Terry's Technique Video

[Terry Davidson]

Sidd:

The video is still there and it's just been yourself and Chris Small who can't see it. As Pakistan is barred from youtube maybe it's the same thing with other public video sites. I'm not sure why Chris can't load it but he seems to be getting the same result as you are.

The thing that was troublesome was the video is about 88Mb and because I'm on a wireless broadband service it took about 15mins to upload as my speed is so slow compared to what I would get if I lived in a town or city. We were supposed to get fiber this summer but nothing so far. This is why I don't load any videos.

Terry

[Terry Davidson]

samcheung:

Yes that is the right observation...my elbow is outside the grip hand and I've been trying to get it aligned.

However, the real question should be WHY is my elbow outside the cue and why can't I correct it. I have tried everything and can only do it if I inject a lot of discomfort into my set-up and that is not the way to go.

Terry

[j6uk]

15min is very good time for such a good quality few min video.. Anyway, I wouldn't let that put you off.

Did you get to read my post #23 tel?
I see this basic flaw as being so significant that, its not really worth discussing anything else before its acknowledged and addressed. You know what I mean?

it took about 15mins to upload as my speed is so slow compared to what I would get if I lived in a town or city. We were supposed to get fiber this summer but nothing so far. This is why I don't load any videos.

Terry

[Terry Davidson]

j6uk (and all):

The fingers waggling on my bridge is a result of tension I think and is definitely not the most glaring flaw as my bridge is very solid with the thumb and forefinger firmly on the bed.

The more important flaws I would like to correct are:

1. Why do I have great difficulty aligning my elbow over the cue? Is it an alignment problem as vmax says or is it just that I'm not flexible enough anymore? It may be so I'll be working on vmax' recommendation moving the left foot a little more forward and a little more to the left and see if that helps. I may also move the cue a little more over to the left on my chin to see if that helps or maybe a combination of both.

2. What is the root cause of my grip hand moving out to the right and thus the tip to the left right after I strike the cueball? I think this is the most serious problem I have as this type of problem has a tendency to creep up in the delivery and starts happening at the time of strike or just before it. It might be that I have the cue too tightly into my chest, 'steering' the cue around the chest and I will be experimenting with loosening off the cue from the chest until it's just lightly brushing the chest, however there might be another reason altogether for this happening. It's going to take a lot of work.

3. Another very serious problem is why my head and upper body is shifting slightly to the right? Again, this might be part of my stance perhaps not being wide enough or else I'm not placing sufficient weight on my left leg and foot. I'm looking for someone to suggest a correction for that. I will be experimenting with placing more weight on the left side once I widen my stance.

4. To resolve the waggling fingers I think it can be corrected by turning my bridge slightly to the right to get more forefinger underneath the cue and also to get the cue away from the 'thumb pillow' between thumb and forefinger. I have done this before and it has helped but I keep forgetting about it ('oldtimer's disease')

In the end I'm looking for suggestions or recommendations to CORRECT the above flaws. I know they are there just by looking at the video, especially with Kinovea. Now I have to work on the root cause(s) of these flaws and get them out of my technique. Today is mirror and camera analysis day again as the way to go is to try different solutions until I hit on the correct one and then cement it into my technique.

Terry

[humperdingle]

I think the off-vertical elbow and the skewed cue line have to be connected.

What you think to be a straight delivery, starts from your off-vertical elbow and moves forward at a slight angle too.

Maybe.

[itsnoteasy]

Terry from what I see is the cue is moving offline on the back swing, it is then coming from right to left(from your point of view)all through the forward stroke , the fault is before the strike of the cue ball not after. Check it with that video thing, frame by frame, see what you think, could be fixed with lining shot up with centre of body and not right leg(I'm only guessing here) also I can't shoot the spots without something to aim at , I am all over the place, but if I stick a bit of chalk in line on the Cush it's much better as I have something to aim at, instead of just a blank Cush, try that and see if its better it might help keep cue on line
The elbow is kind of collapsing to the right as well if its not doing this on softer shots, I'm guessing its tension when trying to add power ,and then a deceleration and relaxing after the shot, this should be easily sorted, by relaxing, but deliberately keeping elbow still, or high with no drop, and taking a bit of power off,(what does J6 call it, hitting from the elbow) I think tension is one of the biggest faults , it ruins cue actions.

[vmax4steve]

j6uk (and all):

The fingers waggling on my bridge is a result of tension I think and is definitely not the most glaring flaw as my bridge is very solid with the thumb and forefinger firmly on the bed.

The more important flaws I would like to correct are:

1. Why do I have great difficulty aligning my elbow over the cue? Is it an alignment problem as vmax says or is it just that I'm not flexible enough anymore? It may be so I'll be working on vmax' recommendation moving the left foot a little more forward and a little more to the left and see if that helps. I may also move the cue a little more over to the left on my chin to see if that helps or maybe a combination of both.

Terry

You could also experiment with putting the right foot outside the line of aim to get more side on in your stance to get the cue on the line of aim and get the body down even lower.
Start by placing the heel of the right foot on the line of aim rather than the instep and go further out from there if neccessary.

[j6uk]

I'll try and give some feedback on the more important flaws
Well, from what I can see I believe, controversially, that most if not all of the issues below are cause and effect of 'the dancing fingers' or the tinkles on the Joanna..
Yes if you distributed your body weight to free-up your cueing arm, you will find some relief of that tension and have a more traditional bridge. Then, be able to drop-in relaxed and cue properly, smooth, straight, from the elbow.

For anyone who's interested

j6uk (and all):

The fingers waggling on my bridge is a result of tension I think and is definitely not the most glaring flaw as my bridge is very solid with the thumb and forefinger firmly on the bed.

The more important flaws I would like to correct are:

1. Why do I have great difficulty aligning my elbow over the cue? Is it an alignment problem as vmax says or is it just that I'm not flexible enough anymore? It may be so I'll be working on vmax' recommendation moving the left foot a little more forward and a little more to the left and see if that helps. I may also move the cue a little more over to the left on my chin to see if that helps or maybe a combination of both.

2. What is the root cause of my grip hand moving out to the right and thus the tip to the left right after I strike the cueball? I think this is the most serious problem I have as this type of problem has a tendency to creep up in the delivery and starts happening at the time of strike or just before it. It might be that I have the cue too tightly into my chest, 'steering' the cue around the chest and I will be experimenting with loosening off the cue from the chest until it's just lightly brushing the chest, however there might be another reason altogether for this happening. It's going to take a lot of work.

3. Another very serious problem is why my head and upper body is shifting slightly to the right? Again, this might be part of my stance perhaps not being wide enough or else I'm not placing sufficient weight on my left leg and foot. I'm looking for someone to suggest a correction for that. I will be experimenting with placing more weight on the left side once I widen my stance.

4. To resolve the waggling fingers I think it can be corrected by turning my bridge slightly to the right to get more forefinger underneath the cue and also to get the cue away from the 'thumb pillow' between thumb and forefinger. I have done this before and it has helped but I keep forgetting about it ('oldtimer's disease')

In the end I'm looking for suggestions or recommendations to CORRECT the above flaws. I know they are there just by looking at the video, especially with Kinovea. Now I have to work on the root cause(s) of these flaws and get them out of my technique. Today is mirror and camera analysis day again as the way to go is to try different solutions until I hit on the correct one and then cement it into my technique.

Terry

[Terry Davidson]

itsnoteasy:

I have done somewhere around 25 videos and analysed them using frame-by-frame and my backswing is perfectly straight and I stike the cueball on the line of aim but 1/30th of a second after I hit the cueball my right hand starts to go out from my body, driving the tip to the left. I'm trying all sorts of things but nothing I can think of has stopped that movement of the grip hand.

I have tried standing almost sideways to the line of aim in a completely boxer stance just like Joe Davis and although it frees up the cue I'm still both moving my upper body to the right which is happening just before the strike and also my grip hand still moves to the right (I think this might be cause and effect).

I have my table marked in the centre of the top cushion and I put a short piece of dowel right on the centre of the cushion and also have a straight black line down the dowel so I have a definite aiming point.

Terry

[Terry Davidson]

vmax:

I've tried moving my right foot out in increments until it was outside the line of aim completely and it didn't work. I've tried standing sideways to the shot too and that didn't work.

I have to try and discover why my upper body moves to the right during the delivery and just before the strike. It's only about 3-4mm but that is WAY too much and I believe there is a cause and effect situation here with the upper body moving my brain tries to coordinate that and I end up going through right-to-left with my grip hand flying out to the right.

I have to keep experimenting until I get rid of the upper body sliding to the right as I believe that is the cause of everything however I'm having a difficult time discovering the root cause of that slide.

Terry

[Terry Davidson]

j6uk:

I have been experimenting with different things for the last 4 hours and then doing the frame-by-frame analysis. In all these experiments I made sure my bridge was well formed and still and I was able to see my index finger past the thumb of the bridge and in the video nothing is moving on my bridge hand.

This made no difference at all and my upper body is still shifting to the right just before the strike and my grip hand is still flying to the right. The root cause of my problem is definitely not the bridge hand as that has been still and stable throughout the past 4 hours of experimenting.

My question is...why is my upper body sliding to the right during the delivery? I believe I have to somehow get more weight on my left side and I also have to align my elbow behind the cue. Mind you, I've been using high power shots in all these experiments, but when I did cut the power down to where the cueball was just returning to my tip the movement ALMOST disappears and the cueball returns right to centre tip. However, there is still a little bit there even with low power, so I feel I have a basic fault and it might be that elbow out of alignment with the cue.

I'm going to continue working on this problem until I solve it as our first ranking tournament isd Sept 14/15 and that ain't far away.

Terry

[j6uk]

So your feeling off balance to the right when you deliver?

Can you post a lineup video?

j6uk:
This made no difference at all and my upper body is still shifting to the right just before the strike and my grip hand is still flying to the right. The root cause of my problem is definitely not the bridge hand as that has been still and stable throughout the past 4 hours of experimenting.


Terry

[Terry Davidson]

j6uk:

No, nothing feels off balance at all. My stance is nice and stable and I now have the elbow virtually on top of the cue. However, when I deliver the cue my head shifts to the right slightly about 3mm or so and I can see that I'm coordinating this by compensating somehow(probably the grip hand movement) as the cue stays right on the line of aim until I actually strike the cueball. Then right after the strike the grip hand starts moving to the right and also the elbow is not dropping straight and this may be because I started to correct the shift but with the dynamic delivery you tend to over-compensate.

I think this latter grip hand movement is over-compensation trying to correct that upper body movement as the delivery is very dynamic since I'm using higher power shots to highlight all the faults. When I drop my power right down the grip hand comes straight into my chest and the elbow hardly drops at all but it still drops straight. This is why cueing along the baulkline doesn't really show anything.

So the question is...what is the root cause of why my upper body shifts to the right slightly during my delivery?

I had to give up for today as I have other things to do but the very last experiment was moving my right foot more into the shot so my grip hand is over the heel (rather than the toes) and this forced me to lean back a bit and shift the hips more to the left and get a lot more weight over my left foot. I haven't done a video using this yet however in shooting the spots with very high power (5 table lengths) the cueball was coming right over the brown spot on the 4th leg so I might have found the problem, which was me being too far back from the shot with the right side of my body which meant I didn't have to lean back very much and therefore wasn't putting much weight onto the left side of my body. I also noticed with my old stance I tended to be on the ball of my foot rather than have the weight distributed between ball and heel as I should have.

When I moved the right foot forward about 5in or so and had the grip hand over the heel of the right foot I found I had to push my own butt further back and more to the left to get a solid stance. This also brought the elbow more into line with the cue. Now I'll have to video analyse this tomorrow morning to see if it's stopped that slide to the right.

If it has maybe I can offer clearer guidance to some of the forum members who are still experiencing trouble delivering consistently straight (and also maybe my old stance instructions regarding the arch or laces of the right foot is total bollocks!).

Terry

[ace man]

For power shots such as these, why not try with full arm, i.e. big elbow drop like some of the pros? More moving parts, yes...but, much less stress on body.
My theory is that not everybody is comfortable keeping the elbow high on power shots nor can they handle the shock of hand hitting the chest at violent speeds.

Don't worry about the video, I'd take a lesson from you in a heart beat.

Oh, and please, don't mess with technique that much. Even you as a master coach shouldn't be doing that. All it will do is fill your head with doubt and uncertainty. Last thing you need before any competition!

[j6uk]

Now your talking tel

j6uk:

(and also maybe my old stance instructions regarding the arch or laces of the right foot is total bollocks!).

Terry