Topic: snake shot blues

[foosball_fanatic]

i used to have this shot down pretty well on my old 'slippery surface' table but since switching to a tornado t3000 the ball seems to roll a bit slower and now when i spin over, the ball doesn't quite make it to the same point in time and the result is a very angled shot or a missed shot altogether. obviously i need to find a way to push/pull the ball a bit faster but the more i try, the worse the shot seems to get - so frustrated at the moment lol.

any thoughts you can share on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated.

[speeddemon]

Just keep practicing it on the T3000.

I just learned the shot 3 weeks ago on my own, only took me 3 days on a Fireball Table. I tend to watch alot of videos on youtube (Zeke Cervantes is my favorite)

[Buckshot]

The snake shot can't be done. Give up.

[John M]

Fanatic:

Try making an adjustment. When you have the ball pinned put a little more down pressure on the ball, you will see that the ball will cast with more speed when you cast pull or push side. As you play different tables with different surfaces this minor adjustment will come in handy.

Also before you go right into the shot try to just pin the ball and cast it into each wall...watch the speed of the ball, then work on the contact in the rollover.

[foozkillah]

Slower but more reliable speed control... just like John says.. make an adjustment to put more pressure on the ball, or at least keep the pressure on the ball longer.
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One common way to do this is to alter your rollover grip. Instead of using the weight of your forewarm and wrist/hand on the front or top of the handle, you might wish to switch to a more "power" type rollover grip ... actually virtually pulling the handle back towards you, with the wrist on the bottom front or even complete bottom of the handle.  Closest analogy would be a bicycle chain on a sprocket instead of a fanbelt on an engine (those have teeth or very sticky rubber to help the grip in V-belt type configurations).
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You'll prolly realize quickly, why it's more of a "power" rollover grip, and may have to lean backwards or away from the target goal.  Your final shot trajectory on both pull and push sides will also change, even drastically, and you have to focus more on your straight-down-the-middle shots as any spraying will be exaggerated ... return strokes to center should actually be easier.   So make an adjustment..  Shouldn't be too hard..  Keep in mind that the idea is to 1. have more pressure on the ball, over the whole "pitch" motion, and 2. have more control, for longer on the ball at takeoff.
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You might have to pad that handle thicker or adjust your winding with a wrap, to prevent bruising.  Prolly feel weird, but I'm sure you'll see many top proMasters with no "Layover the top" type grips but more like a pulling-away or pulling-upward chain-and-sprocket grip.  Prolly not as fast as the "Layover the top" grips, but definitely more control and most prolly more reliability from table-to-table and from different 3bar-to3bar.
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Can't hurt to try, right?  And you can prolly regain the perceivable speed of your rollover with more and more repetition, for smoothness, which is usually the key.

[foosball_fanatic]

thanks for the comments all. nothing was working to correct my shot until i tried foozkillah's ideas. after tweaking my grip position to put more (and different) pressure on the bar/ball, the ball rolled faster and back towards the man - both things that i needed - before it was rolling slower and away from me. thanks so much for helping my shot once again strike fear into my opponents