Staying still on the shot

[bluenose1940]

I consistently take in all of the hints and tips given on this forum, along with those by Barry Stark, Nic Barrow. and others. and they are all serving me well and my game has improved considerable.

However, despite the fact that I endeavour to stay down on the shot probably 99.9% of the time, I still have difficulty getting my head around the need for this.

My thoughts are, if you have chosen the line of aim correctly, and your stance, grip etc are all good, you will strike the cue ball where you so intended and it will travel along the chosen line. If you then, having struck the cue ball, decide to stand up and wave your cue about in the air, how can this action affect the shot?

You are all no doubt thinking what I am going to say now, and you're right, ALEX HIGGINS, now he was amongst the very best at getting up immediately and waving his cue about as soon as the cue ball has been struck, but what a player.

Now from a personal standpoint I am going to continue to try to stay still and down on the shot but, am interested in what thoughts others may have on the matter.

Happy Easter everyone. Don't eat too much choccy, your newly acquired paunch will hinder your play:biggrin-new:

[rimmer10]

From what I can make out, standing still after the shot gives you more chance to get the proper feedback and thus helps you to learn about what just happened.

[guernseygooner]

To ingrain good habits and reduce the chance of moving before you hit the cue ball

[vmax]

Staying still on the shot ensures you don't move before the strike; if you lift your head then your body tends to move with it and your arms are attached to your body so they will move and as the cue is in your hands and the hands are attached to your arm then your cue will move as well.
Also when you move your head it's usually because you've taken your eye of the object ball and if that's before the strike then your hand will follow your eye, so keeping focus on the object ball helps enormously when trying to stay still.

Alex was a one off and shouldn't be copied.
I have lots of video of Alex and even when slowed down to frame by frame I can see he moves on the shot a fraction before the strike quite often; a lot of the time he still pots the ball but more often than not his position is then compromised and he has to pull out something special to carry on the break, which was his forte and the basis of his amazing 69 against Jimmy in '82 when he moved on the shot for the first red and left the cue ball short. He would have been the GOAT if he'd been able to keep still like Ronnie, but that's what made him unpredictable and exciting.

[rimmer10]

I think it's a general thing to do and not just snooker specific. You see it in a lot of sports where the athlete tries to remain still after the execution. Archery, golf, bowling are just a few that spring to mind.

[tedisbill]

You're absolutely right. If you move your head just after the strike on every single shot, that's fine and won't compromise the shot. Even if you move as you strike the ball, as long as you are doing that on every shot, that also won't compromise the shot.

The reason you are taught to stay still, is for lots of reasons. What you don't want to do, is mostly stay still, and then on a pressure ball, raise your head, because now you've just played 9/10 shots keeping still and the 10th, you've done something differently, which can cause a miss. So you are told to keep still so that each shot is absolutely consistent.

What I would say is this: do exactly what you are doing. have it in your mind to keep still, and do your best on every shot. BUT, if you're moving a bit on EVERY shot, it really doesn't matter. There will be lots of other reasons for your misses before you need to concern yourself with a bit of head movement.

[ace man]

My biggest technical flaw is head movement on some shots, not all. Anything with pressure on, cue power required, long shots...etc. Demanding stuff.

I had a group coaching session with a world class coach Roger Leighton. He told me to self diagnose head movement, you just look at how much your chin is off the cue after the shot. If noticeable, it's a sign that you moved too much. We did other experiments like trying a few long shots with cue off the chin completely with just 2 contact points, just too see if this would get me a bit more relaxed and not move on shot. Indeed it was very easy to keep head still with 2 contact points only, but keeping the cue on line with no guidance from chin/chest...well, it's possible but bit more difficult.

Somehow I always knew that my movement was my biggest technical flaw, but it is good to hear it in person from a world class coach. A real one, you know the one that can actually play at a very high level too.
Of course, there's no silver bullet. Roger told everyone who took the lesson never to expect or hope for instant success.

So yes, movement is still a problem. Just like Ted mentions, on some pressure balls I'll do something different and head movement and/or a bad twitch due to tension is highly likely.
Working on it. Hope to reduce those blunders considerably.
But it takes time. I didn't learn to play as a child, and certainly didn't learn to stay completely still when I started with snooker. If I did, I wouldn't have given any of this second a thought.

[vmax]

When I first started playing cue sports it was UK 8 ball pool at age 19, I played wearing my usual daily specs and as the table was very small I could sight and play with my chin about a foot off the cue.
When I switched to snooker at 27 this stance was no good due to the increased distances of the shots, but getting down lower meant looking above my specs to the object ball and then I could see nothing but a blur, couldn't pick out the contact point at anything over two feet away.

My stance was further compromised by being tall with long arms and having to bend my bridge arm to give me enough cue over my thumb to sight the shot when down and have a decent length backswing, even then I was holding the cue in my first two fingers only so decided to get a longer cue than standard, 62 inches compared to the standard 57/58. One might think that 4 inches extra is a lot of cue but it's only the width of my hand and brought my grip hand address to just behind vertical with about 12 inches over my thumb with my bridge arm straight, no different to someone who's 5 foot 8 using a standard length cue.
I bought a spec up to raise my glasses so I could get down lower, chin now only 6 inches above the cue, and along with my longer cue played a hell of a lot better, started making 50+ breaks at least once a week and was improving, but there seemed to be an impasse of missing the sitter and I was told that I played far too fast and when in the break simply got faster and faster until I missed.

I tried slowing down but it simply got worse so I ignored that advice and carried on, switched to using contact lenses and that made it a little bit better until I developed an irrritation in my left eye and switched back to specs again, Bought myself a bespoke pair of snooker specs and carried on but that impasse of missing the sitter remained. Of course I miss difficult shots, who doesn't, but I miss sitters far more often when in a break and didn't know why.

Now, no one ever told me I was moving on the shot, but last year when I filmed myself on a borrowed smartphone to post a video on the forum I saw it for the first time; I was moving my head up just before the strike to get into my old pool sighting peripheral view along with a little body movement, Terry pm'd me saying he saw it too so I decided to work on that.
I now have a chin contact, which I deplore BTW as it seems to make the cue drag, but I'm sticking with it and am also bending both legs to get down lower and give myself a more upright head for better sighting rather than looking through my eyebrows and the outer rim of my specs lenses, cutting down the need to move my head up to see better.

It's paying dividends spasmodically as I'm still straying into my old ways quite often, sometimes for whole practise sessions before I realise it and especially in matches, well I have played that way for 40 years so it's very, very hard to change, but what I have noticed is that a slower backswing keeps my head and body much more still than my usual one so I'm trying to change that as well.

So many things to remember so for the moment all I'm concentrating on is making sure I've looked at the contact point on the object ball before getting down lower by bending both legs and making sure that chin contact stays all through the stroke and while I watch the ball into the pocket or the cushion/jaws/floor

Too late to get that elusive ton at age 60 ? we'll see.

[rimmer10]

Too late to get that elusive ton at age 60 ? we'll see.

You'll crack that ton mate, no worries.

[ace man]

Good luck with your technique change vmax. Seems a bit radical, but this may give you extra motivation. I know I had trouble when switching from 9ball which was my first cue game to snooker. My chin was something like 5cm or so above the cue when I started with snooker. Getting it down to the cue and learning how to feather properly without hurting myself wasn't trivial for me at all. But well worth it.
Very easy to see where the cue is pointing from such a low head position.

[chrisg]

Brian Cox taught me a great routine for keeping body and head still as when I was cueing up to the shot I was bobbing my head up and down and since using this little routine my game has come on in terms of long shots and safety.

It's the little things that often produce the bigger results...

[matthias]

Brian Cox taught me a great routine for keeping body and head still as when I was cueing up to the shot I was bobbing my head up and down and since using this little routine my game has come on in terms of long shots and safety.

It's the little things that often produce the bigger results...

the suspense is killing me.....

[DeanH]

the suspense is killing me.....

same here

Brian Cox taught me a great routine for keeping body and head still as when I was cueing up to the shot I was bobbing my head up and down and since using this little routine my game has come on in terms of long shots and safety.

It's the little things that often produce the bigger results...

so what was it?
was he standing behind you with a cricket bat poised for when you moved your head?

[matthias]

same here


so what was it?
was he standing behind you with a cricket bat poised for when you moved your head?

not a cricket bat I think, it's something little.... clues are given... maybe we can work it out between us

[blahblah01]

A freak off big electric shock from a cable just above his head?