Sunday I sparred with a guy who’s been kicking my ass for a while and that trend continued. It showed me a couple of things though, which is the best part of sparring.
1) I was missing frozen-rail shots, particularly going forward 3 rails.
2) I lost my mental control and focus, resulting getting upset at every single thing ever, resulting in an Earl Strickland type of outburst.
So… instead of unscrewing and going home, I stayed and worked on things (after taking a 20 minutes break to just collect myself). It was a great thing because I accomplished another drill I haven’t done successfully before.
The Rail Workout, aka, the Karen Corr drill via Joe Tucker has been in my drill book for years, but I can’t recall ever completing it as well as I did that night. And I was filming!
I used low/outside on the first shot, low/inside rail-first on the 2, straight high on the 3, high/inside on the 5, low/inside rail-first on the 5 and straight high on the 6. Now, that’s not the strictest way to execute this drill, but it is an important part of doing drills. Don’t set yourself up for failure by making the drill TOO hard. The next time I do this drill, I’ll start with allowing me to use any english I want. Then I’ll forced myself to use only high/inside going forward 3 rails. Another variation would be to only use low/outside 2 rails. And finally low/inside rail-first.
After that, I could further complicate the drill by shooting the balls all into the same pocket, working my way down the table shooting down the rail. I can also mix it up by placing the balls an inch off the rail instead of frozen, which changes the rebound angle just enough to make position less than automatic.
I will post again with updates as I experiment with these options.