Improve Your Pool Shot Routine with Four Moments of Stillness
Most players think of a pool shot routine as a sequence of movements. They plan the shot, step into position, make a few warm-up strokes, and pull the trigger. But one of the most overlooked skills in pool isn't movement at all—it's stillness. By adding four brief moments of stillness to your shot routine, you give your brain time to confirm each stage before moving on to the next.
Four Moments of Stillness in Your Pool Shot Routine
Every complete shot routine contains four major parts: the pre-shot routine, the shot entry, the warm-up strokes, and the cue-stick delivery. The moments of stillness occur between these stages, creating a deliberate transition from one part of the routine to the next.
The first moment of stillness comes after you've completed your pre-shot planning and are standing behind the cue ball. This is your opportunity to visualize the shot and confirm every decision before stepping into your stance. The second occurs after you've completed your shot entry. Before making a single warm-up stroke, everything should be in position—your bridge, head, body alignment, cue tip, and aim. A brief moment of stillness lets you verify that nothing needs to be adjusted.
Let Each Stage of the Shot Routine Finish Before the Next Begins
After your warm-up strokes comes the third moment of stillness. Instead of flowing directly from the last practice stroke into the forward stroke, stop with the cue tip at cue-ball address. This is your final confirmation that your aim is correct and your eyes have settled before delivering the cue. Modern sports vision research refers to this as the "quiet eye," and it has been shown to improve accuracy in precision sports.
The fourth moment of stillness happens after the cue-stick delivery. Rather than immediately standing up, remain down on the shot and hold your finish for a second or two. Keeping your head and body still reinforces solid mechanics, prevents premature movement, and provides a clean transition before beginning the pre-shot routine for your next shot. The goal isn't to shoot slower—it's to separate each stage of your shot routine with calm, deliberate intent. Those four moments of stillness can make your entire game feel more composed, repeatable, and accurate.
Watch the video for a physical demonstration and more thorough description of each moment of stillness and why they are important to your shot routine.
Read the Transcript of Four Moments of Stillness
Welcome to Shortstop on Pool. This is something a little different. I'm standing in front of a blank wall. This is my living room of my house in Denver.
And you can hear it echoing because there's nothing in here. Everything's gone, including my pool table. And if you've watched my videos before, you know that my pool table is right here. It was right up against the fireplace and just a foot away from the railing over there.
It was just a practice table. I couldn't play on all sides. I was just practicing from two sides. My new house in Arizona, I'm gonna have about seven feet on all sides of the table.
This is what it looks like. About 20 by 23 foot room. Can't wait to be able to make videos in there. It's gonna be great.
Sound system's gonna be better. Again, I apologize for the echo. I just have this microphone here and there's nothing in here to absorb sound. I wanted to make a video about a topic that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I actually gave a lesson today where I talked about it a little bit, so I just wanted a short video impromptu where I'm just talking to the camera like this there's not even a pool table but I've got my cue stick and I'll kind of demonstrate a little bit on my computer desk here and the topic is the four moments of stillness what am I talking about I'm talking about I didn't I specifically chose to not use the word pause because a lot of instructors specifically use the word pause to mean a specific thing and and it often means often means the pause in the back of your backstroke before you deliver the cue sometimes it means the pause at the cue ball which is what my moment of stillness is about but I don't want to use the word pause because I'm not talking about pause and different instructors will use that in different ways this is something that I've that I've thought about expressing in this way that when you're, every pool player has a shot routine, and every shot routine has four main components.
And again, different instructors will teach this in a different way, but I think most instructors would agree with these four components to every shot routine. The first one is your pre-shot routine, the second one is your shot entry, the third one is your warm-ups, and the fourth is a stroke delivery. And I'll talk about those real quick. But four moments of stillness, you're going to find your game improve a lot if you can incorporate them into your shot routine. Now
my shot routine, I've got it written out. I've revised it over the years. I've got about at least 35 steps. So each one of those four components I mentioned has multiple steps to it.
We're not going to go into the shot routine today. All I'm talking about today is the four moments of stillness. and each moment happens in between each of those four steps of your shot routine. And the last one, the fourth one, happens between the shot you're shooting now and the next shot.
So let me explain what I'm talking about. So your pre-shot routine can involve walking around the table, checking the angle of the ball, you might look and see, do I have enough room to shoot the ball, pass the other ball, whatever you need to do, to plan your shot. Where am I gonna make the cue ball go? Do I wanna shoot with draw, follow? Where do I
wanna hit the cue ball? All that stuff. So we're not going into depth with that, but that's what your pre-shot routine is. And then the end of your pre-shot routine is when you have made all those decisions and you come and stand behind the cue ball facing the object ball before you get down on the shot.
So all of that is your pre-shot routine And what I'm suggesting to you is that the very last step of your pre-shot routine is a moment of stillness. So here's what an amateur does. An amateur looks at the, they might look at the angle to the object ball and decide what they're going to do, and then they come over behind the cue ball and they immediately get down on the shot. So what I'm suggesting, the first moment of stillness is that it creates a separation between pre-shot routine and shot entry.
So you've made all your decisions, you come over behind the cue ball and stand there and have a moment of stillness. You're gonna see the pro, now that you know what to look for, you're gonna see the pros doing this all the time. Look at the shot, look at the cue ball, look at everything you just decided to do and visualize it. That is your moment of stillness.
And I made a video recently where I analyzed Joshua Filler shooting a couple of really powerful shots, and he didn't. He had that moment of stillness. He stood fully upright behind the cue ball, and he stroked his cue like this. That's your moment of stillness, and it separates your pre-shot routine from your shot entry.
So after you've had your moment of stillness, it gives your brain a chance to settle and relax and be composed and come to an agreement that yes, you know exactly what you want to do. That's the first moment of stillness. When that's done, you begin your shot entry. So there's different shot entries and we're not talking about the shot entry.
There's a lot of steps to that. I do a two-step, a two-step shot entry where I step with my right foot and then my left foot and I bring my cue down on the line. Other people might have a shot entry like Tanner Pruis teaches where you begin with your cue stick and then your body enters into the cue stick on the shot line like that. Doesn't matter.
The end of your pre-shot, the end of your shot entry is your second moment of stillness. So again, what an amateur will do is come around to the shot, just get down and start doing their warm-ups. You'll notice that as I got down in the shop just now, I started moving my cue and doing warm-up strokes before my bridge hand was even down on the table. And one of my personal habits is I'll have my bridge hand on the table, but I'll start doing my warm-ups, and my head is still coming down.
So if you incorporate the second moment of stillness, what it means is you'll execute your shot entry, whatever your shot entry is, but you don't begin any warm-ups until your bridge is completely placed and your head is in position. Now, your head position is yours. Your head position might be up here, or your head position might be with your chin on the cue. That's up to you, but your head position is completely done, and then you have a moment of stillness before you begin the third part of your shot routine, your warm-ups.
And so mine would look like this, and then don't begin any warm-ups. I want to get my head all the way into the down position, and what I'm doing now is I'm making sure that my alignment is good, my elbows are in the right place, and I'm looking at my Q-tip. Is my Q-tip addressing the cue ball where I decided that I wanted to in pre-shot routine. And then I'm also looking at the aim point.
Is my shaft pointed at the aim point that I chose during my pre-shot routine? So this only takes one to two seconds, but that's your second moment of stillness. Everyone comes down on the shot and starts doing their warm-ups right away. So my suggestion is practice this.
You'll get onto your shot, and you'll get everything into position, and then you check. You're looking with your eyes, you're checking if everything's good. That is your second moment of stillness. If everything looks good, then you begin your third portion of your shot routine, which is your warm-up strokes.
And that's the simplest part of your shot routine, but I won't talk about that much. But the third moment of stillness is the transition between the warm-up strokes and the shot delivery. So what do amateurs do? What amateurs do is they'll do their warm-up strokes, and while they're doing their warm-up strokes, they're looking at the aim, and it's like it's off, and it's not there, and it's not there, and it's not there, and then finally the aim is there, and then they quick say, Oh, I got a quick shoot.
And so there's no separation between warm-ups and stroke delivery at all. So, by incorporating these moments of stillness, what you're going to get is, the difference is you acquire your aim point while you're standing up and you keep it. See, the amateur doesn't have their final aim point until they're down doing their warm-ups and they're seeking it while they're doing their warm-ups. And then when they get it, they want to hurry up and shoot before they lose it.
When you incorporate these moments of stillness, you're going to be able to acquire the aim point while you're standing up and hold it through all four parts of your shot you can. So now, when at your second moment of stillness, you've got that aim point, it's there, you could Just take one stroke and shoot, and you'd make the ball, because it's there. When you do your warmups, all you're doing is sensing straightness of stroke and rehearsing the speed at which you're gonna hit it, mentally. Then, when you're ready to shoot, your Q-tip stops at the cue ball, at cue ball address, and that is your third moment of stillness.
So I do my warmups, and when I'm ready, The Q-tip stops, but don't shoot right away. This is your third moment of stillness. And you're doing a final check. Is the Q-tip in the right place?
Is my shaft pointed at the aim point? Am I gonna make this shot? Is everything good? Are we ready to take off?
Give yourself one to two seconds. And in my previous videos, I've talked about the quiet eye. And this is modern science, study of the brain. They've done scientific studies on athletes, including pool players.
You need that quiet eye, one to two seconds at the end of your warmups before you do your final stroke delivery. The scientific studies that they've done prove that giving yourself one to two seconds for what's called a quiet eye, improves the accuracy of your final action dramatically. So, you do your warmups, you pause, and this is your third moment of stillness, the quiet eye, and then after you're settled, one to two seconds, then you do a slow backstroke, and you deliver your cue without hitting your keyboard, You deliver your cue, and at that point is the fourth moment of stillness. Historically, I have been the champion of rising up on my shot, and I'm going to make a video that specifically talks about that because I've been such a victim of it, I've learned a lot of things as I've tried to defeat that.
And this fourth moment of stillness is one, when you do your final stroke delivery, it's just a movement of your forearm and your tip finishes on the table and at the same time you train yourself that the head and your vision also finishes on the table. So the motion is the cue stick going forward but the intent in your mind is Down, everything down. Q-tip down, head down, and freeze. And that freezing at the end of your stroke delivery is your fourth moment of stillness.
Again, one to two seconds, or wait until the object ball goes in the pocket, or wait until the cue ball stops moving. Any of those are good ideas. But that's, you'll do your warmups, and you'll have your third moment of stillness, everything freezes. The only thing that moves now is your grip hand.
Slow backstroke, deliver, and this is your fourth moment of stillness. At least two seconds. Nothing moves. And that's the transition between the shot you just shot and the next shot.
After your fourth moment of stillness, then you stand up and you begin the pre-shot routine for the next shot. I hope that makes sense. I hope you like it. Play around with it in your practice session.
One of the criticisms that I've often received when people watch me shoot is they used to say to me, You shoot too fast. And I tried to slow down, but what does it mean to slow down? How do you shoot slower? Well, I just described it.
It's not shooting slower, it's shooting in a composed fashion with intent. And that's what the four moments of stillness do. The next time you're watching a pro match between pro players, watch them. When they get into a rhythm running on a rack of nine ball, they might seem to shoot pretty quickly.
But if you watch closely, I think you'll see all four moments of stillness in the players. And try it out and see what you think. Let me know what your thoughts about that. are in the comments section.
Thanks for watching this little impromptu video in my echoey living room. And I should be publishing a video later this week on... What is the video I'm making? Oh, it's a Straight Pool video.
Beginner's Guide to Straight Pool. Visual Guide to Straight Pool. So look for that in the record week on Sunday. Thanks for watching.
See you later.
Comments