Topic: Improving the basic skills - advice please!

[willhawkes]

Hi,

So I went to my first big tournament recently and spent the whole time getting pasted. I have come back to my Tornado at home with a lot of homework, but the simple theme is to significantly improve the basics - particularly snake, pull and 5 bar brush and stick. For each of these I have a specific problem, would appreciate if anyone has any thoughts on how I can improve these...

i) on the snake, goalies seem to be able to react to it and block it, which means the lateral is too slow and I am only hitting the 2 and 4 holes, not the 1 and 5.

ii) on the pull, if I put a defender on the centre spot I can go round it and in 50% of the time, but the other 50% the ball squirts off into the corner of the table; also I can hit the deadman about 50% of the time if I toss the ball across slowly and then bring the middle man over and wait for it on the 7th dot - but nothing hard and fast.

iii) on the brush, I can't reliably manipulate the ball into exactly the right spot to do the brush up or brush down (doing near side). If I start from a back-pin, it comes over too far back and the hitting man back-pins. If I start in the tic-tac, it's too far forward for the brush.

iv) On the stick, I can do the wall pass nice and fast but I can't get a reliable lane pass going. The question here is how to start the series and where from. It's harder to do anything reliably from a tic-tac, but if I start from the same point each time, people seem to be able to read the pass.

All advice enthusiastically accepted!

Thanks,

Will

[snake eyes]

Will- look up Ryan Knapton's warm up excercise practices on youtube. He has compiled a very useful video on common passes stick and brush, lane and wall. I found them very useful before tournament play. The 5 bar weave excercise is awesome for catching loose balls.   Snake

[Daniel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wozdH4m0Kik

[KCTrayn]

Whoa - hold on Will. You need to concentrate right now on 1 pass (brush or stick) and 1 shot (pull or snake). In the beginnings, it is important that you choose one and become proficient at it. Once you feel you have a good handle on one of them (your "A game"), you can then start to throw in your "B game" if needed.  

But just quickly in response to your post:

1) There are many ways to practice hitting the 1 and 5 holes but it all comes down to repetition. Figure out a way to block the middle three holes and fire away (I use the rod lock). Don't be too concerned with speed right away, this will come in time.

2) You are not coming around the ball fast enough on the long. I know a lot of people talk about going deadbar but at your stage, I would jsut work on hitting a squared off long hole consistently. Once you have this down, you will then start to realize that you can let the ball travel a half ball or so more for the deadbar. Take what you can do 50% of the time to the long hole (no matter how slow) and keep doing it. Don't be worried about speed. Speed and consistency come with time.

3) You need to work on 5-bar ball control first. Do ladders or what others have described above.

4) You don't really need to start from anywhere to do a stick pass. A good stick lane or wall can originate from a tic-tac or from a stationary point. It's best to mix them both up.

Anyway, those are just quick comments for you to consider but from what I understand in your post, you need to concern yourself mainly with a couple things....pick either a brush or stick and practice, and either a rollover or pull and practice. Practice five bar control. Ask away if you have any follow up questions but practice practice and practice some more, come back in 6 months and let us know where you're at then.

[willhawkes]

Thanks for the comments all. KCTrayn you have it in one - I gotta a lotta practice to do... The stuff on Youtube is really helpful. I am doing to dump the brush because I can't get the ball in the right place to do it, and go with the stick. I'll keep practicing both snake and pull, the latter is essential for goalie shots I think.

Well... I'll probably be back in less than 6 months, but off to practice. Thanks.

[ComebackKid]

OK Will, KCTrayn was exactly right when he said,"

Whoa - hold on Will. You need to concentrate right now on 1 pass (brush or stick) and 1 shot (pull or snake). In the beginnings, it is important that you choose one and become proficient at it. Once you feel you have a good handle on one of them (your "A game"), you can then start to throw in your "B game" if needed."

So let's start at the beginning. I don't care how good your money shot is, or how well you read the defence, if you can't get the ball, you can't score. Matches are won and lost on the 5 bar.

1st things first. You made a good decision in my opinion, by deciding to go with the stick lane and wall series. The reason I say that is because from what you have said, that is where you have something good to work with. You said you have a fast wall. Now what's needed is a good lane. Put the oposing 5 rod about 1/8" away from your near wall. Do wall passes for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, keep doing them until you can do 10 in a row without misexicuting. Focus on what you are doing right before you do the wall pass. Remember how it FEELS. Oh, this is very important, when practicing a pass or a shot, practice it like a regular posession in a match. On the 5 rod start from the middle as in the "Ready Protocall" When you have completed the wall pass exercise, think about this:
You are going to learn a lane pass that starts out, and looks exactly like your wall pass.

 Put the oposing 5 rod against your near wall, now slide the bumper at the far side of that rod against the far wall, this will hold that rod against your near wall.

Now you are ready to begin LEARNING a lane. We are going to break it down into easy steps.

1. Always start the pass from the same spot, (for now) after you get your consistancy you can add in changing where you start from.
2. Now put you 3-1 man right where you are going to pass the ball, (as close to the 2nd man on the oposing 5 bar as you can). By learning to pass the lane here forces the oponent to block your wall or lane with the same man. If you hit the lane to deep, they will be able to block it with the 2nd man by staying on the wall.
3. Remember your start pattern from the wall pass, give the same movement to start and jump out to hit the ball straight down to your 3-1. Make sure not to use a high back-swing. You want everything to be quick and compact.
4. You do NOT NEED TO HAMMER IT. Hit it crisp, and quick,...YES, but you don't have to hit it hard, if you do it just makes it harder to catch.
5. When you feel comfortable striking the ball and catching it consistantly. Watch your pass.

Does it look like your wall pass? Ask others opinion. MAKE IT LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME.

Now you are ready to put your 3-1 on the wall and practice comming off the wall to catch it.

Remember: Practice the same pass for 15 minutes, then complete 10 in a row before moving on to the next pass.

I'll give you another post about your pull shot as soon as I have time. I haven't been able to get on here as much as I would like. Just lot's of stuff going on..LOL

[willhawkes]

Thanks for the comments. Well how am I working out...

On the 5 bar, I've been working real hard on the lane pass, trying to get it as close to the 2nd man on the opposing 5 bar, yes not hitting it too hard but nice and crisp. I'm starting in the same place for the lane and the wall but I'm pretty sure the two of them look very different right now. The thing is, on the wall you have to give the bar a real hard tug to get the ball to the wall, but the lane pass starts much slower, I need to work out how to get them looking more similar. The other thing I'm struggling with is keeping the back-lift from getting too high. I'm probably lifting about 60 degrees from the vertical and then back again, and it's much harder to do it less than that. I'm also working on the exercises in the Ryan Knapton video mentioned, particularly going up and down the ladders, I can see I've got much better at that which is gratifying.

On the 3 bar I'm doing a mixture of the snake and the pull. The pull is really interesting - about 2 weeks ago something suddenly clicked and I was shooting it a level better than before. Now I am setting the ball up quite far back, with the shot being more of a pinch / squeeze as you square it off, actually the man is hardly coming past vertical after the shot when I get it right - and it goes nice and hard into the goal. It's much more like you're setting the ball up to shoot it vertically down into the floor, that's where the power and recoil comes out right. When it's going well I can hit 2-fingerwidths off deadman with some consistency. So progress there. I've also been then translating that to shots from the goalie, setting the centreman of the opposing 3 bar on the fat dot in the centre of the goal and trying to pull round him and shoot into the goal, now I can't do it consistently but it's happening more and more and it's all about learning the feel. I am also doing the same but with the push shot as well, it's harder but also satisfying when it works.

With the snake I have been tinkering around with the grip. There is an excellent Fred Gower snake tutorial on YouTube which gave me a load of ideas, I am putting my hand under the bar at the start (as Spredemen and Ryan Moore do), which means the follow-through is harder and firmer. I haven't been practicising it as much as the other shots but still made progress.

So all in all I have made tangible progress. There is a chance I will be at a tournament in a few weeks so I'll get to test the new stuff out on people, will be interesting to see if it actually works or not!

Thanks for the tips, really good and I'll let you know how I do.

Will

[ComebackKid]

Sounds like you are improving Will. If you have, or can afford some Inside Foos Videos that have Dave Gummeson on them, watch his hesitation wall and lane series. I have been working on it and it seems to make it easier to make them look the same. You start off with the ball on the 2nd man and start slow, pulling the ball about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch, then give it a quick toss
take-off for wall or lane. It takes time to get the feel for that slow take-off. You want the ball to move that 1/2 or 3/4 of and inch but you want it to start slowing down for that hesitation look. This is when you are reading the defence. Then you smoothly and quickly exicute the pass. Remember that you must keep your man on the ball the whole time you are doing the slow take-off, so when you go into the quick part of the pass you will have much more control of the toss. The toss is the important part of exicuting this passing series. Give me updates and I will try to help you work out the kinks.

[willhawkes]

Hi,

Well an update on how I'm working out. You'll remember (as per correspondence above) I'm working on a) a near stick series, b) a pull shot and c) a little bit of a snake.

Want to talk a bit about the pull as this is the one which I am having a bit of trouble with right now. Basically, it's about consistency. If I get the ball in exactly the right starting point, about 25% of the time I can execute a fast hard long short exactly the way it's supposed to be done. The two problems are a) getting it in the right starting point every time, and why it works only 25% of the time. That 25% is not 1 in 4, it's more like I can do 10 in a row then miss 30 in a row. So I know what it feels like when it's absolutely right and I can't tell you what I am doing right or wrong which results in a success or a failure. I have the same grip, I get my feet in the right place, I visualise where the ball is going and what it feels like (more or less), and then the ball either goes beautifully in as deadman, or more often then not, goes into the corner or cuts back into the near side of the goal slowly, or something else.

On the stick side, I have got something which works more or less consistently, the problem is that I don't have any real competition to practice against to see if it is quick enough or hidden enough. I do a standard wall, a wall-bounce lane, a standard lane, and a tap hesitation wall. So I am pending someone to try it against then I'll post more.

Just purchased the 2010 HOF DVDs off Inside Foos, it was my first big tournament and I loved every second (apart from getting beat all the time but that's a learning experience). Will enjoy watching and learning.

Thanks guys for taking the time to answer my questions here, really appreciated.