A big part of putting yourself in a consistency trance is your stroke pattern during your warm-up strokes. An entire book, Pleasures of Small Motions by Bob Fancher Ph.D., was written with this aspect of your game as THE most important part of pool table performance. There is some merit in this.
If you take a look at videos of Efrén Reyes at various stages throughout his long career and pay attention to his pattern of pre-shot stroking, you’ll notice how little variation there is in what he does as the years go by. All the best players develop their way of hitting warm-up shots and that becomes very useful or necessary to create rhythm within their game.
The coordination of your eyes with the movement of your cue is very important and you should strive to find a way of doing it that works for you. Once a player “starts the shot” that also means their arm and grip warm up along with the eye movement sequence in relation to the warm up shots and the final execution of the cue. If you perform all of the above components of your pre-shot routine, tighten the bridge tightly, and THEN go into your stroke/eye movement pattern, your chance of success on any given shot will increase 10 times.
There is no magic right way to organize your practice shots or magic number of practice shots for you to take, however, when you find one that works for you, it becomes your magical result-producing sequence. You may be in “dead shot” and only take one or two practice shots on each shot. This is possible with superior attention to detail in the shot setup process. Three, four, five, or six warm-up shots might be your magic number, or 15. Somewhere in the single digits should get the job done, though, and can vary a bit on shorter, easier shots compared to longer shots. long and hard
A general guideline is to look at the cue ball as the cue tip 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 deliver your actual shot. There can be so much variation that I’m giving this as a GUIDELINE, but work on it, look at your favorite pros, and decide on something that works for you…
My grandfather always marveled at local players who ‘sawed too much wood’, meaning they just lay there practicing shots forever before every shot. As you improve, your pattern should become more refined without the need to get stuck forever on one shot. With the discipline of Adhering 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