Fred Agnir
12-27-2002, 09:07 AM
I don't want to sound like a cheerleader or a BCA-Instructor groupie, but I wanted to revisit the merits of BCA Instruction.
It is often said on boards like this that if you take a break from the game, often times when you come back from, say, a two or three week vacation, that you might play better than before the break. I personally think this is a slippery slope, as the conclusion might be misleading. The idea is that you may have been falling into some poor habits, and that the break may have allowed you to rid yourself of those poor habits.
With me, I must keep playing or else I can't keep my level up. Much of that has less to do with shotmaking, and more to do with patterns, cueball movement and speed control. If, for some reason, I'm forced away from a daily pool playing regimen, it used to be a mystery for me to remember how to play. It'd take a few hours of banging away until my body remembered how to fall into place.
However, one of the things that BCA Instruction teaches is that in order to gain consistency, you have to have a baseline or reference to compare, a checklist of stroke motions, if you will. In that way, remembering how to play after a layoff becomes more organized with a recognizable goal, rather than just hitting them by rote until you remember what you're doing.
That's what I was talking about when I said that I got down to some serious set-pause-finish practice. I had been away from my daily pool playing, and needed to check where my stroke was and where it needed to be.
So... get thee to a BCA Instructor. Define a baseline. Gain consistency. It beats flailing away when your stroke starts to go downhill.
Fred
It is often said on boards like this that if you take a break from the game, often times when you come back from, say, a two or three week vacation, that you might play better than before the break. I personally think this is a slippery slope, as the conclusion might be misleading. The idea is that you may have been falling into some poor habits, and that the break may have allowed you to rid yourself of those poor habits.
With me, I must keep playing or else I can't keep my level up. Much of that has less to do with shotmaking, and more to do with patterns, cueball movement and speed control. If, for some reason, I'm forced away from a daily pool playing regimen, it used to be a mystery for me to remember how to play. It'd take a few hours of banging away until my body remembered how to fall into place.
However, one of the things that BCA Instruction teaches is that in order to gain consistency, you have to have a baseline or reference to compare, a checklist of stroke motions, if you will. In that way, remembering how to play after a layoff becomes more organized with a recognizable goal, rather than just hitting them by rote until you remember what you're doing.
That's what I was talking about when I said that I got down to some serious set-pause-finish practice. I had been away from my daily pool playing, and needed to check where my stroke was and where it needed to be.
So... get thee to a BCA Instructor. Define a baseline. Gain consistency. It beats flailing away when your stroke starts to go downhill.
Fred