Develop a Lasting Pool Stroke

Sometimes a better pool game comes from education or an experience outside of the billiard parlor. The scene takes place in a physical therapy clinic during the summer of 2002. I had injured my knee from an aggressive training plan focused on running. My knee had been so touchy that I saw an orthopedic surgeon who practically laughed me out of his office.  He wrote a prescription of four sessions of PT (physical therapy) and sent me on my way.   The good doctor’s diagnosis was simple—my buttocks, quads, and core muscles were weak causing motion in my hips which made my knee wobble while running.  The cure was to strengthen those muscles, not work on my knee.

Being the summer, evidently vacation time for body workers, I was actually lucky to have three different therapists attend to me during my four PT sessions.  Each one had a different personality and style of teaching me, the student, about curing my knee pain by strengthening my supporting muscles. I learned of balance from one, flexibility from another, and strength training from the third.

During one of my sessions, I felt like I was being bombarded with strength training exercises.  Do twenty reps of this three times per day.  Do 30 of these three days per week and stretch that way for 5 minutes three times per day, and on and on.  Stress mounting, I burst out, “When am I going to have time to run when I’m doing all these crazy exercises? How long will it take before I can run pain free? Do I have to keep doing these stupid things forever? ”    Mr. PT (Pretentious Taskmaster) pacified my irritation with a soothing analogy that I’ll never forget.

“Pretend you’ve just been stranded on a deserted isle in the tropics. Think Survivor season one. You’ve made a smart choice by building a hut on the edge of the beach. Close to fishing and swimming, away from the jungle dangers and the best view too.  You will have to hike into the jungle to collect your drinking water of course. Just imagine forging a trail to the fresh water stream with a machete, hacking back foliage and establishing a good foot trail to tote your water bucket back and forth.  Blazing that trail will be a lot of work. It will take many trips back and forth stomping down the path and hacking back plants to create a trouble free trail.  Then after some time, you’ll have an excellent path to traverse day after day.  After some time of using the trail, you’ll notice a few leaves dangling in your way or a branch here and there poking out into the path.  When you see this happening, you’ll want to grab your machete and do a little house keeping.  It won’t be near as much work as making the trail, but it will be good to do this once and a while as maintenance.”

I was grinning before he spelled out the concluding sentence. “So all of this physical therapy will be lots of work for the next six or eight weeks, but from then on, you may want to pick a couple of these exercises and do a little brush up every couple of weeks.”  No problem Mr. PT (Positive Thinker)! I’ll bust through these things to get strong and remember to brush up on them before a pain in my knee tells me to.

As a professional billiard instructor, I have told this story to many pool players who were suffering from an ineffective stroke. Put in some hard work now, get the stroke developed that will carry your game to the next level and beyond, and do some reminder tune-ups when you feel like you’re in a funk or slump. Right the stroke and your pool game will sharpen right up again.