A day with Chris Small

[j6uk]

Well it all starts with the feet

[chrissmall147]

Hi jim

I am so pleased to hear that mate. Remember even great players have good days and bad days. Even on a bad day still trust the method and u will be on line so dont worry about it. Im just picturing ur face when those long pinks were flying in as I know u would have been over the moon. Remember I cant wave a magic wand I can only teach the correct methods and then its hard practice by the client and I know u will put in the work and effort. Keep up the good work and it will e ventually pay off just be patient it wont happen overnight.

All the best chris small

[itsnoteasy]

Well it all starts with the feet

That's so true J6uk, I was getting my line of aim wrong as I was aiming wrong with my feet. Even if I dropped down straight and cued straight I consistently missed ,which led to a bit of frustration, which in turn led to a bit of tension in my cueing, which i didnt know was there untill it went ,if that makes any sense
Terry I don't know if Chris told me anything on sighting that you haven't said on here, but it's the shot routine that is the big help(if you train yourself to do it EVERY SHOT) I am the type that needs shown, and I would say the preliminary pause and a deliberate back pause(to make sure I get locked on)are the biggest helps on the sighting side of things,I knew my back pause was inconsistent before but I was lazy, now I am really working on things.
Chris you just can't beat that sound when the ball goes in cleanly, lol,I love it, you strut round the table like you have won the world championship.
My tuppence worth on the dominant eye is this, I have always been able to cue straight and hit the ob where I aimed, so when missing I thought it could be the eye thing as I thought I wasn't seeing the shot correctly, so I tried moving the cue, moving my head ,moving my feet, all with no real effect(some had very short term pluses but I think it was just me concentrating more)I had done the finger chalk thing and it showed I was heavily left eye dominant, but then I read the test Terry suggested actually looking down a shot and my view didn't change, so I put it right out my head put cue in centre of my chin and stuck with it, (it turned out to be my aiming that was always off ).

[throtts]

Chris:

Unless you consider it a trade secret I would be quite interested in your aiming and/or sighting method 'itsnoteasy' refers to above.

There are a large number of players on here who believe the reason they are missing pots is because they can't aim or sight correctly and of course there's also the argument on preferred or dominant eye with regards to alignment (which I don't agree with unless a player's vision in one eye is really degraded, like Joe Davis) and it might be helpful to some if you have developed a method or system where a player can accurately aim and sight correctly (as long as you don't mind revealing it).

I guess the other thing would be if it can be explained well using this medium too.

Terry

Well, Terry, you did not get an answer, lol..

For me when aiming I look back from the aventual intended pocket to the object ball, this gives me the BOB and the line which the cue ball must travel to hit that BOB to execute the pot. This is all done very quickly, no over thinking involved, for myself anyway. When I see the line the cue ball must take then that's all I think about, the cue must go on that line, everything else, stance, grip is forgotten about. The one thing I may tell myself ( not often ) when I am down on the stick is to keep very still, imo, a good chest contact can help this, I try and drill this contact point in to me because if concentration drifts I believe that's when a player looses this all important contact..

[Terry Davidson]

From the sounds of it Chris just got 'itsnoteasy' to align himself correctly. The correct foundation and alignment of a good stance with a good set-up is to ensure the straight leg foot is directly on the line of aim of the cue and directly underneath the grip hand (although some advocate having the grip forearm behind the vertical, I don't agree with this).

It all starts with a good foundation but there are other factors involved, like ensuring the head drops straight down over the cue and then a slow and straight backswing and a delivery which accelerates through and beyond the cueball. Keeping the upper body still from the time the bridge hits the table until after the end of the delivery is very important too and is probably where most players make their errors.

If a player does these few things consistently he will start delivering the cue straight which is the real secret of improving rapidly.

Terry

[itsnoteasy]

From the sounds of it Chris just got 'itsnoteasy' to align himself correctly. The correct foundation and alignment of a good stance with a good set-up is to ensure the straight leg foot is directly on the line of aim of the cue and directly underneath the grip hand (although some advocate having the grip forearm behind the vertical, I don't agree with this).

It all starts with a good foundation but there are other factors involved, like ensuring the head drops straight down over the cue and then a slow and straight backswing and a delivery which accelerates through and beyond the cueball. Keeping the upper body still from the time the bridge hits the table until after the end of the delivery is very important too and is probably where most players make their errors.

If a player does these few things consistently he will start delivering the cue straight which is the real secret of improving rapidly.

Terry

All of the above is what was done with me,but the emphasis was on aiming(as Chris said before its 95% of things) as you say Terry it was getting me lined up right and giving me a method to do this(I don't know if the method makes a difference )as long as you can replicate the method you pick time and time again,my problem was I couldn't do that with my method but I can now. Before I went I genuinely thought I wasn't far off playing ok, but I knew there was something wrong, that's why I went. When I got there and Chris started going through my game, he would say a lot of club players make the mistake of doing this or that and I kid you not I said yep that's me to every single one of them lol. I felt it wasn't great big things but loads of little things which all combined into me not playing well, because of this I don't think I would ever have fixed it myself there was too much to change.
Thought I would add, the aiming thing may just have been for me, that was my main thing to work on, I have no doubt with other people its something else, it's just that when I re read the post it seemed as if this is the only thing Chris does.

[chrissmall147]

Hi terry

What I got itsnoteasy to do was. Arrive at shot and ask himself is this pot half ball three quarter ball etc and once he figured this out I asked him to find exact contact point on ob and once he was sure to then line the middle of his body up to that exact contact point on ob and to forget all about cue ball even being there and just drumming it into him that the important ball is ob and the contact point. Once he had the middle of his body in line with contact point I had him doing just a mini step into the shot but this time using his nose on walk in so as it was easier for him to notice any deviation off line until his hand touched the cloth. Now I told him that this is 95% of the shot complete if he could get to this stage with no error. The mini step method is just to give the player less chance of moving of this line as he goes in and drops down on the shot. I also told itsnoteasy to stand behind the shot with feet close together and when he walks into shot his back foot will be on line of aim without thinking about it and it was. He was standing with feet far apart so when he walked in to shot he was off line straight away and his back foot was outside the line of aim. Now once down on the shot you have to get eye movements correct for the individuals cue action which should be smooth and nicely paced then front pause for your check nice slow and controlled backswing then pause and deliver cue smoothly and finishing point at the chest and staying completely still until the ob is in the pocket. I also told itsnoteasy it was his preference when he fixed the eyes to the ob for the last time ie on front pause halfway through backswing or on completion of backswing as everyone is different and told him to choose the method that suited his timing of the shot. My method was halfway through backswing fix eyes to contact point on ob pause count 1 2 then deliver and this suited me great. Now that is shot complete and if you do this correctly then you are on to a winner. Sorry for taking so long to reply but ive been busy coaching all week and trying to look after 3 kids who are on school holidays which aint easy. I will always do my best to reply to posts when I have the time.

All the best chris small

[Terry Davidson]

Chris:

Thanks for your reply. As we were both trained by Nic Barrow it seems we both teach the same method for the pre-shot technique.

With some students I've found when they do step into the shot and place their bent leg foot they will have their head and nose come off the line of aim unless they lean over (which Nic teaches). I have found one method which can be used to great effect when you have a student taking his head/nose off the line of aim when standing behind the shot is to have that student bend the left leg and shift his hips to the left (for a righty) and re-acquire the correct line of aim as he is still standing up.

Not the perfect solution as the student has to re-acquire but I've found with some of my older students (the bulk of my students are over 50, no juniors in Canada) they have a difficult time leaning over at the time they move the left foot out and because of stiff joints cannot achieve it without some discomfort so I chose to use the re-acquire method which doesn't give them any discomfort and gives them more practice in acquiring the correct line of aim.

I teach the same as you have outlined above.

Terry

[itsnoteasy]

Terry I was lining up with my left leg on line and cocked over as I had seen the video of Nic doing this, but I was coming off line, also because my feet were apart as i moved into the shot i had a big weight shift which took me off line straight away. Getting the line in the middle of my body felt really strange and took me a while to get it, as I was always lined up to my left side but using my nose to lead into the shot has helped me see if I am going off line on the way in or the way down, as you said earlier getting the fundamentals right will rapidly improve your game and I think I'm on the way now.Chris has said there is no magic wand, but unless you know the spell you can never do the magic.:friendly_wink:

[throtts]

This method is pretty much what I taught myself to do. There is no magic wand for aiming and discovered the shear importance of it a while back hence throwing out the thread questioning percentages between aiming and sighting and up come the huge 95% factor towards aiming from ChrisS. I also think the way a player walks in to the sighting position is very important too..However, once you grasp the method that's when you got to stamp it in to yourself and that can only be achieved from hours of play and practice..

[chrissmall147]

Hi terry

This is how I played the game throughout my career with the same routine for every shot. So I suppose I had self taught this to myself. But yes this is how nic does teach aswell as it is so reliable imo. Cheers

Chris small

[itsnoteasy]

To add to this I have found what I call shortening the table has helped greatly ,really it's locking on to the ob,and blocking out the peripheral stuff, say I am two feet from baulk Cush, the ob ball is four feet in front of me that leaves the bottom pocket say six feet away, once I have picked my potting point on ob, and locked on all the rest of the table doesn't matter as if I hit this point the ball goes in, so my table is now only four feet long the pot is now a four foot shot not a ten foot one, which it used to seem to me as the rest of the table was always in my mind. I know this is of no help to anyone who is good but it's a little pyscological trick for us beginners

[alabadi]

Hi terry
once he figured this out I asked him to find exact contact point on ob and once he was sure to then line the middle of his body up to that exact contact point on ob and to forget all about cue ball even being there and just drumming it into him that the important ball is ob and the contact point.

All the best chris small

Hi Chris

Please excuse my ignorance. I am confused with the term "line up the contact point with the middle of the body"

The OB is just over 2 inches wide so standing looking at the OB contact point, wouldn't the body naturally be lined up centrally with any point on it. I mean a human torso is anything from 15" to 20" + wide so lining up exact center to a pin point on the OB seems irrelevant. I would have thought that if anyone is standing upright and looking at an OB directly in front of them, as long as they are not leaning to one side it would be inevitable that its lined up centrally.

if not how would one tell, a point on the OB lined to centre body , you could a few cm out either way and wouldn't know. Or am I wrong.
I like to know more about this if you could explain.

Many thanks

Alabbadi

[sydneygeorge]

Let me know when he catches one to Sydney . . .

Count me in as well !!

[chrissmall147]

Hi alabbadi

When I say middle of the body I mean a straight line running up and down the body so say from below the neck down to below the belly button. The way I used to imagine it was take an imaginary line from contact point on ob through to middle of cb right through to middle of the body which for me was roughly top of the stomach. Now you are bang on line if this is done correctly and you must make sure you now walk in to the shot keeping this line and that is why I recommend a mini step in and then plantingthe front foot as the chances are you will keep that line. Remember the actualcontact point on ob is very small and through practice you will learn to line contact point to middle of the body. Also through practice you will just feel that you are correctly in line and you will not need to hunt for them to match up. when u walk in to the shot use the nose as this is in middle of body and its easier to notice any deviation off line as you walk in and also walk in slowly to the shot and when standing behind the shot stand with feet close together. your eyes should be fixed on contact point right through till your hand hits the table and then you look at cb to address it properly. Hope this has explained it for you.

All the best

Chris small