Sighting The Ball

[j6uk]

It all starts with the feet. That's tloa (the line of aim). Where did you get that quote from Steve?
Of course you don't pot with your grip!
You pot with your elbow

I'll stick with my feathers thanks

j6uk:

Steve said 'you don't pot balls with your feet' and I put that in quotation marks so you would no. I said you pot with the grip (and forearm of course).

I'll take a look at #21 and see what you asked.

By the way, what does 'loa' mean? Line of aim? (Do you mean the cue's line of aim? What does 'tloa' mean? I've never seen or heard tloa (the line of aim?) before.

The reason I get techy with you is you don't provide any reasons or answers for people to learn from and yet you disagree with a lot of the post of those who are trying to help like myself and nrage. The post above, #43, is a prime example of a whole lot of nothing, or as I said before, you give 'a whole lot of feathers and not much chicken'.

Terry

[j6uk]

I responded to #8. And I guess you attempted to answer in #22?

j6uk:

In post #21 you asked...'I'm not with you. Why would looking at the contact point on the ob keep your cue on line? Who said so?

Terry

[itsnoteasy]

Yes well that would be ob before back pause

If that's correct ,then on on any cut below 1/2 ball you can't be looking at the line of aim, but at the line of sight otherwise you would be looking outside the ob?.
Sorry I must have miss read, as in the next post J6 has said you do look at ob, sorry all this still confuses me .

[j6uk]

Yes Terry you do look at the ob before you release the cue.. and as you know that is not in doubt.
Yes you are over tloa with the bridge hand infront of you. Nothing can take you off that loa and if it does you would need to stand and reset. I agree its not hard

j6uk:
Keeping the eyes on the contact point (or the centre of the ghost cueball_same thing) is what every coach (including myself) says and this includes the top coaches in the world. It's simple hand-eye coordination combined with the brain unconsciously determining the correct off-set and therefore the correct line of aim of the cue. I believe it's commonly called hand-eye coordination.

Do you have another method? If so, you were already asked that by nrage and never did respond to that question posed to you. The only other option I can think of is you look at the cueball at the time of strike however using this method takes away the object ball reference point you originally used for aiming.

So I'll ask again...if you don't agree with keeping the eyes on the object ball at the time of strike then what method do you use to run all those centuries you talked about previously?

Also I really disagree with your statement...'Well as you know the loa (presume Line Of Aim?) has disappeared once you hit the table because you are then over tloa' (? I have no idea what 'tloa' means but the line of aim does not disappear when the bridge hand hits the table. If you drop your head straight down you will still be on the line of aim and you can still see BOB or ghost cueball or arc or whatever you use to sight along the cue when in the address position. It's not rocket science and every player does it and I'll bet you look at the object ball on most shots too.

Terry

[j6uk]

You would be looking at what you need to hit to pot the ball

If that's correct ,then on on any cut below 1/2 ball you can't be looking at the line of aim, but at the line of sight otherwise you would be looking outside the ob?.

[itsnoteasy]

Aha I think I might have figured out one of j6 conundrums, when he says once you are down the line of aim has gone as you are on it, I don't think he means the part between the cue ball and ob ,I think he means the part that goes from cue ball along , or through, the table back to you down to the floor and through the foot, this part has gone as you are lying on it, is this what you mean?.

[vmax4steve]

The aiming is done standing and mirroring the back swing is cueing straight..but what do I know

Tell that to someone who has been playing for ten years with a high break of twenty four and watch him improve.
What do you know j6 ?
Not much I would say. Thats the problem with natural players, they don't know what they do exactly because it just happens for them.
You pot balls with your feet,
the line of aim is gone as soon as you get down,
the line of aim cannot be lost unless you get back up

WTF is any of this saying to anyone who can't play the game. They need details not ambiguity, clearly defined steps to take that they can follow to get to the core of their problem/s, not a riddle to work out.

[j6uk]

Your are funny but can you please reply to post #21 first?
Oh and where's the ambiguity in my post #18?

Tell that to someone who has been playing for ten years with a high break of twenty four and watch him improve.
What do you know j6 ?
Not much I would say. Thats the problem with natural players, they don't know what they do exactly because it just happens for them.
You pot balls with your feet,
the line of aim is gone as soon as you get down,
the line of aim cannot be lost unless you get back up

WTF is any of this saying to anyone who can't play the game. They need details not ambiguity, clearly defined steps to take that they can follow to get to the core of their problem/s, not a riddle to work out.

[Terry Davidson]

j6uk:

Steve Davis said 'you don't pot the balls with your feet' in his blog on MySpace a few years ago.

I sure can't follow your reasoning as the cue is not connected to either the feet or the elbow, it's connected to the grip and what drives the grip is the lower muscle on the upper arm (when in the address position) and the elbow is actually a silent partner and acts as just a hinge for the piston, which is the forearm and grip.

To show you a little more clearly...a player can have a good stance with the arch of the right foot on the line of aim, he can drop the head straight down and he can use the forearm as a pure hinge BUT if that same player turns his wrist joint inwards as he cues (a lot of players do) then the butt of the cue will go off-line and he will miss.

If you wanted to be clearer then the correct statement would be you drive the cue with the upper arm lower muscle, which contracts and drives the forearm forward, using the elbow as a hinge.

I have to agree with vmax here, your posts do not do too much to help the members on here who are trying to learn the tricks of playing better and in a lot of cases your posts cause confusion.

It is however good that you posted a video showing Ronnie although at 1:24 of that same video you can see, if you stop it at the right spot, that Ronnie actually strikes the cueball using his shoulder muscle as his elbow drops at the time of strike, even on a low power shot (the elbow should drop well after the strike, but Ronnie has played this way since he was a youngster and can control it, obviously). I know for a fact he was shown this by Terry Griffiths using analysis software and I have a training video here showing a century break of Ronnie's with a Nic Barrow analysis and it shows the same thing.

Terry

[armstm]

that's interesting... I wonder if that partly explains Ronnie's touch amongst the balls (the other reason he's a genius?)

[j6uk]

I'm glad you like my posts on 'wrist angle and grip'. This is my approach and I kind of understand your way of helping all be it far to convoluted imho.
So in this clip at shot 1:24 you think Ron is hitting the ball with his shoulder muscle, are you sure? We could move on a little and look at shot 2:15, that's even clearer, what's going on there terry iyo?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P_gLvHZsoY

j6uk:

I have to agree with vmax here, your posts do not do too much to help the members on here who are trying to learn the tricks of playing better and in a lot of cases your posts cause confusion.

It is however good that you posted a video showing Ronnie although at 1:24 of that same video you can see, if you stop it at the right spot, that Ronnie actually strikes the cueball using his shoulder muscle as his elbow drops at the time of strike, even on a low power shot (the elbow should drop well after the strike, but Ronnie has played this way since he was a youngster and can control it, obviously). I know for a fact he was shown this by Terry Griffiths using analysis software and I have a training video here showing a century break of Ronnie's with a Nic Barrow analysis and it shows the same thing.

Terry

[Sidd]

This is interesting. I saw the video and there are three shots actually 1:24 , 2:15 as well as 2:00

If you concentrate on these three shots like i did you can notice something interesting.

On all shots look at the elbow or arm however concentrate on the SOUND of the tip contacting the CB and you will surprisingly notice that Ron never drooped the elbow before the strike the sound of contact comes first and then his elbow in action. Means he is perhaps not using his shoulder muscle until after the CB has been struck... !!!

[Terry Davidson]

j6uk:

I looked at the shot at 2:15 and stopped the video just before the strike and looked at that scoreboard in the background above his elbow and the elbow has definitely dropped a bit before the cueball moved, and that wasn't a power shot either.

I'm not saying this is wrong for Ronnie as God knows he has proven himself, but what I am saying it is wrong to encourage players to drop the elbow as Ronnie does, which is very early in the delivery. It's much better to drop the elbow for a reason and that is to keep the cue on the same plane and it should happen at the very end of the backswing and delivery when the loose grip doesn't have enough leeway to keep the cue level.

The one thing Ronnie does very well, besides his very smooth stroke is he keeps the cue on a level plane with no deviations at all. But learning his method would probably be very difficult for someone who has not done it from an early age. If a player keeps the cue on the same plane throughout the stroke he will play better.

Terry

[vmax4steve]

It all starts from the feet! I pot the ball with my feet then, as I'm down on balance, on the shot, my eyes flick through from cb to ob, I watch the cue come back straight as an arrow, set eyes back on ob and release the cue, from the elbow.

I would say it all starts with the eyes and what you're looking at. You must see the shot you're about to play as you approach the table, look at the position of the two balls that matter, the cue ball and the object ball. See the contact point on the object ball that the cue ball needs to hit, focus on it and it goes into your short term memory.

This is why you see some players walk around to look at the contact point on a thin cut. They walk back to behind the cue ball after taking their eyes off the contact point, but because it's now in the short term memory its easy to find again.

The usual process of finding the correct place for your feet is by focussing on the contact point as you bend down into the stance. This makes you sight the shot naturally using your dominant eye, the feet put you in a place where this focus stays clear all the way down so that when you are down into the stance the focus on the contact point is still clear meaning that your head is in the correct position for your two eyes to work together naturally.

Any deviation of the eyes focus during this process will make you place your feet slightly differently to where they should be and then when looking for the contact point again when down the eyes won't be in tandem with your hand as its on the wrong line of aim and your eyesight will also not be clear and things will look a little hazy when trying to focus.

Subconsciously players will then move their heads to get their focus clear but then because the cue is on the wrong line because the feet have been placed wrongly, playing the shot will bring the cue across the ball and also cause head and body movement.

This is what I was telling Alabadi about, adjusting his stance in order to bring his dominant eye where it should be for every shot.

Is this a better, more clear, more concise explanation to a twenty break player looking to improve compared to your quote above ?

I'm not with you. Why would looking at the contact point on the ob keep your cue on line? Who said so?

You may not be with me but this is what you do when you are looking at the object ball when you strike the cue ball. This is the subconscious mechanics of hand and eye co-ordination. Take your eye off the target and the hand will follow it and the cue will move off the line of aim, you don't have to get up from the stance for this to happen like you suggest, simply looking elsewhere is enough.

You are one of the lucky ones who do this naturally and I would suggest that you don't think about it at all otherwise you will balls up your game completely. But take it as gospel that this is what you do and pass it on to others.

[nrage]

... But take it as gospel that this is what you do and pass it on to others.

I agree with everything you posted, but I am very surprised to see you post this :P (tongue firmly in cheek)