Training Guide Series. - Snookeristsnookerist.ru/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/the-snooker-gym-practice...The Snooker Gym™ Training Guide Series. The intention of this series is to
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“The Snooker Gym™” is a trademark of Nic Barrow.
First Edition 2000Second Edition 2002Third Edition 2004
The intention of this series is to educate players, coaches, journalists and others who are interested in any or all of the departments of this fascinating sport.
For the Training Guide Series, snooker has been taken down into its’ main constituent parts, each one of which has its own edition in the series.
Each guide will give you a stated objective on the front cover, letting you know what you will gain from knowing and applying the information inside.
Within each guide, you will first find a list of headings for an overview of the subject. Underneath each heading will be a rough description of what you will get from each section.
Each section goes into the nuts and bolts of the game, so that anybody wanting to, can derive a fully comprehensive understanding of the game from the ground up. This is particularly useful for individuals studying to become a Snooker Gym™ Instructor, and forms part of the coursework for that programme.
Youth, others learning the game and those still improving their amateur status will also benefit highly from understanding each part of the sport.
This level of detail is NOT, however, suitable for professionals and high level amateurs about to play matches. While useful for pre tournament checks or pre season study and performance development, the professional should always ask for what purpose they need the detail. Their job is to concentrate on the business of winning, and taking their game down to its’ finest components just before competition can take their edge off the focus on results.
Other psychological and physical preparation methods found in other tools available from The Snooker Gym™ are more suitable for players of this standard before matches.
It only leaves me to welcome you to this bountiful garden of knowledge I have been fortunate enough to discover, and wish you well in your quest for the kingdom of snooker performance.
Welcome to The Snooker Gym™ Perfect Practice Routines.
This guide will take you through the major practice routines in the main areas of the snooker, in addition to a few that have been designed through necessity to illustrate certain points to players. It is always better for a player to feel they have learned something themselves, so it is better to have the player gain the lesson by going through one of these routines, rather than by listening to a long explanation.
Each practice is self explanatory in its own right, and does not need to be used in conjunction with any other practice in the book, although some of the practices do have a logical sequence that work well together.
It was always my dream to be able to answer a players question fully when they asked me what to practice. This was partly so that I could give them what they wanted, but also to give a player a sense of focus and purpose every time they are at the table. It is only when time is utilised properly at the table that maximum improvement can occur.
Finally, it remains for me to wish you well on your path of snooker adventure, and I know that the practices featured here can keep you occupied and fascinated for hours on end with this wonderful game we have both chosen to play.
The Sweetshop Method would see you open the book in whatever section or practice you feel like on the day, practicing for as long as you get benefit.
The Bootcamp Method would see you make a rigorous plan whereby you set aside a certain amount of time each day to practice certain sections, ticking off the practices until you have completed every single one.
Finally, The Single File Method would see you start at the beginning of the book and gradually work your way through every practice until you get to the end of the book.
I have given a brief outline later on of the various ways that you can mix up your practice for best integration of the lessons to be learned in each one. As in body building, it is always best to change the types of exercise you do to prevent the law of familiarity and stagnation.
Some practices have a lot of information and a lot of lines on the same diagram. This is to save you searching through pages and pages of practices and also reduces the bulk of the book you have to carry around.
A few simple rules apply to each practice, with exceptions mentioned on each practice:
-It is allowed to pot a ball into any pocket unless a restriction is otherwise mentioned.
-Everything is to be played with centre cue ball striking unless otherwise mentioned.
-No cannons are allowed with the cue ball onto balls other than the object ball, unless otherwise mentioned.
You will find it useful to practice these shots on both sides of the table to be comfortable with dealing with rest shots and shots where the cushion is obstructing your body and your balance.
When practicing positional play, it is assumed you make very small chalk marks on the cloth so the balls are placed in exactly the same position, to ensure repeatability of your ‘scientific positional play test’. There is a huge difference in the position of the cue ball you will get if you play the shot in exactly the same way, if there is even a very small difference in the starting position of the cue ball. This is because we are not dealing with millimetres or centimetres, but rather percentages. Moving the cue ball one centimetre can reduce the angle of your shot by 30%. You would then have no chance of replicating the same position with the cue ball unless you played the shot in a totally different way.
Positional play in not an explicit practice listed here, as most of the routines have been designed to incorporate positional play skills.
Height & Power & Side.
Throughout the guide you will see numbered codes on how to strike the cue ball.
HH applies to the Height you will strike the cue ball and is the first value
you work out when planning how to strike the cue ball for your desired position. There is a scale of 1-10 with maximum lowness on the cue ball being H1, perfect centre ball striking H5 and the highest part of the cue ball being H10.
An important point to know is that H1 means H1. Not H1.1 or H0.9 – being ruthlessly accurate with this is the only way to guarantee accurate feedback on the power of the screw shots you play. If the only variable in a
screw shot is the power you play, you will learn very fast. However, if you do not know for sure if you are hitting where you are aiming on the cue ball, your ability to equate how you play the shots to the results you get will be greatly diminished.
PP applies to the Power you will play the shot and is always the second
value you work out for your desired strike. The 1-10 scale starts with the P1 trickle shot that would push the cue ball only six feet or so without striking any object ball. P5 represents half of the maximum power you feel you can play while maintaining a degree of control over the cue. In reality, though, even the top professionals reduce their accuracy when increasing power, which is why you very rarely see them doing so. P10 is the most power you can play whilst keeping your body more or less still!
L & RL & R applies to the amount of Left or Right hand side required for a
shot. The ten point scale goes from L5 being the most amount of left hand side you can play without miscueing, to L1 being the tiniest amount of left hand side. R1 equates to the tiniest amount of right hand side and finally R5 is the maximum right hand side you can play without miscueing.
A very important observation here is that R5 is less with H10 or H1 than it is with H5! The reason for this is that the cue ball is fatter at H5 than it is at H10 or H1. Therefore, the scale R1-5 means the range of minimum to maximum side spin available at any given cue ball height.
So for example, when you need to pot a straight black and screw back off the side cushion with a lot of side spin, you can apply more side spin by playing H2 than by playing H1. You will still get enough screw back to get where you want with the cue ball, but this option of ‘cheating’ extra side spin is very useful if you know when to use it.
H10 will often be written into a routine, but in actual fact should be H6 if a professional was playing the shot. This is done for a safety margin of accuracy when striking the cue ball. Most people reading this will be at a less than professional standard and when aiming at H6 may indeed hit H5 by accident or through a subconscious need to play a stun shot if they are not certain about the reaction of the cue ball when striking H6. This is a deliberate ‘error’ from my side even though H6 gives you less chance of an early unintentional swerve of the cue ball, and even though H6 gives more chance of a solid hit due to the fact you are striking a fatter part of the cue ball.
On long shots, though, H6 or H7 will often be written where you need a follow through effect on the cue ball. This is to get you into the habit of gaining a more solid hit in the fatter part of the cue ball on long shots, although if you find yourself getting a stun effect on the cue ball, do go a bit higher on the cue ball to create a better reaction.
A ‘stop shot’ means a straight pot where the cue ball remains in the place it was when it contacted the object ball. It does not mean that the cue ball should finish where the object ball was, as that would mean the cue ball after contact would be rolling forward the diameter of one ball. Whenever a stop shot is mentioned, your target is to leave the cue ball motionless after it strikes the object ball – even if the cue ball follows through or screws back one centimetre, you may be satisfied with the shot and continue your practice, but you will not be allowed to call it a stop shot.
H2/3 means height 2 or 3.
R5 applies to side of table shown, not the mirror image shot on the other side of the table! In this case, you would need to use the mirror image side spin which in this case is L5.
Power is not usually mentioned in these exercises. This is because you usually have the three parts of a four piece jigsaw available to you. These are the angle of shot, cue ball destination and height required on the cue ball. The power will come to you by experimentation, and will vary according to the table you find yourself on.
Flicks of left or right hand side is a method that some professionals use when playing angled pots, but in the practices contained here your goal is to learn the art of playing centre ball. When you have mastered this, by all means try this potting method of using a trace of side, and you will then have the ability and flexibility to do both. I suggest you wait until you are at century break standard before trying this method of using a trace of side.
Plan your practice. This is the single biggest benefit you will ever give to yourself in your practice time. Remember, Proper Planning Prevents Pretty Poor Performance!
Feel free to write notes and tips for yourself in the margins next to each practice, or simply record your highest break on the page of the practice you are playing.
Below are some of the key patterns you can employ in how you practice. Mix these up so that you maintain interest and at the same time expand the range of your concentration and experience with each type of shot.
Difficulty… to increase or decrease, that is the question.On individual pots, you should be consistently getting between six
and eight out of ten of whatever shot you are playing. If you are getting less than this, make the shot easier by reducing distance, power or complexity. If you are getting more than this consistently, make it a little harder unless you are a professional. In this case you should be good enough to pot some of these shots nine or ten out of ten, and will be just confirming your accuracy with them before moving on to the next routine.
Play until complete.This requires discipline. A great example of this is a friend of mine in
Oxford who used to start playing in the morning and not stop until he had made a century break – even if it was eleven’o’clock at night.
Play until correct.This would involve playing a routine until you are happy with the
accuracy of the pot and the position of each shot. An example of this would be a player who is learning to clear the colours. They may well spend five, ten, twenty or minutes or more experimenting until they can play the yellow
to their satisfaction, but once they have would carry on until the next shot was played properly and so on.
This is a great way to maintain a sense of accomplishment, and you will often stumble across shots you must improve on, that you actually assumed you were perfect at.
Mistakes on purpose. This is a great way to break a pattern or habit, and by going more
deeply into a mistake you can often burn it out.
For example, if you are consistently missing on the left hand side of the pocket your goal would be to miss even further to the left and then differing degrees of striking to the left. If you know how to deliberately repeat the mistake, you will find it easier to play it correctly.
The OPP modelThe individual components of the OPP model may also be used
throughout the practices as a proper noun. Thus, the proper noun Observe or Predict or Plan may be shown, in which case you would know it is a shot where you would get benefit from applying the OPP model in more depth.
Here is a description of the OPP model:
ObservePlay a shot and Observe the path the cue ball takes. Keep playing with
different height and power, and Observe where the cue ball goes. If you have any targets for the cue ball at this stage, you are NOT in the Observe phase and therefore NOT following instructions. Targets are not allowed here!
PredictPlay the same shot again, and now that you have had a bit of experience
with it, commit to playing it a certain way and Predict where you think it will go if you do so. Keep Predicting until your ability to tell the future is improved.
It is very important here to have the awareness of whether you are playing the shot as you intended or not. It would be vital to know that you struck H4 when in fact you were aiming H5. You will then have very accurate feedback between the result you have and how you played it, which is the gateway to improvement and crucial for the next step.
PlanIn the final phase, you will use the experience you gained in the first
two steps to Plan where you want the cue ball to finish and work out the way you think you need to play it to get this result. Keep refining the way you play the shot until you get the result you want.
In order for you to get even more benefit out of these routines, you can read Improve Your Practice, Improve Your Game’, as well as ‘Positional Play Prowess’ from The Snooker Gym Training Guide Series which both go into these concepts in more depth.
NBNB stands for Nota Bené (which in Latin means ‘Extra note’) or Nic
Barrow. I have sometimes included this extra information after the practice explanation where there is a subtle point worth mentioning, or interesting note to make on the shot.
‘Throw’The cue ball ‘throw’, or curved path it often takes after contact with
an object ball if played with top spin or screw back, is often not shown in the diagrams for simplicity’s sake. If the throw was shown, it could also be misleading because every table, and different set of balls, will react slightly differently. This produces a different throw effect. It will be up to you to Observe and then Predict this phenomenon at different speeds on different angles on different tables.
New vs OldNew cloths are different to play on and easier to pot on than old
cloths. If you are not used to it, you will find on a new cloth that the balls will seem to slide around as if on an ice rink. The pros who are used to this would also find your table will play as if it were covered in glue. It is all a question of practice and familiarity.
In addition, most people think the pockets on the TV are bigger than at the club because the pocket is usually the object closest to the TV camera! What they would find is that the cut of the rubber is much smaller and this optical TV illusion is misleading. What the club player would notice on their own table, though, is that the balls are accepted more easily into a pocket when the cloth is new, and even more so if the balls are also new. This is because the cloth and balls are more slippery when new and clean.
It only leaves me to wish you well on your journey into this path of practice you are now on, and bid you ever lasting snooker improvement...
middle pockets not allowed.Finish below the black into either corner pocket, play a stun shot to the far side of the red so thatyou always pot the red into the opposite pocket
Double Top:Place the cue ball just off straight with the black.When below the black, keep testing until you can place the cue ball in the correct location to play
H10 P8 and strike the pack.When above the black, play H10 P8 R4. The right
hand side will help speed up the cue ball around the two cushions to give a better pack split.
NB - your target is to pot the black. Have the attitude that if you then strike the pack and open
From any five cue ball positions of your choice,play the cue ball P9 to develop your confidence
with playing at pace into the middle pockets.
NB - keep your body down well after you play eachshot. This will give you an extra moment to check that your cue has followed through straight, andthat your head & shoulders have remained still.
Mirror Image:H10, pot the blue into the middle pocket,
and keep repeating the process. No cushionsare allowed, and you can only pot the blue into the
middle pockets.
NB - for invaluable feedback, watch exactly wherethe blue ball lands in the pocket. Millimetres left
or right can mean losing position and end of break.Also watch for the spot itself deviating the path ofthe cue ball - spots on club tables particularly are
rarely flat and will often push the cueball to one side or another...
Three By Three:Play the blue into the middle pocket, H10.
Keep adjusting the position of the cue ball until you can place the cue ball in the correct position suchthat when you play H10, the cue ball strikes baulk
cushion, then side cushion, then top cushion,then your desired colour.
Your target is to make three successfull shots:make a cannon with the blue,
then make a cannon with the pink, then make a cannon with the black.
The Green Keys:From the angle closest to brown, play H8-10 to land
on the ideal brown angle.From the second angle, you will need H8-10 L2-5 for
position depending on the exact angle.From the third angle, sidespin with follow will not gain you position, so you will need a stun shot to
come off the cushion.From the last angle, you can make a direct screw
shot without needing to use a cushion.
NB - depending on the table, cloth, balls and alsocleanliness of this equipment, you will have varyingreactions for these same shots from table to table.
The Yellow Keys:From the angle closest to green, play H8-10 to land
on the ideal green angle.From the second angle, you will need H8-10 L2-5 for
position depending on the exact angle.From the third angle, sidespin with follow will not gain you position, so you will need a stun shot to
come off the cushion.From the last angle, you can make a direct screw
shot without needing to use a cushion.
NB - depending on the table, cloth, balls and alsocleanliness of this equipment, you will have varyingreactions for these same shots from table to table.
Space Invaders:With the yellow on the side cushion as a distanceguide, see how many reds you can pot out of ten.Play perfect stop shots on all, sending the space
invading reds into the corner pockets.Once you can make 7/10 at this
distance, bring the line of cue balls back a fewinches until you can get 7/10 and so on,
gradually increasing the distance.
NB - another interesting way to do this practice is play H10 until you pot the red and follow the cue
Progressive Reds:Pot ten reds on each side of the table from the
positions shown. In addition to the benefit of progressive practice,
this exercise will also get you comfortable withyour bridging elbow being in different
positions relative to the baulk cushion. This cushion can sometimes push you slightly off
balance without realising it.You will notice on this practice that the
elbow rests either in front of or on top of the baulk cushion depending on the side of the table
you are playing from. If not, bring the cue ball backor forth one or two inches until you find this effect.You will then feel a shift in balance as your bridgingarm finds itself higher on some shots and lower onothers. It is your ability to be comfortable in any of
these positions that will lead to greater controland enjoyment in the game.
The Basis Of Everything:Selecting a straight angle, play from the baulk linewith H1, slowly enough that you play a drag shot - ie the backspin has worn off before it reaches the
red, thus allowing the cue ball to follow the red ballinto the pocket. The moment when the backspin
wears off from the cue ball is the moment you willknow if you have played sidespin or not. That
moment is when the cue ball will turn left or right, or carry on perfectly straight according to exactly
where you struck the cue ball.Then play H6 with the cue ball near the cushion asshown. As you are playing higher on the cue ball,
you will be punished by any unintentional side with the cue ball turning away from the line earlier than
with the drag shot.Also look out on this shot for the table drifting oneway or the other. Due to the nap and the tendency of the slate to bow toward the middle of the table,
this drift will almost always be toward the top cushion. The only way to be sure if a drift is theimperfection of you or of the table is to play to pot the brown off its spot very slowly into each
top pocket. The mistake I see most people makeis to just strike the cue ball up the table slowly -
they will never know if they are hitting perfectcentre cue ball or not, thus disasterously influencing the result of their table test.
This practice has the title it does because thispractice will confirm your ability to strike centre
of the cue ball, and aim a long straigt pot properly -the basis of everything in - long potting.
Around The Houses:Do not put the cue ball in the pink spot
in case there is a slight ditch in the cloth.Place the cue ball just in front of the pink
spot so you get a clean strike.Play H2/3 and play off two cushions to make
position for the red on the side cushion.Then play again but this time to land off three
cushions for the red on the top cushion.Then repeat with the green.
NB - It is very important to alternate your shots between yellow and green so that you can checkthat the cue ball is bouncing at exactly the samespeed off the cushions. If it is, it means you are
Side Spin Sweep:Placing both balls in the same position each time,
play ten pots with H5 and the ten levels ofside spin from L5 to R5.
Play with low power to make the swerve of the cuemore obvious.
Repeat on the other side of the table to test yourability to see the angle of this long shot from the
four quadrants -sending the red to the right with L5 & R5,sending the red to the left with L5 & R5.
NB - Leave the cue in the line it was on when cueing up on the ball. Remember, contrary to the opinionof a lot of snooker players arms, moving the cue in the direction you want the cue ball to go AFTER
you have played the shot DOES NOT help the direction of the cue ball!
Commit to leave the cue where it finishes whether you pot or miss - you will get much better feedbackon how you played the shot and how that led to the
Catching The Tail:Playing H6, on alternate sides everytime to enforce equally good aimingon both sides of the table, catch the tail end red of each line and return
to the baulk cushion. When you have contacted the end
red, remove it from the lineand continue doing so until there
Cue Ball Up & Downs:Draw a chalk mark on the cushion where the cue ball is resting. Then measure the distance from the cue ball to the baulk pocket, perhaps usingyour cue as a guide. Replicate this distance by
placing a chalk mark on the top cushion that samedistance from the top pocket.
End up with at least three positions to play the cue ball from.
Play H10, the target being to get the cue ball to finish touching the baulk cushion in the same
place that it started its journey.
NB -This is a great way to test if the table is level.
It will also test your ability to easily find the centre of the cue ball from different lighting positions.
The lamp shade is (usually!) central along thelength of the table which means that the shadowson the cue ball are slightly different when the cue
ball is in different positions on the table.It is finding the centre of the cue ball despite these
Untouching Rail Practice:Pot the black with the full range of cue ball strikes.
Ten pots from H10 down to H1.Ten pots from H5L5 across to H5R5.
Also pot with H2L3 to learn an extra shot that is sometimes required in this position.
Play the black ball with P3 so that the cue ball stays around the black area.
The cue ball is placed quite near to the blackso that the gentle screw and stun shots played
between H1 - H4 give the positional play wewould expect. With the cue ball any further thanthis from the black, and with P3, any backspin applied would evaporate and turn to top spin
before reaching the black. This would mean youwould be playing a drag shot, and not really
learning where the cue ball can be placed by usingdifferent heights on the cue ball.
The reason for playing no more power than P3 is because the slower the black ball goes,
the more chance it has of simply sliding off the jaws into the pocket if it was not