Practice makes perfect...

[Guest]

Snooker. 

I saw a young lad on the news the other day who had won a game in a tournament at age 15. He was from Huddersfield?

Anyway my point is that I had a friend who was really good at snooker, won all the local tournaments etc and decided to try and go pro. Joe Johnson was still playing then, so it was a bit back. His dad offered to bankroll him so he could give up work and concentrate on snooker full time. 

He was a good player (to our eyes anyway) but when he tried to mix it with even the lower ranking pros, (or very good amateurs) he found he wasn't up to scratch. After a couple of years he sacked it as he knew he wasn't going to make the grade. 

This kid must have that something extra. 

[Robin Evans]

Inspired by a good friend, I started cooking in my 20s. I got better and better. Learned from my mistakes. Not frightened to take advice from anyone and I'll have a good go at most things.

I'm not perfect. I never will be and don't seek to be. But good enough to enjoy the result when I cook for others

[Northern Eel]

It is said that it you practice something for 10,000 hours, you will become an expert. (Malcolm Gladwell)

What it should really say is that if you practice something for 10,000 hours, you will become an expert of what you practiced. Categorically, if you practice a mistake (which could, in this instance be an element of poor technique), you will become accomplished at that poor technique, not improve.

The best pianists in the world still have teachers/tutors. They need others to critique what their own eyes and ears can't determine. 

[DavidM]

Can you practice and practice and get worse ? Golf seems a sport where players are always searching for something extra . Endlessly they’re tinkering , changing something or telling an interviewer they need to rush off to practice after playing a round . Maybe there comes a time when youre as good as you’ll get and practicing and tinkering becomes counterproductive 

[Padge]

12 hours ago, Johnoco said:

Understood but I have actually tried. I had to sack it and just face it, I could never draw. It's possibly a gene thing.... either way, not gonna improve from something a 5 year old would be embarrassed about. 

You can be taught how to construct a drawing, most people just go flat out to creat something the can see or have seen. There is a reason you will see artists hold up a pencil to the subject, they are measuring, they translate the measurements to the page. A little simplified but it is all about following some basic rules and not just looking and drawing.

That does not mean that some people can't just look at something and put it straight to paper.

 

[Maximus Decimus]

2 hours ago, Northern Eel said:

It is said that it you practice something for 10,000 hours, you will become an expert. (Malcolm Gladwell)

What it should really say is that if you practice something for 10,000 hours, you will become an expert of what you practiced. Categorically, if you practice a mistake (which could, in this instance be an element of poor technique), you will become accomplished at that poor technique, not improve.

The best pianists in the world still have teachers/tutors. They need others to critique what their own eyes and ears can't determine. 

There is a guy on YouTube doing the 10,000 hours experiment with darts. He's pretty switched on about how to practise, and is up to 1000 hours now. He's improved a lot already.

With darts though, if you look at older tournaments it was definitely a sport where people found a way that worked for them. Nowadays there is a greater awareness of technique and the standard has improved. The likes of Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson had shocking technique.

[Maximus Decimus]

1 hour ago, DavidM said:

Can you practice and practice and get worse ? Golf seems a sport where players are always searching for something extra . Endlessly they’re tinkering , changing something or telling an interviewer they need to rush off to practice after playing a round . Maybe there comes a time when youre as good as you’ll get and practicing and tinkering becomes counterproductive 

Now this time it is practise!

This is essentially my experience of both sports: having a go and enjoying it, looking up how to improve, seeing some improvement before getting worse and then bogged down in tinkering.

Some small adjustment can suddenly see a big improvement, and you think you have the answer. It always wears off though and leaves you jumping to the next thing.

I've literally done it today. Watched a technique video, made a small adjustment and played much better (average of 60 today). Come tomorrow it'll have likely worn off and I'll be sat scratching my head.

[gingerjon]

9 hours ago, DavidM said:

Can you practice and practice and get worse ? 

See the comment from @Northern Eelabove.

If you're practicing something unhelpful then it's more than likely you'll get worse. Or if your practice doesn't also include how to practically use what you're learning then it will be so inefficient you may feel you'll get worse.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Padge said:

You can be taught how to construct a drawing, most people just go flat out to creat something the can see or have seen. There is a reason you will see artists hold up a pencil to the subject, they are measuring, they translate the measurements to the page. A little simplified but it is all about following some basic rules and not just looking and drawing.

That does not mean that some people can't just look at something and put it straight to paper.

 

I know all that! I have looked into this many years ago. The main driver was wanting to be able to paint stuff on leather jackets and seeing artwork on records etc by guys like Pushead (you won't have heard of him) 

I knew a couple of actual artists so got a few tips. They included things like tracing things and then trying to replicate it, doodling shapes before turning it into more of a drawing. I still was never gonna be able to draw - and it wasn't a burning desire as such, so I just accepted defeat. No big deal really. 

[Bob8]

On 26/01/2022 at 23:24, Maximus Decimus said:

There is a guy on YouTube doing the 10,000 hours experiment with darts. He's pretty switched on about how to practise, and is up to 1000 hours now. He's improved a lot already.

With darts though, if you look at older tournaments it was definitely a sport where people found a way that worked for them. Nowadays there is a greater awareness of technique and the standard has improved. The likes of Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson had shocking technique.

When darts was disorganised and first went serious, the standard was lower. I suspect the difference in hot housing we have now, where the best play each other and learn from each other.

Scotland is a far greater snooker playing nation than China, and that is purely a concentration of good players, meaning that the top player compete and learn from each other. Equally, it used to be that the England soccer team pretty much came from Liverpool, Newcastle and East London.

Had Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson been born in Stoke twenty years later, it would be interesting to see how good they could have been.

Perhaps.

[graveyard johnny]

when a Scandinavian multi millionare supermodel falls for me at first sight and drags me off for endless sessions of passion on her yacht in the med I hope all the practice I  put in with the mrs pays off 

[Maximus Decimus]

On 28/01/2022 at 20:42, Bob8 said:

When darts was disorganised and first went serious, the standard was lower. I suspect the difference in hot housing we have now, where the best play each other and learn from each other.

Scotland is a far greater snooker playing nation than China, and that is purely a concentration of good players, meaning that the top player compete and learn from each other. Equally, it used to be that the England soccer team pretty much came from Liverpool, Newcastle and East London.

Had Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson been born in Stoke twenty years later, it would be interesting to see how good they could have been.

Perhaps.

I was surprised to see some of the early averages at the very top. As World Champ in the mid 80s, Bristow was consistently in the mid to high 90s. 

With the state of the boards then, amd the smaller treble segments it's not implausible to think that Bristow would've been a serious challenger even now.

[Maximus Decimus]

So a week on, I've had a much better week. The week before I posted, I averaged only 46 across my legs and in the week since it has been 55. 

Maybe it was just a temporary lack of form, or maybe I was overtired etc. Maybe I actually made an adjustment that worked for once!

[The Hallucinating Goose]

On 26/01/2022 at 15:32, Johnoco said:

Snooker. 

I saw a young lad on the news the other day who had won a game in a tournament at age 15. He was from Huddersfield?

Anyway my point is that I had a friend who was really good at snooker, won all the local tournaments etc and decided to try and go pro. Joe Johnson was still playing then, so it was a bit back. His dad offered to bankroll him so he could give up work and concentrate on snooker full time. 

He was a good player (to our eyes anyway) but when he tried to mix it with even the lower ranking pros, (or very good amateurs) he found he wasn't up to scratch. After a couple of years he sacked it as he knew he wasn't going to make the grade. 

This kid must have that something extra. 

When I was that age I considered trying to make it as a pro. I'd done well in local tournaments but even just looking at some of the players in national amateur competitions I knew I wasn't going to get very far. Most top players turn professional when they are 16 or 17 and quite often have won a tournament by 20-21 ish and not uncommon for that tournament to be a major as well. Still, practice made perfect in my being an obsessive fan of the sport ever since I was a little kid!