Be Honest About Your Game

In practice and in play, we all have strengths and weaknesses. Be honest with yourself about both. Practice to correct weaknesses and reinforce strengths.

"I find it instructive to analyse why I break down, but you need to be honest with yourself. It is rarely the last shot you played - the reason you clanged the hoop is because you approached it from a poor position, which you got into by being on the wrong side of the pivot, and so on. The point to really concentrate is when a nice tidy break is starting to getting ragged - get it back under control before it collapses completely."

-Steve Comish

"Be honest. For example someone once told me they were 95% likely to successfully roquet a boundary ball when taking off to get it from halfway across the lawn or greater. They failed to do just that twice in a game against me, but they still believed that they were 95% likely to succeed.

I suspect that when the ball curves off and misses the boundary ball they blame the lawn and don't add that event to their computation of their success rate. There were other plays that they could have done instead of the takeoff attack to the boundary, but they didn't think of them because they were so sure that they would succeed."

- John Taves

Take Practice Seriously

Practice for precision and know when to quit.

"Practice with intensity. Always try to put the balls to specific spots. Don't get sloppy because it's 'just practice'. Concentrate the whole time. But if I practice too long, I get to a point where it's no longer on any value. I think you need to limit your practice to the point where you realize your concentration and intensity are fading. Then quit, because you can just frustrate yourself."

- Phil Arnold (Northern California)

"Don't just go out there and hit balls. Have some sort of plan, what you want to practice. There's a lot of times I might go out and just hit balls and I'm not getting any better. But when I play seriously and I put pressure on myself to practice something, then that's when I get better."

- Jacques Fournier (Arizona)

Set Achievable Goals

As your skills improve what you practice will change, but be realistic. Have a plan. Challenge yourself. But don't practice a sextuple if you can't run a three ball break.

"You are rarely going to get much out of a practice session if you just mess around. I normally practice one of three things: shooting, approaching hoops from corners (e.g. 1 from corner I with roll or stop shot, 2 from corner II with roll or stop shot, etc) or just general break play to avoid getting rusty (mostly triples from standard positions).

For hoop approaches you can aim to do better than (say) 3 out of 5. For shooting I normally get 8 balls and put 4 on the yard line and the other 4 six yards away. I take four shots; if I hit 0 or 1, I move a yard closer; hit 2, and I stay where I am; hit 3 or 4, and I go back a yard. Then have another four shots. Starting at 6 yards I aim to get to 13 yards in practice session."

- Steve Comish

"You've got to practice with a particular motive in mind. Practice particular shots. Break things down. Practice parts of a triple, so that you practice doing the last two peels, or practice the four back peel and do the few shots that lead up to that. And practice that again and again four or five times rather than practice the whole triple.

Or practice parts of a leave three or four times so that you just get a feeling of what small differences there are in terms of where the balls are when you do it four or five times in quick succession. Or just even if you're just starting the game, getting rushes after hoops where you want them to go. Just keep practicing that bit for ten or fifteen minutes."

- David Openshaw

American Rules players should play International Rules

The American Rules game is much more a game of strategy than the Association (International) Rules game. Some players love American rules. Others hate it. The concept of "deadness," absent from the Association game, can render a side totally helpless, forcing it to retreat into the corners turn after turn. With such a penalty, many American rules players never risk the aggressiveness needed to build and run breaks.