[Big_Bad_Bern]

Here is this weeks article enjoy!!

3. Mental tools:

Improving your mental tools will definitely have a large impact on your confidence. Many people spend years perfecting their mental tools and you should do the same.

Resolve to set goals, make a plan for each time you play, be it practice or match. Ask yourself why you are there and what you are going to accomplish. Keep it simple at first with goals like “to put my best stroke on every ball” or “limit my mistakes” and as you accomplish them reset your goals gradually making them tougher.

You must be able to concentrate at a high level for extended periods of time, the ability to bring an intense focus to every shot will greatly increase your confidence as you will play fewer *“loose shots” until you eliminate them completely.

Once you set goals and concentrate you need to develop commitment or intention. Do you show up at a tournament simply to have fun and hang out with the crowd, or are you there with the intent to win. Either intention is fine just know what your reason for being there is. With the power of intention you will move mountains, cross rivers etc. because you have set your mind with commitment and have a burning desire to accomplish your intent.

This also applies to practice. How many people do you know who practice haphazardly, that is they just throw balls on the table and shoot them randomly moving from shot to shot with no idea or plan. They usually end up doing the same routine over and over (normally shooting shots they are already good at but not working on their weaknesses) and wonder why they haven’t improved even though they practice 4 hours a day. You need to approach practice with intent also. If you are going to work on your stroke today, then focus on the smooth fluid motion of your stroke not on pocketing balls. If you are working on position play, don’t think about your stroke. If you are going to work on your break and kicking then work on your break and kicking don’t start aimlessly pocketing balls. People who get bored when practicing are practicing without intention, there are plenty of drills available to work on any skills you need to develop. Approach the practice table with intention and know what you will work on in every session and you will see improvement and with it the strengthening of your confidence chain.

Finally to play your best game you must control your emotions. You can not allow yourself to get to high or to low, as it can cause massive swings in confidence. Getting extremely upset about missing a shot helps to burn that shot into your memory, all shots should be viewed impartially, otherwise if you miss that shot and get upset the next time it comes up you will avoid it (or shoot it less confidently) because of the memory of the previous miss.. This is not to say you must be stoic or stone faced, feel free to allow your personality to show at the table and enjoy yourself. Playing your game without fear of results is the ultimate in confidence.

*A loose shot is made when there is confusion about the outcome, due to not answering all of the questions i.e. speed, spin, angle etc. Usually this results from a lack of focus, rushing being unprepared or a lack of knowledge i.e. hit and hope shots.


See ya next week
Bern

[Pin]

Fantastic article. This one's loaded with great ideas.

A few thoughts:

Developing mental tools:
I've been keeping a journal for the last couple of months where I quickly jot down some thoughts on how I performed mentally (including how well I followed my 'mental plan' and how it felt) and how well I played overall. This has been a massive help to me because it's given me clarity of what works for me and exactly what a great mental game entails and feels like. I highly recommend it.


Practice:
Great points. I've heard of the concept of deliberate practice before but don't know much about it. I believe it's something along the lines of what you describe. Apparently Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers visits it, and I've just started reading the book - so watch this space!


Control of emotions:
Dude! I used to be the typical kind of pool player who would get upset over his mistakes and hold himself down. I'm now able to consistently elevate myself from poor spells by understanding what is required for me to have a chance to improve the level of my play, allowing my mind to remain clear and understanding what I *should* be doing per my mental plan - then doing it.
It doesn't give instant results, but by taking an intelligent approach that facilitates my improvement, at some point in an evening I usually seem to break out of my little slump and start motoring again.

And because in the past I couldn't really do this, I feel so good when I handle the problem in this way.


Comment on intention:
In background, in terms of knowing what you want from the game, definitely. When I'm at the table, I'm just attending to the process as much as I can. Making the ball, winning the game, playing well: All that is secondary to attending to the process. For me it works.

[Big_Bad_Bern]

Hi Pin, your comments are good and your plan has you on the road to confidence. Just one comment to clarify something, attending to the process is the result of commitment/intention. You follow your process because you go into your games with the intention of playing your best and you have developed a process that brings that out in your game consistently. This create a confidence snowball the more you follow your process the better and more consistent your play and the better and more consistent you play the more you follow your process.

Bern

Pin, on Jul 28 2010, 11:52 PM, said:

Fantastic article. This one's loaded with great ideas.

A few thoughts:

Developing mental tools:
I've been keeping a journal for the last couple of months where I quickly jot down some thoughts on how I performed mentally (including how well I followed my 'mental plan' and how it felt) and how well I played overall. This has been a massive help to me because it's given me clarity of what works for me and exactly what a great mental game entails and feels like. I highly recommend it.


Practice:
Great points. I've heard of the concept of deliberate practice before but don't know much about it. I believe it's something along the lines of what you describe. Apparently Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers visits it, and I've just started reading the book - so watch this space!


Control of emotions:
Dude! I used to be the typical kind of pool player who would get upset over his mistakes and hold himself down. I'm now able to consistently elevate myself from poor spells by understanding what is required for me to have a chance to improve the level of my play, allowing my mind to remain clear and understanding what I *should* be doing per my mental plan - then doing it.
It doesn't give instant results, but by taking an intelligent approach that facilitates my improvement, at some point in an evening I usually seem to break out of my little slump and start motoring again.

And because in the past I couldn't really do this, I feel so good when I handle the problem in this way.


Comment on intention:
In background, in terms of knowing what you want from the game, definitely. When I'm at the table, I'm just attending to the process as much as I can. Making the ball, winning the game, playing well: All that is secondary to attending to the process. For me it works.

[Pin]

Something I read in the inner game of tennis was the technique of the 'association with the easy'.

Your aim is to think about the feelings you have when doing something easy, but that has your attention, and to associate those feelings with playing pool.


I suppose the state you're getting to is the same as the state of confidence, where you're relaxed and focussed only on the process of the task at hand.


I had been using it at first, but accumulated a large number of 'techniques' in a short space of time, which became too much of a distraction, so I dropped them all and went back to basics.


What do you think of the technique - does it fit into a confidence programme?

[Big_Bad_Bern]

Hi Pin, I don't like the idea of associating it with something easy. I beleive that you must repeat the process until it feels easy and you are confident in it, this is where great drill like FastLarry's 8/7 drill or my run 100 drill (essentially the same drill I just set a goal of running 7 racks without a miss) help. They brainwash you through repetition, in the process of running these drills you will shoot almost every shot banks, caroms, combos and cuts of all sorts and you will do it under the pressure of not wanting to end your run. You will shoot them so many times that you stop worrying about them and start just executing them without thought, it becomes "see it, feel it, shoot it".

Bern

Pin, on Aug 3 2010, 09:46 PM, said:

Something I read in the inner game of tennis was the technique of the 'association with the easy'.

Your aim is to think about the feelings you have when doing something easy, but that has your attention, and to associate those feelings with playing pool.


I suppose the state you're getting to is the same as the state of confidence, where you're relaxed and focussed only on the process of the task at hand.


I had been using it at first, but accumulated a large number of 'techniques' in a short space of time, which became too much of a distraction, so I dropped them all and went back to basics.


What do you think of the technique - does it fit into a confidence programme?

[Pin]

So I finished Malcolm Gladwell's book (a little while ago to be honset).

It talked about practice, and distinguished quality practice from wasting time, but didn't really have anything of great value on what deliberate practice entails.
It wasn't really that kind of book. On the other hand, I now understand I need to play for 10,000 hours to become world class, which is useful.