Shoulder 'Locking'

[Particle Physics]

it's something I'm working on at the moment, but I'm finding extending the bridge arm as far as possible without discomfort really helps ... as you say PP, I think it's because it automatically means your bridge shoulder gets lower and closer to your chin and hence your cue arm shoulder gets more in the line of the shot and less able to move (ie locked) ...

I'd never really thought about it until Terry Davidson mentioned it so many thanks Terry ... good advice as always which is certainly helping my game

Dandy, I'm guessing that all the set-up tips we get from the wise owls are framed towards locking the whole body into shot line, so that only the hand and forearm moves, to minimise any other movement? Are you using straight bridge arm or bent? I find that straight seems to help my long potting, and a few other members have expressed the same view. I think one chap who had experimented long and hard with bent arm and a shortened cue, was now selling that cue, going back to full stretch with a full length 58" cue. Bad memory on my part not to know his name, but you get the idea. Today, I found that R foot in line, L foot at 90 degrees to right foot and being parallel to R foot (left knee bent), straight left bridge arm brought round the body (with just a small gap between L shoulder and chin), cue under chin and shoulder lock tightened up the whole body. In this position, it felt like it was just back fingers working on feathering and a bit of forearm on the actual shot. I could be wrong of course, I'd have to do a video to see if anything else was at play. I imagine the whole thing looked quite stiff and probably Hendry et al. like. No bad thing.

[Terry Davidson]

The whole point in the set-up is about 4-fold:

1. Make sure it's COMFORTABLE
2. Make sure it's STABLE and there's no upper body movement during backswing and delivery
3. Make sure everything is in line as much as possible (depending on the player's physique)
4. Ensure the delivery comes from the elbow joint primarily with the shoulder muscle only getting involved at the end

After getting all this ingrained then the only thing left is to drive the grip hand to the chest (on EVERY shot) and not tightening the grip too early in the delivery. Master these points and a player doing sufficient and directed practice will improve rapidly.

Please notice I said nothing regarding preferred eye and where the cue should be on the chin or under one eye or the other. Just keep everything consistent and the rest will come quickly.

Terry

[Particle Physics]

The whole point in the set-up is about 4-fold:

1. Make sure it's COMFORTABLE
2. Make sure it's STABLE and there's no upper body movement during backswing and delivery
3. Make sure everything is in line as much as possible (depending on the player's physique)
4. Ensure the delivery comes from the elbow joint primarily with the shoulder muscle only getting involved at the end

After getting all this ingrained then the only thing left is to drive the grip hand to the chest (on EVERY shot) and not tightening the grip too early in the delivery. Master these points and a player doing sufficient and directed practice will improve rapidly.

Please notice I said nothing regarding preferred eye and where the cue should be on the chin or under one eye or the other. Just keep everything consistent and the rest will come quickly.

Terry

Thanks Terry. Everything you say is sound advice.

I did a practice for a few hours today, long balls and line up, primarilly to test a slight twist on set-up. R foot in line, L foot parallel, left knee bent, leaning inwards, ala Jimmy White. Body twisted round, L bridge arm straight (shoulder in contact with cheek when bridge arm on cushion/rail, and just below cheek (same line) when arm fully on the table. R shoulder pushed back a bit (by holding cue at the end) and locked round a bit. Cue under the chin, chest over cue and in contact with cue, with R nipple about one inch from cue. Ring finger grip open enough so the little finger just touches the cue. In this pose, the elbow appears to disect the head down the middle.

With this set-up, I managed to pot long blues with ease, and also managed to pot angles, straight short balls, cushion shots, skinny shots, screw, stun and run through and middle pocket shots (from over the black ball pockets). I had more problems with balls in the middle of the table, when I had to put my left arm on the table. I seem to prefer straight arm on the cushion/rail, so it was an issue of getting lower down, while keeping the bridge arm on the same line. This required a bit more twist of the body clockwise to achieve the same shot and cue line. It took a while to discover this but I'm glad I did. The left shoulder is no longer touching the cheek but sitting underneath the point where it would touch the cheek if the left arm was on the cushion/rail. The balls were flying in, and I was at times, generating a lot of white ball movement, which seems to suggest that I was accelerating through the ball by concentrating my movement on the cueing hand and forearm? My head/body was still moving a bit, but compared to months ago, I'm a totally different player, and that goes for everything else I reckon.

Sighting; I'm R eye dominant, and manage to switch the left eye on by staring at the left side white and object balls sometimes. I'm still trying to fix this dominant eye thing with patching, though I keep forgetting and must pay more attention to this issue asap.

I will arrange to video this next week and let all see what I've been up to the last few months. It's a shame I didn't have an initial video for before and after analysis.