When the Basics Become Instinct: How Experience Teaches You What Might Work, and What Doesn’t…

Mastering the fundamentals isn’t the end of learning. It’s what eventually gives you the confidence to think for yourself.

There is a phrase that has stayed with me throughout my years of playing and learning snooker:

“Basics will always win.”

Keep your head still. Pause before the final delivery. Deliver the cue smoothly through the ball. Stay down on the shot. Watch what happens and learn from the result.

They’re hardly glamorous instructions. But the longer I’ve played snooker, the more I realise that mastering the basics isn’t simply about producing a better cue action.

Something else begins to happen.

You develop instinct.

And strangely enough, a recent cooking experiment reminded me just how powerful that process can be.

I’ve had it in snooker as well…Moments when the basics are in the background and your instinct is taking over – and sending a message to your brain that this works this shot…

The Lightbulb Moment

I’ve been doing a lot of experimental cooking recently. One dish I’ve been cooking around with is my own take on Aglio e Olio, using noodles rather than traditional pasta, with garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, chilli, choi, spring onions and parsley.

Before playing snooker at Oxshott recently, I spotted some focaccia breadsticks in a shop SURREY HILLS DELICATESSEN.

And I had one of those little lightbulb moments.

What if I crushed them into crumbs and fried them with the garlic, olive oil and chilli?

There was no recipe telling me to do it.

I didn’t know for certain that it would work.

But I have cooked enough now to know that you can have a go and have a reasonable idea of what might happen. The crumbs should absorb some of that garlicky, chilli-infused olive oil. They should toast. They should provide another texture against the softer noodles and vegetables.

So I tried it.

Or, to use my rather less sophisticated new cooking philosophy:

Cook the bugger and see.

I cooked the bugger.

And I saw.

AND It worked.

The crumbs developed a crispy, almost nutty quality that gave the entire dish another dimension. It’s something I’d definitely cook again.

But afterwards I realised there was a lesson here that had very little to do with cooking.

You Don’t Start With Instinct

When you’re a REAL beginner at almost anything, you don’t possess much instinct.

You need instruction.

In snooker, somebody might need to show you how to form a bridge, where to stand, how to address the cue ball or why your head needs to remain still.

At that stage you’re consciously thinking about almost everything.

Where should my feet go?

Where am I aiming?

Am I gripping the cue too tightly?

Did I pause?

Did I stay down?

There is a lot going on.

But practise those fundamentals often enough and something begins to change.

You don’t stop using the basics.

You stop having to think about every one of them.

And that frees your mind to deal with something else.

From Technique to Judgement

This is where I think players sometimes misunderstand the importance of fundamentals.

The basics aren’t there to turn you into a robot.

They’re there to give you a reliable foundation from which you can eventually make better decisions.

An inexperienced player may look at a difficult table and think:

“What am I supposed to do here?”

With more experience, the thought process starts to change:

“I know this shot works. For example, I know how to use side – so let’s try the shot and see…

Then:

“I’ve played something similar before. This might work.”

And sometimes:

“Technically I could attempt that — but experience tells me it’s probably a terrible idea.”

That is development.

You’re no longer simply learning how to execute shots. You’re building a library of experiences.

Every pot.

Every miss.

Every safety.

Every positional error.

Every successful escape from a snooker.

Every time you’ve played the wrong shot and realised five seconds later what you should have done instead.

They’re all adding information.

Eventually that information starts appearing as something we call instinct.

Basics → Experience → Instinct → Creativity

I’ve started to see the learning process something like this:

BASICS → EXPERIENCE → INSTINCT → CREATIVITY

First, learn the fundamentals.

Then use them repeatedly.

Experience begins teaching you what works and what doesn’t.

Eventually you start recognising situations without consciously analysing every tiny component.

And that’s when creativity becomes possible.

Because creativity doesn’t necessarily mean doing something outrageous.

Sometimes creativity is simply recognising an opportunity that somebody else might not see.

A clever safety.

An unusual route for the cue ball.

A containing shot instead of an attacking one.

A different escape from a snooker.

Or even recognising that the obvious shot isn’t necessarily the right one.

The better your understanding of the fundamentals, the more intelligently you can experiment beyond them.

Sometimes It Won’t Work

There’s another part of this that I think matters enormously in coaching.

Instinct isn’t always going to be right.

My cooking experiments certainly aren’t all winners.

Sometimes you have an idea, cook it and discover that you probably shouldn’t cook the bugger again.

Snooker is exactly the same.

You might see a safety shot that looks brilliant in your head, only to leave your opponent perfectly on a red.

You might try a positional route and completely misjudge the pace.

You might attempt a pot that you genuinely believed was the correct shot and miss it by a mile.

That doesn’t necessarily make the decision worthless.

Ask yourself:

Why didn’t it work?

That’s feedback.

And feedback becomes experience.

Experience improves judgement.

Better judgement improves instinct.

It’s a cycle.

Coaching Should Eventually Produce Independence

Perhaps this is one of the ultimate aims of good coaching.

A coach shouldn’t need to stand behind a player forever telling them exactly what shot to play.

The player has to develop the ability to think.

Teach somebody strong fundamentals and then encourage them to observe what happens.

What did you see?

Where did the cue ball go?

Did you hit the object ball too thick or too thin?

Why did the safety work?

Why did it fail?

What might you do differently next time?

Over hundreds and eventually thousands of shots, those little pieces of information accumulate.

The player starts coaching themselves.

Basics Will Always Win — But They’re Only the Beginning

I still believe wholeheartedly in the phrase:

Basics will always win.

But perhaps I’ve come to understand it slightly differently.

The basics aren’t merely things you practise until you can perform them correctly.

They’re the foundations upon which experience is built.

Experience eventually creates judgement.

Judgement develops instinct.

And instinct gives you the freedom to become creative.

Whether you’re standing over a snooker table or, apparently, standing in a shop in Oxshott staring at a packet of focaccia breadsticks, the process isn’t all that different.

Learn.

Practise.

Observe.

Experiment.

Sometimes you’ll get it wrong.

Sometimes you’ll surprise yourself.

And occasionally you’ll have a lightbulb moment.

Then there’s really only one thing left to do.

Try the bugger and see.