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not cueing straight, shoulder twisting

Postby rekoons

It’s become clear to me that I’m having issues with consistently cueing straight, and that it’s because I’m unable to keep my cueing shoulder still on every shot, all the time. I’m quite sure this is the main culprit and that I have at least basically got the other elements of a well executed shot covered.
Almost invariably every time I narrowly miss a pot it’s because my shoulder moves/twists/rotates up-and inwards on the shot, moving my arm outwards (slightly about an inch or 1.5 inch) and thus making me cue across on the left side, hitting the left jaw of the pocket. When I miss by a larger distance it’s more likely due to bad aiming.

I can’t seem to consciously keep my shoulder still, so I’m torn between two possible approaches to this problem:

1) I’m hesitant to go down the route of putting more or too much attention on the shoulder when down on the shot, cause I fear it may mess up the execution of the shot itself by loss of focus on the main job at hand: smooth delivery itself.

2) I’m more inclined to focus even harder on the smooth delivery and cue action on itself, as I hope this would be a workaround. I guess when I cue smoothly the shoulder is nicely fixed in place naturally without paying attention to it, so instead of focusing on the part that needs fixing (shoulder), it could be better to focus on getting the main movement, or chain of moving parts, working nicely togethering, fixing the problem in the same go.

Instead of thinking about don’t do this or that with your shoulder, you would be only focusing on how to execute the shot the way it should.

I don’t know if this makes any sense, any thoughts or hints anyone, I feel this is really keeping me back to be more consistent, and it's doing my head in! :angry:

Re: not cueing straight, shoulder twisting

Postby jef539475

i have had a similar problem, the cueing shoulder and the grip..so my advice keep your grip looser than normal lock your chin to your left shoulder which in turn will keep the right shoulder grounded then at the end of the backswing just close the elbow and keep the grip out of it ..lastly learn by playing simple pot in off shots for example pink halfway to pocket white 1 foot behind it when aiming through the pink ball look for a stitch in the pocket then go back to playing the shot and follow in off at the end of each stroke check that the cue is directly in line still to the stitch you have picked out in the pocket or whatever else you have lined up to..hope this helps out