Concentrate Before Every Game of Pool

Mental preparation is key before every game of pool.

It will help you not to get distracted in difficult moments of the game.

First is to clear your mind of all negative and unnecessary thoughts.

Sit in a quiet place and take deep breaths just paying attention to your breathing.

This will help you become more self-confident.

Maintain your confidence that you are capable of facing all challenges with ease.

Follow these steps to prepare yourself mentally:

1. Close your eyes
2. Take a deep breath
3. Open your eyes
4. Go to the pool table
5. In a conscious way, grab the pool cue, the cue ball, touch the table, feel the sensation of everything.
6. Now, take a few shots to test the state of the table.
7. Start visualizing game situations in a positive way, pocketing all the balls with ease.
8. Execute and win.

Record and then watch videos about your pool game so you know what your weaknesses and strengths are.

Practice your weaknesses more.

Another way I use to concentrate before each game is the conversation I have with myself.

First I observe the environment where I am.

Usually there are a lot of people and some of them with their voice or with their actions or saying what I have to do, are a distraction.

These people do it on purpose, they use tricks to make you lose your concentration and they can win you easily.

And your goal is to turn those voices and actions of others as if they are giving you more encouragement to beat them.

First step: Don’t listen to anyone.

Playing deaf, you achieve this when you only listen to your inner voice telling you and encouraging you with positive words like:

“Calm down, this ball you have here I have always pocketed it, giving it spin to the right and a little down, to place the cue ball in this next position”.

Then visualize it as if you were inside a movie of yourself.

And in the next scene, make the shot just as you imagined it.

This first step, you played deaf, visualized and shot.

Second step: There is no one around you, it’s just you with the table and the billiard balls.

Mentally make them all disappear.

By doing this, nothing can distract you.

And only your internal conversation accompanies you to choose the best shots and effects.

How to make them all disappear mentally?

It is simply exactly as I tell you.

Imagine, make a mental movie that there is no one around you.

Sometimes situations happen to us in life that when we are calm, appear to disturb.

For example: “Walking to the pool hall, a guy on a bicycle passed you, brushed your arm and knocked over the cue case with your pool cues.

Luckily nothing happened to your cues.

But that situation is going to be the external and internal conversation all day long in the pool hall and outside the pool hall”.

I assure you 100% that you will be mentally replaying that action, thinking different possibilities, about how you should have acted, what you would have done better, etc.

And while you are calmly waiting for your turn, that is going to be your mental movie, making you get distracted and play badly, maybe just that day.

That’s why I’m telling you, if you have the mental movie right now of the guy with the bike.

You can right now just change the mental channel and imagine nobody around to concentrate better.

And your internal conversation should be about the present game of pool.

Forget if you previously missed a ball, that’s over, you can still win.

And concentrate on the present, what is happening right now.

Last personal trick I use to make my opponents miss the ball.

Make a mental movie of the guy missing the ball and you jumping for joy.

It doesn’t work 100%, because there are people who are imagining the movie in their mind winning.

So if you don’t visualize and concentrate, others will.