Confidence

[simoncapon]

Its said that confidence grows when you win matches. This is of course very true but what do you do to create confidence after a few defeats. Firstly take yourself back to a time when you were playing very well. See the whole experience through your own eyes and take notice of how to walked around the table and the time you took over shot selection. Now think about what was going through your mind so for instance think about what you said to yourself and how you said it (voice tone). finally use all this and recreate it. These are the ingrediants of your strategy for playing well. Its of course true that something technical can be wrong buts its amazing how many times this does make a difference. Give it ago...

[rongreen]

simoncapon.

Sound advice, what helps me is the afternoon before a match I practice for a couple of hours straight forward simple shots ie colours off their spots, pinks and blacks and 4 reds between pink and black spots and pot into black pockets in rotation, of course there's more to match play than potting a few easy balls on your own but it helps puts my mind in a positive state, rather than trying more difficult shots.

[Terry Davidson]

Firstly, confidence comes primarily from having faith in your own individual technique. When you reach the point where you KNOW you can pot a ball and get the correct position then your confidence soars.

Secondly, confidence comes from consistently winning against players who you consider your equals or slightly better and then again it can come from playing well against a much stronger opponent and still losing but putting in what you consider a good performance.

With myself included in this statement 'most of us lose matches because we beat ourselves by missing a stupid shot' which is exactly what happened to me yesterday in a ranking tournament at 3-3. Dogged a simple red along the top cushion with 50 points and victory right there for the taking. I missed and my opponent won the match 4-3. However, except for that one (plus a few others here and there) stupid mistake I should have won.

Terry

[simoncapon]

Beating ourselves up after a poor shot is something we all do. The worst part of this will be what we say and how we say it to ourselves. If you were to stop for a moment and ask yourself if you would let anyone else talk to you in that way the answer would be NO. Just think about how you react best to advice from others. Its almost certainly when people talk to you in an encouraging tone and give you advice that actually seems straight forward and obvious. So if we were to do this for ourselves the job does get easier. Match snooker is a test of the mindand every little helps so just try this for yourself.