Sticks and Stones Billiards » Practice Drills

Try To Play Quietly

sticksandstones — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:39:19 +0000

Play any game you want, but try to play as quietly as you possibly can. Roll the balls so that they barely go in the pockets. Tap that cue ball like it’s an egg. Take off your shoes and be a ninja. Do not disturb the force.

This practice scenario will improve your touch, and help you realize how little really needs to be done to get a successful outcome on a pool table.

Just push those rocks in the hole.

Use The One-Stroke Drill for Confidence, Muscle Memory

sticksandstones — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:33:27 +0000

The One Stroke Drill was shown to me by a friend of mine who had uncanny sight in shotmaking — he had a very still head, focused, unblinking eyes, and was very adept at precision shots such as the extremely thin cut.

The drill can be used with any game, or as I recommend, just throw out five or ten balls and shoot any ball in any pocket. On each shot, take no practice strokes at all. Keep your stick completely still, with the tip pointed at your desired contact, until you are ready to execute the shot.

Take each shot with only one full stroke, back, then forth, with a steady, but loose wrist. As always, try to hold yourself still on the follow through, but with this drill stay down longer and focus on keeping your head in one spot.

The value of this drill is that it isolates all of your problems into one motion — if you can do this one motion correctly, you can be confident in doing it at the end of your stroke routine. Pocketing balls this way is difficult – a very good player might not do very well trying to play this way — but once you get it right — you know exactly what it feels like to stroke the cue ball to near perfection.

To take this drill to a more advanced level, set up the object ball on the spot, and put your cue ball in one of the corner pockets. Use only one stroke with high english to shoot the nine ball into the opposite corner pocket, trying to follow the cue ball in for a scratch. Once you have accomplished this, try to use just one stroke with low english to draw the cue ball straight back for a scratch. This is VERY difficult, but it sure shows you what kind of stroke you, or somebody else, has.

An additional value to this drill is that it helps to improve focus at the moment of execution. In this drill, there is but one moment where all of you must be in harmony. Since there is so little room for error — even the slightest imperfection in form or execution will result in an unsuccessful shot — developing the necessity to be at full focus on the final stroke.

Use Natural Diamond Caroms to Develop or Assess a Predictable Stroke

sticksandstones — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:32:16 +0000

Practice a predictable stroke, or see how predictable your current stroke is, by using this simple exercise:

Take a striped ball and place it inside the jaws of a corner pocket, with the stripe going straight up and down. Strike the ball dead in the center and shoot medium soft, aiming in a straight line through the diamond in the middle of the opposite end rail.

In a perfect world, the ball will bank straight into the other corner pocket on your side of the table, but there are quite a few things that can keep this from happening. The most common culprit is striking the cue ball off center — any off-center spin will change the angle the ball comes off of the rail. Hitting the ball too hard or too soft will also keep the ball from rebounding at a true, reflective angle.

Furthermore, even if your stroke is perfect, the table you are playing on may not be perfectly level. There may be small chunks dug out of the slate of the table that change the path of the ball. Maybe the rails are so new, old, cold, or humid that they react oddly. These are all things that a player cannot control, only adapt to.

With practice, on a well groomed playing surface, you should be able to reproduce very nearly the same result with this shot time and time again. Observe the results of repetitive attempts to pocket the ball — this will tell you precisely how reliable your stroke currently is. Using a striped ball makes it easier to see when you have put sidespin on the ball – and also shows how hitting the rail affects the spin of the ball.

Play Scratch Pool to Improve Position Play

sticksandstones — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:30:49 +0000

One really fun way to practice cue ball control is by playing Scratch Pool. Scratch pool is not so much a game by itself, like Eight Ball or Nine Ball — It’s more a variation of a game that can be used in conjunction with any other game of pool.

Unlike traditional pool games, where the player strikes the cue ball and runs it into object balls to try to push them into the pocket, scratch pool requires you to hit the ball you want to pocket (say the four ball) with your cue. You hit the four ball into the cue ball instead of the other way around — hoping that the four ball bounces off of the cue ball, and either falls directly into a pocket, or pushes another ball in. In other words, scratch pool asks you to scratch on purpose. If you do, you get to keep shooting!

If you accidentally pocket the white ball, it is considered a foul, but in scratch pool, when a player fouls, the other player doesn’t get cue ball in hand — they get an object ball in hand. Place the white ball on the foot spot and proceed according to the rules of the game you are playing:

For nine ball or seven ball the fouler’s opponent picks up the lowest numbered ball on the table and places it anywhere on the table he chooses. For 14.1 (straight pool) and one pocket, any ball may be picked up and placed anywhere on the table. For eight ball, the shooter may choose any of his set of balls to use as his “cue ball” or the eight ball if all of his balls have already been pocketed.

Scratch pool is a fun way to use a wide variety of shots and techniques to manipulate the path of the cue ball (no matter what color it is) and at the very least shows you what not to do in a “normal” game of pool!

Use Only Center English to Improve Touch

sticksandstones — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:29:24 +0000

Throw all fifteen balls out and shoot any one you want. Use only center english on every shot, and shoot just barely hard enough to make the balls teeter on the edge before they fall in the pocket. Don’t worry about manipulating the cue ball for position – just be aware of, and attempt to catalog, what happens to the cue ball when you shoot as soft as possible with center english.

Add a position target to this exercise and it becomes far more powerful. Don’t change the way you shoot because of where you put the target – put the target where you think the cue ball will end up when you shoot as soft as possible with center english, and see whether you were correct.

Use A Landing Target in Any Game

sticksandstones — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:28:24 +0000

You can make or purchase a landing target that will help your position play dramatically. Cut out a circular piece of paper with a diameter of 6-18″ (the more advanced you are, the smaller it should be).

Play any game, and before each shot, choose a specific location that you want your cueball to be at the end of the shot. Place the target there and go for it. You might be surprised at just how difficult this is — but it shows you exactly which shots you need to work on, and how much you need to work on them.

An additional value of this drill is that it forces you to choose a precise point to land the cue-ball — as opposed to lazily choosing ‘somewhere on this end of the table,’ etc.

Use a landing target to improve your precision position play.

Progressive Runouts to Lose Your Dog

sticksandstones — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:27:30 +0000

A common problem you’ll hear among nine ball players is ‘dogging it’, or missing an easy shot. This drill helps build confidence in ‘finishing the game’ for rotational runout games. The example I will use is 9ball, but this works for 7-ball, 10-ball, and 15-ball as well.

Throw the eight and the nine ball out on the table and take ball and hand. Try to run out without missing – and keep trying until you do.

Now add the seven ball. Keep trying until you run out the three balls in order twice in a row without missing.

Now add the six, and run out three times in a row before you move on.

See how far you can go – but don’t be surprised if it’s not as far as you think you should. Whenever you miss, start over at the beginning, and work to achieve your best score. Take it a step further and keep track of how many total balls pocketed during each attempt in a notebook. You can track your progress, evaluate your improvement, and determine how ‘in stroke’ you are at any given time with this drill.

Additional value to this exercise is the consistency it produces as it develops sustained focus — an asset common of all champions.

Shoot Opposite Handed

sticksandstones — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:26:27 +0000

Spend an hour shooting opposite handed — if you’re a righty, try left handed, and vice versa. Be aware of the challenges you face as you try to pocket balls, and try to identify which of these obstacles give you trouble in your “real” game.

When you play pool normally, with your dominant hand, if you’ve played for long enough, your muscle memory takes over — and you don’t really think about what you are doing. When you switch sides, and try opposite handed, you don’t have that muscle memory, so it forces you to focus on what you are doing mechanically. This is a good refresher in analyzing what is important — steady body, smooth stroke, loose wrist, straight as a string.

Muscle memory is a wonderful thing — but it can also be a liability — when a player has committed a bad habit to subconscious control. Playing opposite handed may help you isolate bad habits in your normal game.

Employ the Power of Visualization to Strengthen Your Game

sticksandstones — Sun, 24 May 2009 06:23:42 +0000

With Sticks and Stones, I take a simple approach to the game, but from time to time I’ll find an ‘out of the box’ technique that is well worth passing on. Employing the power of visualization is one of those techniques.

Here are a few examples in action:

Use imaginative exercises

Visualize your object ball as a golf ball. Stand behind the ball and pick the dimple that points straight in the hole. Aim at that spot. Or visualize the path between your object ball and the intended pocket as a set of railroad tracks.

Use internal visualization

Without thought of technical fundamentals or over-analysis, think of the process of taking a shot in pool in a somewhat different way. In your mind’s eye imagine yourself standing in an empty room. Feel your pool cue materialize in your hand. Watch a table appear before you with any shot you wish. Go through your stroke routine, and picture the way you would want to look executing a perfect shot. Watch other players you respect playing at their best for good ideas on how to improve your look — but be sure your final product is indeed your own. You cannot reach your maximum potential trying to imitate someone elses fluidity.

You may find that it is difficult to picture at first — but believe me, everyone can do this. In fact, in an odd, somewhat mystical way, you may find that whatever is making it difficult for you to visualize yourself as successful in pool is related to what you are doing to stop yourself from being successful in real life.

Use a video camera to film yourself

Seeing yourself in the third person is invaluable in improving your overall game. Often during play you will forget mistakes, or not even realize there was a better shot — but with the video camera you can analyze yourself in all facets of the game. I cannot stress enough what a valuable technique this is.

Use the power of visualization to your advantage!