One
04-01-2004, 09:37 AM
Here is an interesting article I found on http://poollogics.port5.com/
This is very advanced stuff but after thinking about it for a while it does make sense! /ccboard/images/graemlins/smile.gif
__________________
The optimal follow through
by Mr. X.
December 23 2003
Introduction
When I watch pro players I can always see problems with their stroke, they obviously don't know much about the contact between the tip and cueball. Pros all use different strokes because it works for them to make the ball in the pocket, even with the worst possible stroke where you can still hit the cueball you will make a ball in the pocket. Everyone knows that you can make the ball more accurately the more accurate your stroke is, but pros use different strokes because they don't see a difference. But those strokes are far from good and even further from optimal.
Pros stop developing their stroke when they can make all balls in the game they are playing, they make a conclusion that "if you can make unlimited racks in 9-ball then the stroke is working right?" Totally wrong!!! It all depends on the difficulty of the game and there is no reason why you shouldn't develop your stroke to its maximum potential.
The most important thing is the follow through, that is where the shot accuracy is decided and a difference between success and disaster. The stance and pre-strokes are just preparations for the follow through, they all work together towards the same common goal; a tiny contact between the tip and cueball that has to be very precise.
Follow through acceleration
The worst thing you can do is accelerate through the cueball, though everyone does it without realizing how bad it is. The reason for this is that it will be far from consistent because it will mostly depend on the accuracy of your follow through and the follow through has to be perfect for it not to have a negative impact.
Logical explanation
When you accelerate through the cueball you are touching the cueball a slightly longer time, and the longer time the tip is in contact with the cueball, the more accurate the stroke has to be. It is like you are pushing the cueball and always keep touching it because you are accelerating the cue. To be able to push the cueball like this, you need to shoot the shot at a low speed and accelerate the cue so the tip can reach the cueball another time and keep up with it, but if you don't decelerate the cue to make the tip move at the same speed as the cueball you will hit the cueball many times with the tip. Hitting the cueball many times with the tip will make the errors in the stroke bigger, for example when you are hitting downwards on the cueball using top spin, it will trap the cueball under the tip which will make it contact the cueball many times until you are pushing it, and hitting dead centre is almost impossible, because the cueball will choose a way out from the sides. Keep in mind that the contact between the tip and cueball in a normal shot is less than a fifth of an inch, and it is impossible to see the many hits with the human eye.
For being in contact with the cueball for a longer time depends on cue weight and acceleration/deceleration, for a lighter cue you need to start accelerating from a shorter distance (lower speed) to be in contact with the cueball a longer time. This is because the lighter the cue is, the more the cue slows down on the impact with the cueball, so you need to accelerate faster to hit the cueball another time. If the cueball doesn't weigh anything, then the cue will obviously not slow down at the cueball impact and you can keep pushing the cueball forever (only dead centre contact). Because the cueball has weight in it the cue will always slow down no matter how heavy the cue is, the cue will just slow down less with a heavier one. The only way you can push a cueball that has weight is to either start pushing it when already touching it, or, catch up with it when it is already moving and slow down less and less to avoid hitting it again and then accelerate again to keep up with it. If the cueball is slowing down (friction) then you need to decelerate the cue to match the cueball's deceleration.
The logical conclusion to this is that the heavier the cue is, the longer contact you can make with the cueball, which results in more spin, but you can't see a difference.
The longer contact you make with the cueball, the more it depends on a straight stroke because if you followed through the cueball slightly wrong, the error will multiply the longer contact you make with the cueball. So the less contact you make with the cueball the less it depends on stroke.
How to use the multiple hits to your advantage
The easiest way to double hit the cueball is when using spin on the vertical axis, for example massé shots, those shots pushes the cueball to the side. The tip stays on the cueball until it leaves the edge of it, so it adds up spin in that period while forcing the cueball to the side at the same time (to get spin the tip has to "grab" the cueball, if it slides you get no spin (miscue)).
Using top spin and shooting down on the cueball is the opposite of this. The tip will start contacting the cueball high on the vertical axis and because the cueball will try to move forwards the tip will slide towards the centre of the cueball, and this results in less spin and a lot of contacts.
There is another way to use the multiple hit, it is when using draw and using an upwards curve stroke when having the cue elevated. When hitting the cueball with draw the tip will be forced downwards from the cueball (if the cue bends, which is normal) and will eventually hit the cloth of the table. Because the cueball is round you are contacting it in a spot that is further than when contacting the middle of the ball. If you would move the cue up when using draw, then the end of the tip would be about an inch inside the cueball! When you follow through and the tip goes upwards you are hitting the cueball another time, and you don't need to accelerate the cue as much in order to catch up with it, because the contact point is an inch closer. The more elevation of the cue you have, the more contacts you can make with the cueball, because you shoot the cueball down at the table instead of forwards so it doesn't escape your tip as fast. Before the cueball jumps up from the table you will be contacting it again with the tip to add more spin to it. The higher it jumps the less times you can hit it because the cueball escapes upwards.
Only use this technique if you can handle it. Because it took me into a slump that lasted a year to get out of. I eventually used this upwards curve stroke on every shot which is very bad and much harder to control cueball tip position with. But when having the cue elevated when using top spin the curve stroke will avoid the many contacts which will make it depend less on stroke accuracy.
The optimal acceleration
So now you know that when accelerating the cue in a short distance results in more "pushing" the cueball because of the low speed at contact with the cueball. However, if you can accelerate the cue fast enough to your maximum speed, then you don't get pushing of the cueball. The more you are decelerating the cue, the less pushing you will get and the more consistent the hit will be, because the shorter contact with the cueball, the less the errors are multiplied. But decelerating the cue at impact will be very difficult and will be even harder to do consistently than accelerating through the cueball. The optimal and easiest follow through is when you do neither of those, you are not accelerating nor decelerating at impact with the cueball, the cue stays at a consistent speed when hitting the cueball. For example the cue is going at consistent 20 mph forever (for this you need a slight acceleration to keep it at that speed because of gravity and wind resistance) instead of 20 mph, 21, 22, 23...etc, or, 20 mph, 19, 18, 17...etc.
So in order to do this you need to decelerate the cue before impact with the cueball in order stop its acceleration that you gave to the cue with your arm. But you don't have to do that! The arm will slow down by itself if you don't accelerate it because of gravity and slight wind resistance. You are accelerating the cue only in the beginning of your stroke instead of continuing to accelerate it up to the impact with the cueball and beyond it. After the initiated acceleration period is completed, just let the arm move by itself and keep it relaxed and let it automatically complete the impact with the cueball, it is like you are throwing your arm at the cueball.
When you are accelerating the arm, it takes a while to shut off all muscle activity of your biceps, all the muscle fibers will not shut off exactly at the same time, they will shut off hopefully linearly which results in less and less acceleration until there eventually isn't any muscle activity left.
When you don't have any acceleration force to push the cue it will immediately slow down and start decelerating on its own. But this is just good because you will get less contact with the cueball. The bad thing you can do here is to use the triceps to decelerate the cue instead of letting it slow down by itself, there should only be biceps activity before and through the impact of the cueball.
The timing of the acceleration period and shutting off the muscle fibers should be timed good, it should be timed so that you have just enough biceps activity so you are still pushing the cue to keep it at a consistent speed at the impact with the cueball. For example if the cue is traveling at 20 mph you probably only need 1% biceps activity to keep the cue at the same 20 mph speed, it all depends on the weight of the cue, the weight of your arm, your maximum strength, and your muscle fiber type percentages.
The length of the acceleration period depends on the time it takes for your biceps to shut off all activity. This depends of your percentage of fast twitch muscle fibers (type IIb), the more of these fibers you have, the faster you can activate and de-active your muscle fibers. So the faster muscles, the later in your stroke you will attempt to shut off all your muscle fiber activity. The slower your muscles are, the sooner you will need to shut them off to get the right timing at the impact of the cueball. The length of your backstroke depends on this. If you can't accelerate the cue fast enough to reach the speed that you want, you will need a longer backstroke, and if you have fast muscles and can accelerate fast in a short distance, then you can use a shorter backstroke and have an advantage because you get less errors with a shorter stroke.
What to do after the impact is complete?
After the impact/impacts with the cueball are over and you let the cue slow down by itself, then you can activate the triceps muscle fibers to slow down the cue until it stops, it doesn't really matter what you do with the cue after, you can't change the shot anymore. It is only the impact period that has to be straight, but if it is straight then the cue will naturally follow through straight too, if the impact with the cueball is not straight then the follow through will obviously be much worse. So if the follow through looks straight, then the impact must have been straight also.
You always need to drop the shoulder in the follow through in order to keep the cue straight, but timing is very difficult to do it exactly while the impact is occuring. But you still have to do it because if you wouldn't drop the shoulder to keep the cue going straight, the cue would go in a curve downwards in the follow through, this doesn't matter if the curve begins after the impact is completed. But if you judge distances wrong or grip the cue wrong you will get disaster. You also have to drop the shoulder in your pre-strokes to keep the cue straight and level, but that is not as important as the follow through.
The optimal follow through length
The follow through length obviously doesn't matter, you only need a follow through length that is as long as the impact period. The extra distance is only used to slow down the cue. But still many use different length follow throughs, why?
It depends on cue weight, strength and stupidity. If you have a heavy cue you need to be stronger to decelerate the cue as fast as with a lighter cue, so you will need a longer follow through. The reason why it depends on stupidity is because many people seem to think the follow through length matters, like more spin etc. Well of course because they accelerate through the cueball with a short backstroke, but that doesn't depend on follow through length, only the length of impact.
The difference between accelerating through the cueball and not doing it will be impossible to see with the human eye, it could only be possible to tell the difference if you hit the cueball with an upwards curved draw stroke.
The optimal follow through length depends on the weight of the cue, the lighter cue the shorter follow through etc. The shorter follow through the easier speed control is. A lighter cue also slows down from the impact more and doesn't push the cueball sideways as much as a heavier cue, instead the cueball pushes the cue away more. So when using a heavier cue you need a straighter stroke. So the logical conclusion is to use as light cue as possible while still being able to shoot hard shots, because a lighter cue needs to travel faster than a heavier cue.
A 19 oz cue for pool balls is about the same as 17 oz for snooker balls, Stephen Hendry uses a 17 oz cue and he has almost optimal follow through, but I can still see problems with it. When practicing for optimal follow through you should imitate his follow through, he does it better than anyone else of the snooker pros. The follow through length that he uses is close to optimal, you can see that he follows through the ball with the arm relaxed instead of accelerating through the cueball a lot like pool players do, but he still does it a little. He uses a short stroke and accelerates the cue faster than others and that's why he has that good stroke accuracy. Others will need to accelerate through the cueball more if they use the same stroke length.
Obviously you need a longer follow through in pool compared to snooker because of a heavier cueball and cue. So about a 3 inch (7.7 cm) follow through would be optimal for pool when using a 19 oz cue, you will use this distance on all velocities except the break shot. Don't try to stop the cue before it has slowed down by itself after the cueball impact. If you can't decelerate the cue in that optimal distance, then use a longer follow through until you can. The reason to use the same follow through length is for consistency, you practice dropping the shoulder just the right amount so it gets as straight as possible instead of going upwards or downwards. The more you practice it, the more fine tuned it becomes.
Conclusion:
1. Accelerate the cue and attemp to shut off all biceps activity before impact with the cueball. Time it right so you will have enough activity to make the arm/cue travel at a consistent speed that is not accelerating nor decelerating when hitting the cueball.
2. Use a follow through length that is optimal for the cueball vs cue weight. Use a shorter follow through only if your triceps are fast enough.
by Mr. X.
__________________
This is very advanced stuff but after thinking about it for a while it does make sense! /ccboard/images/graemlins/smile.gif
__________________
The optimal follow through
by Mr. X.
December 23 2003
Introduction
When I watch pro players I can always see problems with their stroke, they obviously don't know much about the contact between the tip and cueball. Pros all use different strokes because it works for them to make the ball in the pocket, even with the worst possible stroke where you can still hit the cueball you will make a ball in the pocket. Everyone knows that you can make the ball more accurately the more accurate your stroke is, but pros use different strokes because they don't see a difference. But those strokes are far from good and even further from optimal.
Pros stop developing their stroke when they can make all balls in the game they are playing, they make a conclusion that "if you can make unlimited racks in 9-ball then the stroke is working right?" Totally wrong!!! It all depends on the difficulty of the game and there is no reason why you shouldn't develop your stroke to its maximum potential.
The most important thing is the follow through, that is where the shot accuracy is decided and a difference between success and disaster. The stance and pre-strokes are just preparations for the follow through, they all work together towards the same common goal; a tiny contact between the tip and cueball that has to be very precise.
Follow through acceleration
The worst thing you can do is accelerate through the cueball, though everyone does it without realizing how bad it is. The reason for this is that it will be far from consistent because it will mostly depend on the accuracy of your follow through and the follow through has to be perfect for it not to have a negative impact.
Logical explanation
When you accelerate through the cueball you are touching the cueball a slightly longer time, and the longer time the tip is in contact with the cueball, the more accurate the stroke has to be. It is like you are pushing the cueball and always keep touching it because you are accelerating the cue. To be able to push the cueball like this, you need to shoot the shot at a low speed and accelerate the cue so the tip can reach the cueball another time and keep up with it, but if you don't decelerate the cue to make the tip move at the same speed as the cueball you will hit the cueball many times with the tip. Hitting the cueball many times with the tip will make the errors in the stroke bigger, for example when you are hitting downwards on the cueball using top spin, it will trap the cueball under the tip which will make it contact the cueball many times until you are pushing it, and hitting dead centre is almost impossible, because the cueball will choose a way out from the sides. Keep in mind that the contact between the tip and cueball in a normal shot is less than a fifth of an inch, and it is impossible to see the many hits with the human eye.
For being in contact with the cueball for a longer time depends on cue weight and acceleration/deceleration, for a lighter cue you need to start accelerating from a shorter distance (lower speed) to be in contact with the cueball a longer time. This is because the lighter the cue is, the more the cue slows down on the impact with the cueball, so you need to accelerate faster to hit the cueball another time. If the cueball doesn't weigh anything, then the cue will obviously not slow down at the cueball impact and you can keep pushing the cueball forever (only dead centre contact). Because the cueball has weight in it the cue will always slow down no matter how heavy the cue is, the cue will just slow down less with a heavier one. The only way you can push a cueball that has weight is to either start pushing it when already touching it, or, catch up with it when it is already moving and slow down less and less to avoid hitting it again and then accelerate again to keep up with it. If the cueball is slowing down (friction) then you need to decelerate the cue to match the cueball's deceleration.
The logical conclusion to this is that the heavier the cue is, the longer contact you can make with the cueball, which results in more spin, but you can't see a difference.
The longer contact you make with the cueball, the more it depends on a straight stroke because if you followed through the cueball slightly wrong, the error will multiply the longer contact you make with the cueball. So the less contact you make with the cueball the less it depends on stroke.
How to use the multiple hits to your advantage
The easiest way to double hit the cueball is when using spin on the vertical axis, for example massé shots, those shots pushes the cueball to the side. The tip stays on the cueball until it leaves the edge of it, so it adds up spin in that period while forcing the cueball to the side at the same time (to get spin the tip has to "grab" the cueball, if it slides you get no spin (miscue)).
Using top spin and shooting down on the cueball is the opposite of this. The tip will start contacting the cueball high on the vertical axis and because the cueball will try to move forwards the tip will slide towards the centre of the cueball, and this results in less spin and a lot of contacts.
There is another way to use the multiple hit, it is when using draw and using an upwards curve stroke when having the cue elevated. When hitting the cueball with draw the tip will be forced downwards from the cueball (if the cue bends, which is normal) and will eventually hit the cloth of the table. Because the cueball is round you are contacting it in a spot that is further than when contacting the middle of the ball. If you would move the cue up when using draw, then the end of the tip would be about an inch inside the cueball! When you follow through and the tip goes upwards you are hitting the cueball another time, and you don't need to accelerate the cue as much in order to catch up with it, because the contact point is an inch closer. The more elevation of the cue you have, the more contacts you can make with the cueball, because you shoot the cueball down at the table instead of forwards so it doesn't escape your tip as fast. Before the cueball jumps up from the table you will be contacting it again with the tip to add more spin to it. The higher it jumps the less times you can hit it because the cueball escapes upwards.
Only use this technique if you can handle it. Because it took me into a slump that lasted a year to get out of. I eventually used this upwards curve stroke on every shot which is very bad and much harder to control cueball tip position with. But when having the cue elevated when using top spin the curve stroke will avoid the many contacts which will make it depend less on stroke accuracy.
The optimal acceleration
So now you know that when accelerating the cue in a short distance results in more "pushing" the cueball because of the low speed at contact with the cueball. However, if you can accelerate the cue fast enough to your maximum speed, then you don't get pushing of the cueball. The more you are decelerating the cue, the less pushing you will get and the more consistent the hit will be, because the shorter contact with the cueball, the less the errors are multiplied. But decelerating the cue at impact will be very difficult and will be even harder to do consistently than accelerating through the cueball. The optimal and easiest follow through is when you do neither of those, you are not accelerating nor decelerating at impact with the cueball, the cue stays at a consistent speed when hitting the cueball. For example the cue is going at consistent 20 mph forever (for this you need a slight acceleration to keep it at that speed because of gravity and wind resistance) instead of 20 mph, 21, 22, 23...etc, or, 20 mph, 19, 18, 17...etc.
So in order to do this you need to decelerate the cue before impact with the cueball in order stop its acceleration that you gave to the cue with your arm. But you don't have to do that! The arm will slow down by itself if you don't accelerate it because of gravity and slight wind resistance. You are accelerating the cue only in the beginning of your stroke instead of continuing to accelerate it up to the impact with the cueball and beyond it. After the initiated acceleration period is completed, just let the arm move by itself and keep it relaxed and let it automatically complete the impact with the cueball, it is like you are throwing your arm at the cueball.
When you are accelerating the arm, it takes a while to shut off all muscle activity of your biceps, all the muscle fibers will not shut off exactly at the same time, they will shut off hopefully linearly which results in less and less acceleration until there eventually isn't any muscle activity left.
When you don't have any acceleration force to push the cue it will immediately slow down and start decelerating on its own. But this is just good because you will get less contact with the cueball. The bad thing you can do here is to use the triceps to decelerate the cue instead of letting it slow down by itself, there should only be biceps activity before and through the impact of the cueball.
The timing of the acceleration period and shutting off the muscle fibers should be timed good, it should be timed so that you have just enough biceps activity so you are still pushing the cue to keep it at a consistent speed at the impact with the cueball. For example if the cue is traveling at 20 mph you probably only need 1% biceps activity to keep the cue at the same 20 mph speed, it all depends on the weight of the cue, the weight of your arm, your maximum strength, and your muscle fiber type percentages.
The length of the acceleration period depends on the time it takes for your biceps to shut off all activity. This depends of your percentage of fast twitch muscle fibers (type IIb), the more of these fibers you have, the faster you can activate and de-active your muscle fibers. So the faster muscles, the later in your stroke you will attempt to shut off all your muscle fiber activity. The slower your muscles are, the sooner you will need to shut them off to get the right timing at the impact of the cueball. The length of your backstroke depends on this. If you can't accelerate the cue fast enough to reach the speed that you want, you will need a longer backstroke, and if you have fast muscles and can accelerate fast in a short distance, then you can use a shorter backstroke and have an advantage because you get less errors with a shorter stroke.
What to do after the impact is complete?
After the impact/impacts with the cueball are over and you let the cue slow down by itself, then you can activate the triceps muscle fibers to slow down the cue until it stops, it doesn't really matter what you do with the cue after, you can't change the shot anymore. It is only the impact period that has to be straight, but if it is straight then the cue will naturally follow through straight too, if the impact with the cueball is not straight then the follow through will obviously be much worse. So if the follow through looks straight, then the impact must have been straight also.
You always need to drop the shoulder in the follow through in order to keep the cue straight, but timing is very difficult to do it exactly while the impact is occuring. But you still have to do it because if you wouldn't drop the shoulder to keep the cue going straight, the cue would go in a curve downwards in the follow through, this doesn't matter if the curve begins after the impact is completed. But if you judge distances wrong or grip the cue wrong you will get disaster. You also have to drop the shoulder in your pre-strokes to keep the cue straight and level, but that is not as important as the follow through.
The optimal follow through length
The follow through length obviously doesn't matter, you only need a follow through length that is as long as the impact period. The extra distance is only used to slow down the cue. But still many use different length follow throughs, why?
It depends on cue weight, strength and stupidity. If you have a heavy cue you need to be stronger to decelerate the cue as fast as with a lighter cue, so you will need a longer follow through. The reason why it depends on stupidity is because many people seem to think the follow through length matters, like more spin etc. Well of course because they accelerate through the cueball with a short backstroke, but that doesn't depend on follow through length, only the length of impact.
The difference between accelerating through the cueball and not doing it will be impossible to see with the human eye, it could only be possible to tell the difference if you hit the cueball with an upwards curved draw stroke.
The optimal follow through length depends on the weight of the cue, the lighter cue the shorter follow through etc. The shorter follow through the easier speed control is. A lighter cue also slows down from the impact more and doesn't push the cueball sideways as much as a heavier cue, instead the cueball pushes the cue away more. So when using a heavier cue you need a straighter stroke. So the logical conclusion is to use as light cue as possible while still being able to shoot hard shots, because a lighter cue needs to travel faster than a heavier cue.
A 19 oz cue for pool balls is about the same as 17 oz for snooker balls, Stephen Hendry uses a 17 oz cue and he has almost optimal follow through, but I can still see problems with it. When practicing for optimal follow through you should imitate his follow through, he does it better than anyone else of the snooker pros. The follow through length that he uses is close to optimal, you can see that he follows through the ball with the arm relaxed instead of accelerating through the cueball a lot like pool players do, but he still does it a little. He uses a short stroke and accelerates the cue faster than others and that's why he has that good stroke accuracy. Others will need to accelerate through the cueball more if they use the same stroke length.
Obviously you need a longer follow through in pool compared to snooker because of a heavier cueball and cue. So about a 3 inch (7.7 cm) follow through would be optimal for pool when using a 19 oz cue, you will use this distance on all velocities except the break shot. Don't try to stop the cue before it has slowed down by itself after the cueball impact. If you can't decelerate the cue in that optimal distance, then use a longer follow through until you can. The reason to use the same follow through length is for consistency, you practice dropping the shoulder just the right amount so it gets as straight as possible instead of going upwards or downwards. The more you practice it, the more fine tuned it becomes.
Conclusion:
1. Accelerate the cue and attemp to shut off all biceps activity before impact with the cueball. Time it right so you will have enough activity to make the arm/cue travel at a consistent speed that is not accelerating nor decelerating when hitting the cueball.
2. Use a follow through length that is optimal for the cueball vs cue weight. Use a shorter follow through only if your triceps are fast enough.
by Mr. X.
__________________