Pool Practice Drills: A Coach's Structured Routine

Search "pool practice drills" and you'll get thirty exercises in a list, no order, no reason, no idea which ones you actually need.

That's the problem with most drilling. It's a pile of activity with no structure. You do a bit of everything, get tired, go home, and wonder why your game didn't move. Doing more drills isn't the answer. Doing the right ones, in the right order, with a way to measure them, is.

Here's how I'd actually structure a player's practice, and a starter routine you can run this week.

Why most practice doesn't make you better

Two reasons.

First, no structure. Hitting a bit of everything spreads your attention so thin that nothing improves enough to stick. You need to work one thing hard enough and long enough that it changes.

Second, no target. A drill without a number is just hitting balls. If you can't measure it, you can't tell whether you're improving or just busy. Every drill below has a target, because the number is the point. It tells you the truth when your feeling lies.

Going back to the other topics I wrote about, registering your problem area is the first step. Once that is in place, begin with simple drills, most of which you do not need to find from the internet, but you can make yourself. As you begin to do them, increase/decrease difficulty to get you plateau on the drill. Then work on it until you can move to the next step.

A starter routine

Five drills, in order. This isn't everything. It's a foundation you can run in under an hour, and it covers the things that hold most players back.

1. The straight-line stroke test. Cue ball on the spot, no object ball. Aim straight up the table at a target, strike centre ball, medium pace, and watch where the cue ball returns. It should come back along the same line. If it drifts to one side, your cue isn't delivering straight. Ten reps. Target: seven or more come back on line. This is first for a reason. If your stroke isn't straight, nothing else you practise will hold up.

2. The light-grip lag. Cue ball on the break line, no object ball. Hold the cue with the lightest grip you can, light enough to wiggle your fingers on the backswing, and roll the cue ball gently to the far cushion and back. Twenty reps. Target: fifteen finish within a ball-width of the centre. This teaches the cue to swing instead of being steered, which is the root of a lot of inconsistency.

3. The stop shot ladder. Straight shot, cue ball stops dead on contact. Start close, twelve inches between balls, and once you can stop it dead, move them further apart and do it again. The stop shot is the foundation of all cue ball control. If you can't stop it reliably, every position shot is a guess.

4. The follow distance drill. Pot a straight ball and follow the cue ball forward to a marked spot. Then a different distance. Then another. Five distances, five reps each. This builds the feel for sending the cue ball a known distance, which is what position play actually is.

5. The draw shot. Pot a straight ball and bring the cue ball back toward you. Low, smooth contact, full follow-through. This is the one most players rush and never groove. Slow it down and get it clean before you worry about distance.

Run these in order. They build on each other: a straight stroke first, then a light swing, then control, then movement.

How to know which drills you actually need

Here's the honest part, and it's the same point that runs through everything I teach.

The drills above are a sound foundation for anyone. But the right drills for you, the ones that fix what's actually costing you frames, depend entirely on what your real fault is. A player whose stroke is already straight wastes time on stroke drills. A player whose position is the problem needs more of drills four and five and less of everything else.

Skipping the first drill is the most common thing I see. It is not that players do not know it, but it is because there is no potting behind it. It feels boring and hard, plus it shows the problems clearly. The drill actiually can be quite frustrating as well.

That's the difference between a drill list and a plan. A list gives everyone the same thirty exercises. A plan starts from your actual weakness and gives you the handful that move your game, in the order that makes sense for you. That's what the assessment builds: it reads your game, then hands you an eight-week plan of the drills you specifically need, starting with your biggest fault. But start with the five above. They won't steer you wrong.