing.
4. You don't drop the elbow at the end of the delivery, even on a power shot and therefore you're not getting a lot of power into the shot as you are not at maximum acceleration as you go through the cueball. Your follow-through appears to be only about 4" or so and you should increase that to at least 6" by dropping the elbow at the end of the delivery. This is difficult to learn and will cause you to change your timing a bit as you should be taking a little longer on the backswing due to the increased length.
5. On the shorter video where you had the 5 straight blues it looked to me like you weren't lined up on the shot correctly for the first 3 or them and it appeared as if your cue was actually lined up to the right of the line of aim. Now this could have been an optical illusion but you did miss every one of those pots to (my right) left of the pocket. On the 4th shot the line of aim looked a bit better but still appeared to be off a bit. On the 5th one you appears to be lined up correctly and indeed you did pot the ball.

Point 5 above is the way you are getting down into the shot and it ends up you are selecting the wrong line of aim. You must do all your aiming while standing behind the shot and then taking the 2 steps and in your case left foot first with the laces of the shoe on the cue's line of aim and then DROPPING THE HEAD ABSOLUTELY STRAIGHT DOWN with no coming into the shot from the right as you seem to be doing.

In order to check this...line up a straight blue from the baulkline so it is lined up EXACTLY centre-pocket on the top pocket. Now get down into the address position, do your feathering and without taking the shot drop your cue gently to the pocket leather of the yellow (or green) pocket and leaving the cue there stand up and check and see if the cue is EXACTLY in the centre of the leather. If it isn't then you have an alignment problem you will have to correct.

If you have an alignment problem to correct, do this exercise until you can accomplish it fairly frequently. Place 3 object balls together on the top cushion behind the black spot. Remove the centre ball and move the remaining 2 balls out BY NO MORE THAN 1/8th INCH. Now place cueball just ahead of the brown spot and at slow pace (I hope the table is level) try and hit the cushion between the balls without moving them. As you are more successful, increase the power a bit but don't try it at maximum power as no one can do that consistently. Once you get this shot mastered you MUST be lining up correctly.

I hope this long-winded reply helps you a bit

Terry

[snooks1000]

Thank you very much for the reply Terry, firstly sorry if i made you feel sick haha. I sometimes do drop the elbow but then sometimes get it in my head that i'm not dropping it correctly so i switch back to not dropping it at all. I'm a constant tweaker Terry and never had enough confidence in my technique to stick to one thing. Sometimes i cock the wrist, othertimes not etc.

just going by what you watched, what would you say to work on mainly first? I ask this as yourself and other coaches advocate working on one thing at a time? How would i correct being too upright as you put it? Unfortunately i'm 6'4". Maybe stand further away from the shot so i'm leaning into it more?

Thanks again, James.

[snooks1000]

one more thing. Does anyone who has watched some of the clips think that my cue is long enough for me?

[Terry Davidson]

snooks:

The first and most important thing to concentrate on is keeping the upper body ABSOLUTELY still at any power. Use a swing thought like 'keep chin on cue' or something like that as any head movement at all shows that you are getting the shoulder muscle into the shot. This happens because of your shorter backswing on power shots.

As you are fairly tall with longer arms than most it isn't necessary for you to drop the elbow all the time. The length of your backswing should be proportional to the amount of power the shot requires and generally a backswing over 4" (maybe 5" in your case) should have the elbow dropping slightly and then (for example) on a long blue from the baulkline where you are trying to screw the cueball back into the yellow or green pocket, your backswing should be at least 8-9" and the elbow should drop at least an inch at the end of the backswing.

Also, in a power shot you should drive the cue through the cueball and keep accelerating the cue right to the end of the stroke when the back of the thumb hits the chest and on these power shots the elbow should drop around 2" or so and this ensures you are continuing the acceleration all the way.

The second thing you should work on is getting the butt of the cue down to about 1" off the cushion in the address position and keep it at that height for both backswing a delivery (when you drop the elbow on the delivery sometimes the butt will drop a bit and sometimes hits the cushion or rail. You can achieve this by spreading your stance maybe another 3-4" and bending your right leg a bit more. DO NOT TRY AND MOVE BACK MORE FROM THE CUEBALL as this will force a change in technique and REALLY screw you up!

On your question of cue length, at your height I think a 58" cue would be the right length but I don't know what length the cue in the videos was but you didn't look cramped to me.

Terry

[snooks1000]

Thanks again Terry.

i tried the long straight blues idea, and found the cue to be running along the centre fall of the yellow pocket (which is obviously a different spot to the centre of the leather from that angle). I tried your suggestion of placing 2 balls only slightly apart and was surprised at my accuracy at this exercise.
When i then returned to attempting to pot long blues i missed about the first 10 all to the same side as in the clip, and then suddenly potted 5 in a row without touching the jaws. I think there is definitely something in this idea that i might be 'scooping' at the cueball a little bit and maybe not striking the cueball exactly where i am aiming.

James

[Terry Davidson]

snooks:

If you didn't cheat a bit and had those two balls only 2-1/16" + an 1/8" on each side then you must be cueing straight because that's a REALLY difficult exercise from the brown spot to the top cushion. It puts me at a loss as to why you have some difficulty with the long straight blues.

So if you are not moving those two balls then your next step to work on is getting down into the shot such that the butt of your cue is only around 1" off the cushion AND the butt stays at that same level during the feathering, backswing and delivery. This will mean dropping your elbow a little bit on the backswing for over 4-5" or so and then on delivery on a power shot dropping the elbow around 2" at the end of the delivery. The danger here on the delivery is a player will start dropping the elbow early in the delivery and the tip of the cue will rise as the butt goes down and it also means the shoulder muscle is getting into the delivery before the strike of the cueball, which is definitely bad (except for Ronnie of course, who does that a lot)

Terry

[snooks1000]

so does the cue not need to come through parallel with the bed of the table? Or is this only after the cueball has been struck? When i'm playing shots where the cueball is a good 2-3 foot in towards the centre of the table, it feels like i'm not cueing far above the cushion at all. But when i watch clips back of me playing, the butt end does look too high and i'm sure i must be scooping a bit

[snooks1000]

Watching back some of the clips i posted again, the butt end is pretty high on most shots. Much more than i realised! On the 4th clip (just after 2 mins) i play a shot bridging off the cushion, and its scary how much it appears i am nowhere close to the correct line of aim, and lo and behold i dont even get the pot in the jaws!

All your advice has been very much appreciated Terry. I think i really need to drill in keeping the upper body perfectly still and widening the stance a bit. And try and work out why i'm miles off the correct line of aim on some shots. By the way my cue is 59" but i sometimes feel i should go a bit longer

[gem]

one more thing. Does anyone who has watched some of the clips think that my cue is long enough for me?

My first thoughts were that the cue lookes a touch on the short side.
Not everyone advises a longer cue but it does work for me.
I have settled on a 59 1/2" cue and feel better on long potts with this length.

What length is the cue you are using?

You might find it worse with a longer cue so you could experiment first. I think it can depend more on arm length than actual height.

[snooks1000]

My first thoughts were that the cue lookes a touch on the short side.
Not everyone advises a longer cue but it does work for me.
I have settled on a 59 1/2" cue and feel better on long potts with this length.

What length is the cue you are using?

You might find it worse with a longer cue so you could experiment first. I think it can depend more on arm length than actual height.

Hi, thanks for your reply. My cue is 59". I had one at 60.5" and it felt about right length wise but was too heavy and a bit whippy but at times i knocked some nice breaks in with it