Driving to Excellence
Think back to when you first learned to drive. If you’re getting up there and the memories aren’t quite as sharp as they once were, think about when you taught your kids.
At first, driving is a very complicated task. What with the steering, the braking, watching the other cars, looking out for pedestrians, wondering what the other drivers are going to do, what’s the speed limit here, etc., etc. It’s almost overwhelming. And although none of these individual tasks is particularly difficult, and some were simply variations on things you’d done many times before, doing them all at once was very difficult and very frustrating.
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| Get your pool game on autopilot |
So what did you do? Like many, you probably went to an empty parking lot and practiced driving around where the environment was much simpler than it is out in traffic. You could concentrate on just one or two things at a time instead of ten. You got the feel for how hard to push on the gas and the break; how hard and how fast to turn the steering wheel, etc. Once you had reached a certain level of proficiency with the basic control of the vehicle, you moved up to driving on lightly trafficked side streets, and then when your competence improved even more you were ready for the highway.
When you’re new to driving, each of the numerous sub-tasks takes too much of your attention, so that you had to work very hard to even be a poor driver, and being a good driver seemed out of reach. It wasn’t, but it seemed like it was.
In order to handle complex tasks, your brain, and everyone else’s, uses a technique called chunking, whereby when tasks are learned well enough they become hard wired and can be handled as background tasks. The thinking, conscious part of the brain is then free to do things that have not yet been learned well enough to do on auto pilot. Most people have experienced arriving somewhere and not remembering driving there. It’s because they were thinking hard about something else and the driving was done completely as a background task. Safely, I might add.
Ever hear a pro say they play by feel? This is what they mean.
In order to become better at pool we need to practice in such a way that more of the subtasks that make up a skillful game are learned so well that they become second nature, that they become background tasks so that you can use your foreground thinking for learning something new, or figuring out your strategy, or focusing on a known weakness. Ever hear a pro say they play by feel? This is what they mean. They weren’t thinking about their stroke, their stance, their cueing, how hard to hit the ball, how much the throw effect was going to be, they just thought about the game and let the shooting take care of itself. That is being in the zone. It takes confidence to let your subconscious work for you, but it also takes training to get to the point where its able to succeed and you’re ready to let go.
The very best way to do that is through disciplined practice, focused on one or two areas at a time. Whatever you work on, at first it’s hard, than not too hard, then you start getting the feel for it, etc. Don’t quit too soon, just because you’ve improved. Raise your standards to a high level and work until you are proficient.
Get more of your game on autopilot; you’ll play better.
Start from the most fundamental skills and work them until they are a part of you. Work to eliminate all the things you currently have to think about when you’re shooting. And the things you do most often are the things you want to eliminate from your foreground thoughts as soon as you can. Things like stance, grip, bridge and stroke are something you do on every shot, so they should get your first effort. Aiming, cueing and controlling the force of the stroke are also critical, but must be based on the lower level fundamentals just mentioned.
Lastly, be careful when you do this; you don’t want to teach your subconscious to do these things improperly or you’ll be working against yourself for the rest of your playing days. Getting rid of bad habits is very hard work.
So get more of your game on autopilot; you’ll play better, you’ll be more relaxed, and you’ll enjoy yourself even more than you do now.
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4 Responses to “Driving to Excellence”
Aditya
- March 16th, 2009
Very nice.
I made the same discovery a few months back. Since then shooting has become effortless. I wrote an article describing my process of aiming without aiming.
http://enlightenedgeek.blogspot.com/2008/08/aiming-without-aiming-how-to-shoot-pool.html
John Biddle
- March 16th, 2009
Aditya, welcome to Pool Student’s Blog and thanks for commenting. I read your article, and agree completely. All my best performances seem to happen when I stop trying so hard and just let go. It’s amazing.
What’s difficult for me has been actually letting go and achieving this state where the unconscious is in control. Playing in the zone is another name for it, and most players seem to have difficulty reaching it regularly, as I do. Do you have any tips on how to get to this state on demand?
I read your other blog articles too, good stuff, I hope you’ll publish more frequently.
Aditya
- March 24th, 2009
The biggest thing that you need to make the leap is to be willing to miss. The first few times it will seem incredibly counter-intuitive – to shoot without aiming and being willing to miss. I even wrote down in my journal – “I refuse to aim”. I was amazed at how quickly my subconscious mind took over.
Most of the books and resources I have read (meditation and enlightenment, inner game, success) talk about creating a goal and then letting go of the goal. Of letting the subconscious mind find its own way of achieving that goal.
Because every time we take over the wheel and try to take control, we stop the subconscious mind from finding elegant ways of achieving the goal that we can never find consciously.
I have spent a lot of time over the last year or so on being “in the now”. Trying things like meditation, improv, taekwondo and sky diving to learn to quiet the inner mind and enjoy the moment. I had this amazing experience some time back. http://enlightenedgeek.blogspot.com/2008/08/awakening-learning-to-enjoy-journey.html
Since then things have become a lot easier.
Two books that I recommend that have helped me a lot are
- The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (NOT pool related)
- Pleasures of Small Motions by Bob Fancher
-Adi
John Biddle
- March 24th, 2009
This is great stuff, Aditya. I read in a number of books that one should learn to shoot by feel. That at first you need to learn how to aim, and where to aim at, but once you have the rudiments down you should switch to a feel approach.
Banks are also taught this way, even more so than regular cut shots. First the authors walk you through complicated diagrams and methodologies for determining the point of aim. but once you have an idea of about where to shoot, you should switch to a feel approach, just shooting hundreds or maybe thousands of these shots in practice until your subconscious mind knows where to shoot more than your conscious mind.
Lastly this happens with deflection, I think, though I don’t read of it much in books. Different cues have different deflection characteristics, and you get used to your cue’s characteristics. If you change cues it takes a little while to adjust to the new one, but the adjustment seems to take place unconsciously, rather than analytically. I don’t remember anyone ever saying how they had to adjust in a particular way to a different cue, it just happened.
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