4 Simple Tips to Improve Consistency

Not everything that improves your pool game will take a lot of effort. The simple ideas below all take little to no effort but can add consistency and accuracy. These tips are tweaks to things you probably already know to help you do them more better or more consistently, rather than teaching you to do something new. That said, if even one of these tips helps you gain a little consistency, they’re well worth your time.

Three of these I learned just recently from Rolando Aravena during a couple of group lessons I participated in at Stroker’s in Palm Harbor. They weren’t a core part of the lesson, he just offered them up as tips as the subject mater came up.

 01 Ground Your Tip to Find Center Ball
As you first approach the cue ball to get ready for your shot, touch the tip of your cue to the table just behind where the cue ball makes contact with the cloth. It’s much easier there to find the exact vertical center line than it is up in the middle of the ball. By raising the tip straight up, you’ll keep it on the center line. It takes almost not time, and you very quickly integrate the motion smoothly into your pre-shot routine.

A bigger problem than not knowing where center ball is, is knowing where it is, but being wrong. Unintended English is a very serious problem for novice and intermediate players. You must adjust your aim when using english, so it’s critical not to apply any inadvertently.

 02 Bump Your Butt to Find Level
I bet you’ve heard and read many times how important it is to keep your cue as level as possible at all times. Well, here’s a simple technique to help you achieve it.

Kinesthetic sense is the ability to know what your body’s doing without looking at it. Some people have a lot of it, others unfortunately not so much. Just because you feel, for example, that you’re stroking parallel to the table doesn’t mean you actually are. What you want is on objective assessment of your stroke’s levelness, so you can adjust as appropriate and practice until that is second nature. During practice you can get a friend or instructor to help; you can use a mirror or a video camera. But what can you do in a game?

After you’ve settled in with your stick aligned properly to the cue ball and the path you want to send it on, drop your grip hand slowly until the butt end of your cue bumps the rail. Now raise it just enough to be sure you’ll clear the rail as you stroke and you’ll have achieved the closest thing you can get to a level cue for that given position. On some shots the first thing to hit will be the backs of your fingers on your grip hand touching the cloth of the playing surface. That works too.

Of course it doesn’t work on every shot, but if you begin to use it everywhere it does work, you will hone that kinesthetic sense, and that will help you on the ones where the technique is inappropriate. And don’t worry; you won’t look like a dork. As you do this in practice the first few times, and it quickly becomes a natural movement and gets integrated smoothly into your pre-shot routine, it will be all but imperceptible.

 03 Use a Chalk Holder to Minimize Loss of Focus
It doesn’t matter what kind or style. Magnetic, stick or some other, all are ok. Just get one you like and are comfortable with. You might have to try out a couple to find one that you really like, but they’re inexpensive.

You might be guessing that this is just a way to get you to chalk more often. Nope! While chalking up more often is indeed a good thing, you already know that and this post (hopefully) is about showing you something new.

When you use a piece of free-standing chalk you have to put it back on the rail before you shoot. To do so, you will usually take your eyes off the shot, and break your concentration, in order to see the rail and position the chalk. Boo, hiss.

Now, when you use a chalk holder that you’ve become accustomed to, you can make the entire chalking process, from getting the chalk to chalking itself, to returning the chalk into a subconscious process that no longer needs any conscious attention. There’s no loss of concentration or focus. Pretty simple, pretty amazing.

 04 Exhale Before You Shoot
The last of our simple tips, like #3, is about improving your focus and concentration. I’ve written before about the quiet eye phenomenon, but the gist is that focusing your eyes on the target point on the object ball for 2 seconds or more immediately before you pull the trigger maximizes your accuracy. This tip is a tweak to that.

At the end of your pre-shot routine, on your last practice stroke, your last best focus on the target point on the object ball, exhale. Now hold it while you give your last best focus to the target point on the object ball for at least 2 seconds. The stillness from your not breathing minimizes body movement, but much more than that it maximizes concentration. It also puts a little added emphasis on this last critical aiming step before stroking.

I hope you liked these tips as much as I did when I first heard them. Leave a comment about these or other tips that have helped you. Or even those you tried that didn’t help.

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