[pooh]

I watch a lot of players. Their potting ability, safes, strategy, and mental play, so in watching I have picked up a bit.

Sometimes it is even possible to see that a player is going into choke before they hit the first choke shot, and sometimes it is possible to see psychological weakenesses in a person before they ever walk up to the table, and if playing a saavy player, especially one who is also skilled in the game, these weaknesses can be exploited, the psychologically weak player gets broken down.

Some people just learn to be mentally tough, imo, through experience, some may just need to learn a few tricks that will enable them to turn off the thinking part when down on the shot.

But I have seen some real good players who have stagnated, and cannot get over the hump and do not know why. And, if you tell them that their skills are fine but their mind is getting in the way, they may not believe you, but even if they think you might be right, they cannot figure it out, nor how to fix this problem in their mind.

This is my personal opinion. If the player has issues like self esteem issues ie confidence problems because of those, those things are going to come to the table. In a really good player, sometimes they are going to shoot lights out. But if the source of the problem is an under the surface esteem problem, then in certain conditions, their play will be sabatogued, which results in inconsistency and just makes the confidence problem worse. Unfortunately I have seen players who had loads of talent and could be A players, but the mental problems from under the surface lack of confidence, really deep down not believing in themselves has kept them from achieving what they could.

cheers

[paco1076]

Larry talks about this in some of our other posts here... Mainly he says that the amount of information on the mental side of the game is limited. Until recently the mental side of the game (professionals mind you) has been ignored and not treated as important. Now you have professional teams trying to teach their athletes how to control themselves and their mental reactions to what happens. This seems to be the next step of development in sports/atheletics. People in general are either naturally mentally weak or strong. There has been no formal teaching about how to control ones self. This is a gapping hole in having the complete game and being able to fight back. You first have to control yourself before you can control your opponent. You must be ready to have a spine of steel and be able to stand tall when winning or losing... Maybe this is a problem with our society as a whole, maybe it is a matter of up bringing, maybe it has to do with our lack of personal satisfaction from what we see as important and not what is forced upon us. Maybe it is a lack of a sense of self responsibility. Who knows... All I know is that there is a big problem that is finally being recognized, but I am betting that we are decades off from being able to cure this issue on a grand scale. Yeah, I am sure that there are some people out there that have the answers or some of the answers, but to "cure" society as a whole will take decades... In my humble opinion.

Craig

[pooh]

by paco1076 on 2004/9/14 7:27:00
. People in general are either naturally mentally weak or strong. There has been no formal teaching about how to control ones self. This is a gapping hole in having the complete game and being able to fight back. You first have to control yourself before you can control your opponent. You must be ready to have a spine of steel and be able to stand tall when winning or losing... Maybe this is a problem with our society as a whole, maybe it is a matter of up bringing, maybe it has to do with our lack of personal satisfaction from what we see as important and not what is forced upon us. Maybe it is a lack of a sense of self responsibility. Who knows... All I know is that there is a big problem that is finally being recognized, but I am betting that we are decades off from being able to cure this issue on a grand scale. Yeah, I am sure that there are some people out there that have the answers or some of the answers, but to "cure" society as a whole will take decades... In my humble opinion.

Craig

Yea, but. You and I were both brought up in families that supported us, encouraged us, and we both know what we are on the inside, and we like what we are.Deep down inside we believe in oursleves. We have no fake ego covering up insecurity, etc. That part of us is already in tact.That, by itself, gives us a major ingredient to the mental edge.

And of course, there is a genetic component, ie, the kinds of brains we were born with, but even that can be developed quite a bit, ie-right brained person does things to develop their left brain.

I mean really Craig, how hard did you really have to work to get that mental edge while others around you were floundering? I am not a good pool player, but the mental things came fairly easy to me, often I just made a decison that next time I walked into the pool hall i was going to be focused, relaxed, and no emotional things that might have happened including thoughts about some things inc would come with me to the table.

Craig, all I had was to make a decision of how I was going to be mentally, it was that simple. There was nothing difficult about it. I did not do hard mental work. FL would say something like, 'you have to be like ice, no thoughts, no emotions'. Then all I had to do was to tell myself that that was how i was going to be. It was that simple.

I do not think that this has anything at all to do with being mentally superior, more intelligent or anything like that. But IMHO, it has everything to do with being told constantly as a child that I could do anything I wanted, all i had to do was set my mind to it, and of course I was encouraged, taught how to think, both logically and intuitively.

There are other fine athletes, even olympians, who were brought up the same way, and have that same edge. These are the one's the sports psychologists like to brag about helping, because helping someone like this requires such little effort.

There was a saying among educators: 'There are some kids you could put on the moon with a box of cheerios and they would learn how to read, and these are the kids we like to say that we taught.'

There are many good techniques coming out. To a degree what a person can do with those has something to do with the brain they were born with,but IMO, there are other factors too.

But , if you get away from the persons who were brought up like you and others that came from encouraging backgrounds whether it was parents, an uncle, aunt or whatever,or the person overcame some stuff by their own determination,I am seeing athletes who are having confidence problems from under the surface stuff, u r talking about a whole different ball of wax. Some of these stagnate due to poor esteem, others excell but constantly have outbursts of anger and blame their poor performance on others,bad rolls,etc.

Those that are like you and others are easy to train. But, there are those others, that are much harder, and , people do come to me for advice about their mental game because I am a psychologist. I am sure I am a very much better psychologist than a pool player. But, I am seeing people with things that they are bringing to the table with them. These people do not know why they stagnate, or why they cannot shut down their obsessive thinking during play, or why they have anger, even though they may have rationalized to themselves why.

I have tried to take players and without even touching anything about pool, work on building self esteem and relaxation. With some it works, if a little encouragement is all that they need. But I have been finding players, whose self esteems problems are way deeper and i cannot help them, because this is not therapy, this is helping them mentally with sports psychology techniques.

It is not only frustrating but it is sad when I see a player who has the ability to do great things and something deep within them is keeping them from doing it.

Now, i guess I have opened a real can of worms. Did not mean to, just the truth of my experiences.

Laura