Trust Your Stuff

Mind of Steel

Trust Your Stuff

Dr. Christopher Stankovich

www.drstankovich.com

If you want to immediately improve your pool game, you must learn to “trust your stuff” and shoot with great confidence every time you approach the table.  When you are confident and believe in your shot-making ability, you allow your mind and body to work together in perfect synchrony – like a well-oiled powerful machine. 

Players who struggle with confidence end up over-thinking situations, leading to high anxiety and shaky shots.  Confidence is king when it comes to pool, and in order to play your best you must trust your stuff when it comes to making big shots!  This means that instead of over-analyzing shots and worrying about all the bad things that can happen, simply bear down and calmly stroke the shot the exact way you do when you make it in practice.  Trust your stuff by knowing that you will make the shot and relax, focus, and follow through all the way to the pocket.

Too many times when faced with pressure situations, players will forget how good they are, and instead over-think the table to the point where they lose their rhythm, focus, and confidence.  Rather than go through a normal pre-shot routine and trust their stuff, they begin to engage in self-doubt, resulting in poor synchrony between the mind and body.  When this happens, shots are missed, usually because of a relatively small error (i.e. slightly over-cutting a shot).   

Of course every shot at the table requires thinking, and some deserve extra-thinking.  The key is not thinking to the point where you lose your emotional groove and throw off that great flow that often comes when you are playing your best.  Fortunately, if you have played pool for awhile, your mind and body have already become conditioned to automatically see and make shots, so it is important that you believe you have what it takes to play successfully.  By simply thinking like this, potential negative nerves will transform into positive adrenaline!

Dr. Christopher Stankovich is a nationally acclaimed expert in Sport Psychology and the Founder of Advanced Human Performance Systems.  For more information on performance-enhancement products, including the exclusive “Mind of Steel for Pool Success” and Sports Performance Assessment for Pool visit www.drstankovich.com