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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Single Shots

This is where the adventure begins - Single Shots.

Objectives:  Strengthen aim, alignment and follow-through by building muscles necessary for stroke consistency, reinforcing hand-eye coordination and creating mental pictures of successful shots. This phase is just about pocketing, with the exception of the cue ball requirements of The Mighty X.

My current plan (Johan's suggestions are in red, my additions are in black) -

One-Arm Drill:
- Place object ball two ball-widths from the end rail
- Walk into the shot as you would normally
- Let cue rest on the rail, dropping your bridge hand and placing it on your leg to support yourself
- Make sure that cue is level
- Using a slow back swing and smooth cue delivery, pocket the object ball in the corner pocket

Bert Kinister's The Mighty X with no practice strokes (Volume 12... available here)

The standard shots from PAT1:



Cushion Scare:
- Pocket the frozen ball (9-ball) from each of the cue ball positions (1-ball through 4-ball.)
- The cue ball is frozen to the rail in all positions
- Johan has a thick accent so when he said "cushion scare" I thought he said "cushions care" meaning take care with shots off the rail.  When I mentioned this, he said "No Liz, the cushions don't give a sh*t."

The Cutting Edge:
- Cut each ball in from the center of the table
- Balls are half a ball-width off the rail


Next up... Dynamic Shots

5 comments:

Johnny said...

Oh wow... the one-armed thing is interesting for sure. And the cutting drill for the balls on the short rail would drive me absolutely insane. I wish I had some pool time coming up today to go try these... maybe tomorrow.

Thanks again for posting these!!

Liz Ford said...

Love the enthusiasm, Johnny, keep it up!

Unknown said...

"the cushions don't give a sh*t" hahaha how true.

Liz Ford said...

It was even funnier in a Dutch accent :)

Johnny said...

I finally got a chance (and remembered) to try out the Cushion Scare drill yesterday. Wow... Great drill! I did it 6 times (3 on each side) and never got a consistent score (I was counting attempts at each position, as well as the total for all 4 combined). Definitely a keeper! It was frustrating, but still a good experience. :)