A big part of putting yourself in a consistency trance is your stroking pattern during your warm-up strokes. A Complete Book, Pleasures of Small Movements by Bob Fancher Ph.D. it was written with this aspect of his game as the most important part of the performance at the pool table. There is some merit in this.
If you take a look at the videos of Efren Reyes at various stages throughout his long career and pay attention to his pre-take caress pattern, you’ll notice how little variation there is in what he does as the years go by. Each elite player develops their way of making warm-up shots and that becomes very useful or necessary to create rhythm within their game.
Coordinating your eyes with the movement of your cue is very important and you should do some work to find a way to do it that works for you. Once a player “enters the shot,” that also means that his arm and grip warm up along with the sequence of his eye movement as it relates to the warm-up shots and the final delivery of the signal. If you perform all of the above components of your pre-shot routine, position your bridge firmly, and THEN enter your stroke / eye movement pattern, your chance of success on any shot will increase by 10 times.
There is no magic and correct way to organize your practice strokes or a magic number of practice strokes for you to perform, however when you find one that works for you, it becomes your magical result production sequence. You may be in “dead hit” and only hit one or two practice strokes on each stroke. This is possible with superior attention to detail in the shot setup process. Three, four, five, or six warm-up shots can be your magic number, or 15. However, somewhere in the single digits it should do the job, and it can vary a bit on shorter difficult shots compared to longer shots. .
A general guideline is to watch the cue ball as the cue ball enters the cue ball and look back at the object ball as it moves away from the cue ball. Then, before your last backswing, fix your eyes on the object ball and THEN start your last backswing and then hit your actual shot. There can be so much variation that I give this as a GUIDELINE, but work on it, watch your favorite professionals, and get to decide on something that works for you …
My grandfather always marveled at local players who “cut too much wood,” meaning they just stood still practicing shots forever before each shot. As you improve, your pattern should become more refined without the need to always be down on a hit. With the disciplined sticking to all components of the pre-shot routine, finding a good rhythm will find its way to you.
Good luck with that and see you soon …
Max eberle
