How to Maximize “Banging Balls”
Some people find it too boring to do drills or other forms of progressive practice. They wind up just throwing out a rack of balls onto the table and just banging them into pockets. While I don’t want to encourage any of you to do this, I realize that many will continue to do it, at least some of the time, and I want to make some suggestions that will help you get much more out of your ball banging.
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| Image by SebishOR via Flickr |
My suggestions all center around adding a requirement to all shots for a given rack’s worth of balls. By doing this you will be improving your practice time by focusing on one particular thing, at least for awhile, and that will help you to concentrate on it more as well as learn more from the activity.
Your mind is most efficient at learning when there are only a few things to concentrate on, and only one of them, or at most two of them are changing from iteration to iteration. Each of the following constraints will help simplify your activity by limiting your options and concentrating your focus by getting you to pay much more attention to the constraint as well as to the result.
I suggest doing these options for at least two racks, but more is better. When you get tired of one, switch to another, but give them a chance by taking them seriously and giving them your best effort.
Let us know how this works out. Are you finding it useful? Is this kind of practice a good compromise between mindless ball banging and full on drill based routines? Next time you decide to bang balls, try one of these options out and see if you don’t find your time more satisfying as well as more rewarding.
By doing this you will be improving your practice time by focusing on one particular thing.
Another benefit of doing your ball banging this way is that it is a kind of stealth practice. By that I mean your friends and competitors in the room will see you banging balls rather than doing serious practice and this may help them to underestimate you, or take you less seriously. Some guys like that, and can make use of it.
Stroke Builders
Play every shot with draw. Vary the amount from shot to shot, trying to pull your rock back to a specific place. Try sometimes to bring it back into a rail and then back out. Use side english in combination with draw to vary how you come off the rail, etc. Draw is a powerful weapon, but only if you can use it consistently and with control.
Play every shot with inside english. Most folks find inside to be the more difficult english to use and often shy away from using it. If you force yourself to run a few racks using it on every shot, you’ll find your comfort factor going way up and hence you’ll be much more willing to use it. Once you’re comfortable you’ll begin to see options and patterns that you didn’t even think of before because you’re subconscious knew you didn’t want to see them.
Position Builders
Play Targets. For every shot, pick one of the remaining object balls as a target that you’ll hit with the cue ball after the collision with the object ball. That is, the second ball becomes your position target. You want to hit it, but just barely. Consider yourself successful if you get within a ball’s distance for close shots, two balls distance for medium shots and 3 for long distance positions.
Play all position off one rail. Using rails effectively is one thing that beginning players do poorly and we all can improve on. For each ball in the rack, get position on your next ball using one and only one rail. English, follow and draw are optional, just use one rail to get position for every shot.
Don’t touch any rails. Just as some players shy away from using rails to the detriment of their games, others use them perhaps too much once they’ve mastered them. They forget how useful and accurate no rail position can be. Shoot a couple of racks where you don’t allow the cue ball to touch a rail (or another ball if you want to make it extra tough), and you’ll start to remember some of these routes you used to use much more frequently. You will also get the opportunity to practice your micro-control, using throw to add or subtract from the normal cut angle for the ball and the cue ball both.
This will give you plenty to do for awhile, and I’ll be back with more in a later post.
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How to Maximize “Banging Balls”
Five Ways to Liven Up Your Practice Drills
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One Response to “How to Maximize “Banging Balls””
Research Essay Writing
- January 4th, 2010
yes..I find it hard to do the drills but I am determined enough to learn.
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