Injury Setback

I've had a couple of niggling problems this week, although i have played and match and had a practice session.

I played football on saturday for the first time for a while, and after skipping a warm up felt a strain in my right thigh as i hit my first shot! serves me right i guess!

Anyways the problem stayed for 3 days when i played my match and was still in some discomfort leaning over the table and putt weight on it to lean into a shot.

I then practiced on Thursday and although my thigh wasn't affecting my snooker, my left shoulder was causing me problems. It's a reaccurance of pains i've had on and off for well over a year now and they were starting to affect my game.

So i skipped practice today knowing i need to rest up, looking to be back in shape for next thursday. My thigh feels fine today, playing football again on thursday didn't seem a good idea as it flaired up again worse than before, but overnight i think it's cleared completely. However unfortunately my shoulder is still painful and not fully flexible. I don't know now how to try and sort it. Whether to rest up for a week and see how it feels, or maybe do some weights and fight through it like i did with my thigh. I'll see, weekend off snooker again i think. Might even help my uni work if i'm away from the tables, something else to do in the day other than snooker!

The match on tuesday went to plan i guess, I won 3-1 playing solid enough snooker.2 match unbeaten run. Runs of results didn't matter too much before but they are starting to become important, especially with a likely league to be coming to our club soon i want to be playing well and with a strong run of form going into some big matches against much better opponents.

structure to my practice

Snooker has taken a bit of a back burner this past week as i've been in university a fair bit again. I've had 3 matches since my last update, and lost twice 7-4 and 4-3 in very dissapointing fashion, but i'll put them behind me, and have done with a 3-1 win recently were i got going allbeit after a couple of frames.

I've only been able to practice twice this week aswell, which is annoying, and may stay like this for a week or so as i'm going to have to start some uni work!

Thursday's practice was frustrating, as things didn't seem to drop as well, but i could take some positives, such as 5 successive straight long reds of the blue spot. Showing my cueing is improving through the work i've been putting in on the practice table at home.

Friday's practice was the best ive probably ever played, i had a relaxed attitude and my first hour flew by as i'd been potting very well. By then i was already happy with my work and knew if things got dreadful then i'd had at least a good hour potting. Things fortunately kept up and i'd potted well for 2 and a half hours.

I developed a bit of structure to my practice, which i want to keep up next time. I start by knocking the top colours yellow, green and brown. Some nice easy pots which require positional thinking. Then i crack on with a line up, then move on to potting several balls off each spot. Black downwards, which revealed i have a few problems mostly off the yellow spot, which i looked to rectify.

This is helping my game as pinks and blues (both long and to the middle) are forming my accuracy in and around the high scoring area of the table. Then i usually go back to a line up for break building or a long line where i pot what i want.

Throw in a few random long pots and i've set up a nice routine which lasts over an hour.

I've realised a few things about my game. When i miss its generally because i hit it too thin. So learning to hit the ball thicker seems a little strange but they were dropping square in the middle of the pockets, which as any player knows is good to be seeing regularly.

Also with my long potting i had a tendancy to put backspin on the ball, even if i didn't need to. I found this often leads to a kick or a wild contact where the object ball flies off. Topspin i feel gives me better control and the follow through often leads to better position, especially if it gets me by the black spot. Something i'll look to work on this week.

On the break building front things are getting better, but still no elusive 30. A 27 in a game last week and a 28 in practice on thursday, i missed a long red that would roll onto the black, so i potted the black meaning that one long out of position red cost me a 35 break. Not too bad to say within a week i've come close twice and could've bettered it by 5. Especially in a week were snooker has been on the back burner.

Think the call this week is for more practice, ideally i would like to avoid a match, but if the chance comes up i might just take it, as the form i'm in i'd fancy a win to boost my confidence throughout all my practice.