The snooker basics fundamentals walk in stance and grip - Straight Cueing Pt. 3

What if you miss the shot before you even strike the cue ball? I saw snooker on the tv and that was the end of it. Konnichiwa! Privyet! Hello and welcome back to the snooker shed and what we're going to do today is look at part three and the final part of the straight cueing. So what is it we're going to look at today? What we're going to look at is the nitty gritty, the stuff that happens before we strike that cue ball. So what we're going to look at, walking in on the shot, the bridge hand, your body position and the delivery. Okay so what we're going to first of all look at is walking in on the line and I'm always focused on the contact point where I'm going to hit that red. I just walk in naturally looking at that ball and then get down and then strike the red. It sounds really simple but so many times I've seen players coming in from the left and the right sides and when people come in they're having to cross over here. Some players come in on the left hand side and when they get down they readjust to come in. When you ask your body to relax it's going to relax in that natural way and if it's not naturally pointing in the right direction then you're going to find you're going to be hitting the ball thin on either side. My eyes are focused directly on the contact point on where I want the cue ball to hit that red and all I'm going to do is take a couple of What you can do is a lot of times you could let yourself just fall forward and you would naturally take by falling forward the steps required to come in. If you're bang on great, if you're coming in slightly left slightly right readjust and try again. So if you're still finding that you're seeing the aim good the contact on the cue ball to the object ball is bang on the centre and you're walking in on the shot nice and straight and nice and relaxed but the cue ball is still drifting left or right. Next we're going to look at is the grip and the body contact on the cue. So let's look at the four points of contact and the first one is going to So the bridge hand is made up where it's designed to support the cue. Now I've got quite a high thumb line here and it supports my cue nicely. My fingers are equally spread on the table but to give that extra support I've also got my forearm on the table. Now a good way to test if you've got a good grip here is try and lift your hand up and you should find it difficult to lift your hand off the table and that gives me a good support for the cue. Next thing we're going to look at is the chin. So the bridge hand is down I'm folding my bridge hand. Now the chin is a good idea because it gives you a little bit of feedback. If the cue is moving left to right or right to left you can feel it along your chin. The next point of contact we're going to look at is the chest. Bridge hand down, chin on the cue and you can see my chest. My cue is running alongside my chest. If you look again at a lot of the pros you'll see that their waistcoats has a shiny part from the cue sliding back and forth on the material. The last thing we're going to look at is the grip hand and probably the most important part of your body is the grip hand. Your physical body when we pull the cue back if you keep that grip really tight we'll get to the point where your wrist won't go any further and if you time pull it further it's going to pull the cue way offline if it hasn't already because the grip was too tight and therefore that's why we need a nice loose grip and that will allow the cue to freely move back and forward and stop your wrist from breaking off. So the grip is really only these two fingers. These fingers are just caressing the cue so that when the cue goes back they open up. The grip hand needs to be nice and loose to allow that cue to come back and forward nice and smooth. So on the grip and the four body contact points these are easy to practice. You don't even need to be in the club. Grab an iron board, grab a kitchen table and just get down practice going in and getting in that position and then just slowly pulling the cue back slowly pushing it forward. So in a minute I'm going to let you know the biggest change that I made to my game that took me from below the 100 break standard on practices to above the 100 break standard on practices. But first of all let's look at the questions you want to ask yourself when the straight cueing is no going correct. The first thing you're going to do is make sure did I walk into that pot in the correct line? Am I pointing the cue at the cue ball in the centre? Is my grip on the table? Is my forearm on the table? When I do my feathers is my cue coming back nice and straight, my grip's nice and loose and it's running along my chest. Before I strike the cue ball I pull it back and I have a wee pause and then once I'm happy I just strike the cue ball. Stay down on the shot and feel what it feels like when it goes correct. If it didn't go correct feel what went wrong. It's all about the feeling. It's all about what happened and if we play and get up too quick the feeling, the information is all lost. And remember when you're practicing these shots play them soft. Give yourself time. Give yourself time. So I said I was going to let you know my pivotal moment in cueing that took me over the 100 break in practice. Really really simple and I came across this through exactly the practices that I'm showing in these videos. And all it was was a bit of a twist in my grip hand. Just a wee change. Here's a wee explanation. So here you could see in this position my arm's at about a 90 degree angle. The tip is almost touching the cue ball. Now that's kind of the ideal position that you're kind of led to get into. What was happening though was that was making me deliver the cue slightly left to right. I didn't know it at the time until I worked all the stuff out in this video. And here's the change that I made. All I done was I twisted my hand further in and pulled it further back at the end of the cue. When I get down on the shot I make sure that the chevrons are still directly below my nose. This small change brings my elbow in line but it forces me to open my hand further which gave me a looser grip. So if you've got to this part of the video thank you very much for watching all the way to the end. We've covered lots in the last three videos on straight cueing. If any of this has worked for you or you've got any questions whatsoever leave them down in the comments or join the Facebook group and leave them in there. Guys if you liked this video or you like anything we're doing here at the snooker shed hit that subscribe button. It may not mean a lot to your day but it means absolutely loads to us here at the snooker shed. This is Nick Barrow and I'll see you on the table.