The yips are defeated (for me)

[monkeytennis]

Very happy at the moment.

I've been personally suffering the yips for about 8 years now. This week I made a huge leap towards solving it.

I was probably at my best when I was 17-19 years old. A long time ago now (I'll be 30 next month). Back then I was a great potter and had plenty of cue power. My positional play was pretty basic as I still had a lot of learning to do but I managed to win 20-30 local pool tournaments, started hitting centuries on my own in practice, won the local pool league singles tournament and qualified for the IPA pool tour.

Then for some reason, I started tinkering with my technique. Before then I had basically learned to play on a 6ft table in my house, did my 10k hours but had a slightly unorthodox technique due to no formal instruction. I started trying to change things to look more like the players on TV. I tried moving to a more square stance and introduced a rear pause into my cue action. After that, I slowly started getting worse rather than better and started losing accuracy and cue power.

I think what had happened was that I had started decelerating through the cueball and it got to the point where recently I could miss just about anything and seemed to have to hit the ball hard to get any action on the ball. Of course I thought at the time my lack of accuracy was due to alignment issues so started playing around with shoulder position and twisting my body about all over the place.

Occasionally, however, just briefly things would click and I would start playing fantastic, but I could never work out what I was doing differently that made such a step change, especially as those bursts wouldn't last very long.

Anyway, a few months ago out of frustration I posted a video of myself practicing. The standard was pretty pants but as I had it on my phone still I kept watching over the last 2 minutes, where that step change happens. Suddenly I could pot anything and it felt easy. I kept watching it and then started filming myself cueing on my 6ft table and noticed that I had been going through the cueball very slowly, with little acceleration, and that I was only following through a couple of inches.

I kind of forgot this for a few days. Monday I played my friend and played absolute crap until the very last visit where I hit 77 out of nowhere before having to go home.

Wednesday I decided to head down to SWSA as I had foolishly signed up for a tournament there (purely as a motivational factor to get me to practice properly). I scattered some balls about and potted them. Set a game up and a huge chunck fell out of my tip after the 4th shot. Bloody great! So I was really hesistant hitting the ball and started playing worse than crap, which also made me feel pretty embarrassed. After about an hour of trying to give 100% and playing s*** I decided to just whack the balls about and see what happened. After 10 minutes of not trying I was playing significantly better and I worked out what I was doing differently. I was following through the cueball about 5-8 inches. Now obviously this is not world beating news but it was confirmation of what I thought about me decelerrating and not getting throught the cueball properly.

Skip forward to Saturday, I decided to make a concerted effort to ensure I follow through an additional 3 inches on every shot (where possible). I managed to play the entire 4 hours to a hugely improved standard to how I have been recently. I didn't hit any massive breaks as my concentration wasn't great but I noticed a massive improvement in my long potting, my cue power and the availability of additional shots. I was also significantly faster.

Now I realise I still have a lot of work to do on other areas of my game but to finally feel like I'm hitting the ball properly is a big deal to me, and hopefully I can start improving again.

Anywho, sorry for the ramble, but I felt I needed to share that there is hope when you don't feel like there is any.

Thanks,
Simon

(Also, special note of thanks should go to Tim Dunkley who started me on the right path last year when he noticed my backswing was way too long - one of the primary reasons for my deceleration).

[Leapfrog11]

Nice post m8, this sounds like me!!

I will have to look at my follow through

Regards

[vmax4steve]

Glad to hear you've sorted your action out for the better, but you didn't have the yips mate. The yips are having the feeling of being unable to let the cue go, either forwards or backwards. My mate has them bad, is unable to bring the cue back when playing screw shots and freezes for a while in the address position until he finally jerks the cue forward from the shoulder with no backswing at all, leading to missing the pot and/or a severe miscue

I can talk him through the shot in a coaching session but he can't do it on his own. He knows what he needs to do but his constant failure to consciously do it does my head in to be honest. I can't help him anymore as I can't talk him through every shot when he plays matches, I mean how the hell can't you not draw the cue back when you know for certain that is the thing you're not doing and that when you do do it when talked through it everything is all OK.

[Catch 22]

That's great news mate

I also had a breakthrough 2 nights ago where I figured out where my inconsistancy was happening and now I feel more confident now .

[itsnoteasy]

I think he can do it when talked through it as you are providing his brain with a distraction, or something else to concentrate on, or another reason could be he has no responsibility for the shot if you are talking him through it, as he has a ready made excuse if he fails, so this allows him to relax, if that makes sense, just guessing at reasons really.

[matt926_uk]

Another name for the yips is 'Focal Dystonia', its on wikipedia if anyone wants to look it up and its a neurological condition. I don't have it with my snooker but i have had it the last 7 years with my guitar playing. I saw a Neurologist last month who basically told me there is no cure for it, but people do recover and get better.
It doesn't really sound like you have the yips monkeytennis, but maybe you do, vmaxsteve's description sounds about right.

[hotpot]

Having had the yips bad myself many years ago i know for a fact its a psychological issue , not saying its not a neurological one as well but it is deffinnetly a mental issue .

[vmax4steve]

I think he can do it when talked through it as you are providing his brain with a distraction, or something else to concentrate on, or another reason could be he has no responsibility for the shot if you are talking him through it, as he has a ready made excuse if he fails, so this allows him to relax, if that makes sense, just guessing at reasons really.

Not really, he makes the pot when he has a backswing, misses and miscues when he doesn't. He knows it as I have told him so, filmed him on his iphone and he saw himself doing it as he should and making the pot and doing it as he does and ballsing it up. He should be able to talk himself through the shot, I've told him that and given up helping him. It's like I'm not being listened to and it annoys the hell out of me

[matt926_uk]

How did u recover Hotpot?

[hotpot]

How did u recover Hotpot?

Stopped playing league snooker , forgot about form and how i was playing and hit the ball when i intended to no matter how bad i played the shot n if it went in or not . mine was mainly under the cush , for me it stemmed from negative thinking prior and on the shot , this effected my eye rhythm and timing . It was a long hard road but i got there , will still have the odd occasion now and again but only when im not practicing much , not confident , doubting myself and thinking too much prior or on the shot .

Its deffo a mental issue that triggers it off for me .

[itsnoteasy]

Vmax I don't know if you have tried this or even if it would work, but it might be worth a try.
When in the address position there are only three things to do, pull back, pause, push through, so you could do the instructions for him, once down you say, back , then pause then through and see if he can do it on demand, once he can, you drop down one, so you say ,back, pause and he says through, out loud,(doesn't matter if he pots or misses), then once that's done ,down again you say back ,he says pause and through ,until he can do all three , then he can do one at a time in his head , as I say i have no idea if it will work, I just have a feeling it might, if it doesn't just beat him about the head with the thick end of the cue, it might not help him, but i bet it will make you feel better lol.

[vmax4steve]

His real failure was staring at the cue ball when playing screw shots, something he doesn't do when playing other shots, but his anxiety with the screw shot and how it was going to react after contact with the object ball made him focus on the cue ball and simply blast at it straight from the address position.
I looked carefully at his eyes when he was playing , noticed this, and pointed it out to him but he didn't believe me.

He said that he always looked at the cue ball and that it didn't make any difference when he wasn't trying the screw shot.

I told him that he in fact switched his eyes to the object ball right at the moment of delivering the cue, a split second that's hard to fathom when you are doing it but can be seen by someone actually looking for it to happen.

He refused to believe me so I left him to it.

What else can you do when faced with this level of denial ?

[itsnoteasy]

You can't do much really, just let him get on with it, as you said you have tried and he doesn't really want to listen.