Very happy at the moment.
I've been personally suffering the yips for about 8 years now. This week I made a huge leap towards solving it.
I was probably at my best when I was 17-19 years old. A long time ago now (I'll be 30 next month). Back then I was a great potter and had plenty of cue power. My positional play was pretty basic as I still had a lot of learning to do but I managed to win 20-30 local pool tournaments, started hitting centuries on my own in practice, won the local pool league singles tournament and qualified for the IPA pool tour.
Then for some reason, I started tinkering with my technique. Before then I had basically learned to play on a 6ft table in my house, did my 10k hours but had a slightly unorthodox technique due to no formal instruction. I started trying to change things to look more like the players on TV. I tried moving to a more square stance and introduced a rear pause into my cue action. After that, I slowly started getting worse rather than better and started losing accuracy and cue power.
I think what had happened was that I had started decelerating through the cueball and it got to the point where recently I could miss just about anything and seemed to have to hit the ball hard to get any action on the ball. Of course I thought at the time my lack of accuracy was due to alignment issues so started playing around with shoulder position and twisting my body about all over the place.
Occasionally, however, just briefly things would click and I would start playing fantastic, but I could never work out what I was doing differently that made such a step change, especially as those bursts wouldn't last very long.
Anyway, a few months ago out of frustration I posted a video of myself practicing. The standard was pretty pants but as I had it on my phone still I kept watching over the last 2 minutes, where that step change happens. Suddenly I could pot anything and it felt easy. I kept watching it and then started filming myself cueing on my 6ft table and noticed that I had been going through the cueball very slowly, with little acceleration, and that I was only following through a couple of inches.
I kind of forgot this for a few days. Monday I played my friend and played absolute crap until the very last visit where I hit 77 out of nowhere before having to go home.
Wednesday I decided to head down to SWSA as I had foolishly signed up for a tournament there (purely as a motivational factor to get me to practice properly). I scattered some balls about and potted them. Set a game up and a huge chunck fell out of my tip after the 4th shot. Bloody great! So I was really hesistant hitting the ball and started playing worse than crap, which also made me feel pretty embarrassed. After about an hour of trying to give 100% and playing s*** I decided to just whack the balls about and see what happened. After 10 minutes of not trying I was playing significantly better and I worked out what I was doing differently. I was following through the cueball about 5-8 inches. Now obviously this is not world beating news but it was confirmation of what I thought about me decelerrating and not getting throught the cueball properly.
Skip forward to Saturday, I decided to make a concerted effort to ensure I follow through an additional 3 inches on every shot (where possible). I managed to play the entire 4 hours to a hugely improved standard to how I have been recently. I didn't hit any massive breaks as my concentration wasn't great but I noticed a massive improvement in my long potting, my cue power and the availability of additional shots. I was also significantly faster.
Now I realise I still have a lot of work to do on other areas of my game but to finally feel like I'm hitting the ball properly is a big deal to me, and hopefully I can start improving again.
Anywho, sorry for the ramble, but I felt I needed to share that there is hope when you don't feel like there is any.
Thanks,
Simon
(Also, special note of thanks should go to Tim Dunkley who started me on the right path last year when he noticed my backswing was way too long - one of the primary reasons for my deceleration).
I've been personally suffering the yips for about 8 years now. This week I made a huge leap towards solving it.
I was probably at my best when I was 17-19 years old. A long time ago now (I'll be 30 next month). Back then I was a great potter and had plenty of cue power. My positional play was pretty basic as I still had a lot of learning to do but I managed to win 20-30 local pool tournaments, started hitting centuries on my own in practice, won the local pool league singles tournament and qualified for the IPA pool tour.
Then for some reason, I started tinkering with my technique. Before then I had basically learned to play on a 6ft table in my house, did my 10k hours but had a slightly unorthodox technique due to no formal instruction. I started trying to change things to look more like the players on TV. I tried moving to a more square stance and introduced a rear pause into my cue action. After that, I slowly started getting worse rather than better and started losing accuracy and cue power.
I think what had happened was that I had started decelerating through the cueball and it got to the point where recently I could miss just about anything and seemed to have to hit the ball hard to get any action on the ball. Of course I thought at the time my lack of accuracy was due to alignment issues so started playing around with shoulder position and twisting my body about all over the place.
Occasionally, however, just briefly things would click and I would start playing fantastic, but I could never work out what I was doing differently that made such a step change, especially as those bursts wouldn't last very long.
Anyway, a few months ago out of frustration I posted a video of myself practicing. The standard was pretty pants but as I had it on my phone still I kept watching over the last 2 minutes, where that step change happens. Suddenly I could pot anything and it felt easy. I kept watching it and then started filming myself cueing on my 6ft table and noticed that I had been going through the cueball very slowly, with little acceleration, and that I was only following through a couple of inches.
I kind of forgot this for a few days. Monday I played my friend and played absolute crap until the very last visit where I hit 77 out of nowhere before having to go home.
Wednesday I decided to head down to SWSA as I had foolishly signed up for a tournament there (purely as a motivational factor to get me to practice properly). I scattered some balls about and potted them. Set a game up and a huge chunck fell out of my tip after the 4th shot. Bloody great! So I was really hesistant hitting the ball and started playing worse than crap, which also made me feel pretty embarrassed. After about an hour of trying to give 100% and playing s*** I decided to just whack the balls about and see what happened. After 10 minutes of not trying I was playing significantly better and I worked out what I was doing differently. I was following through the cueball about 5-8 inches. Now obviously this is not world beating news but it was confirmation of what I thought about me decelerrating and not getting throught the cueball properly.
Skip forward to Saturday, I decided to make a concerted effort to ensure I follow through an additional 3 inches on every shot (where possible). I managed to play the entire 4 hours to a hugely improved standard to how I have been recently. I didn't hit any massive breaks as my concentration wasn't great but I noticed a massive improvement in my long potting, my cue power and the availability of additional shots. I was also significantly faster.
Now I realise I still have a lot of work to do on other areas of my game but to finally feel like I'm hitting the ball properly is a big deal to me, and hopefully I can start improving again.
Anywho, sorry for the ramble, but I felt I needed to share that there is hope when you don't feel like there is any.
Thanks,
Simon
(Also, special note of thanks should go to Tim Dunkley who started me on the right path last year when he noticed my backswing was way too long - one of the primary reasons for my deceleration).
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