Stay Down Stance
I was kinda hoping the "Stay down on your shot" topic would win the poll for next instruction video. That has been so important to me for a long time and especially so this last month. It looks like "slow backstroke" will win. Then I'll make the "Basic Position" video and then the "stay down" video.
Monday I ran 140 balls during the Livestream. Next day I ran 112 balls. Since then I have had three session and not run over 50. You really have to had your head in this game! Couldn't figure it out though it should have been obvious. Did a Livestream this morning for something different. While I didn't play great I played better, had a few runs into the 3rd
and figured it out. I was rushing the program. I'm quite susceptible to that, maybe most people are, I don't know.
What that means is - you work on your game, start playing better, then grow overconfident which makes you neglect the things that you worked on. Confidence is a necessity. Overconfidence will kill your game. Once I started deliberatly executing the steps in my program, my game started to come back and feel better. For me, that mostly means staying down through the shot. I've talked in the past about settling my weight down into the stance. Or a weight shift back in the stance. What it actually amounts to is NOT standing on the balls of your feet, but rather putting your weight on the heels of your feet.
Watch the pros and you will so often see the lower part of the forward leg angled back - like John Schmidt in this photo. This is an extreme example. What John is doing is a simplified version of his normal "9-ball" stance which he can settle into quickly, then pop back out of quickly, for Straight Pool. When I get my weight shifted back onto the heels of my feet, everything works better. I stay down throughout, I'm able to pause longer at the cue ball before stroking, my backstroke moves slower and my forward stroke moves smoother. All because my "shooting platform" is strong and stable. When your weight is on the balls of your feet, the momentum of the forward swing of the cue stick cannot be resisted, leading to body movement and head lifting. When your weight is back on the heels of your feet, that momentum is pushed off from your heels and your weight stays back, so you stay still.
There is your preview of the "stay down" video way ahead of time.