New drill, slight progress in current drill

In a recent post, I detailed a drill that I am doing where I try to run the last six balls of a nine-ball rack 6 times out of 11.  Up until recently, the best I could do was 2 out of 8 times.

Over the recent holiday week, I went to a pool hall while in Canada and worked on this drill a bit.  By the end of the session, I was able to complete the drill 4 out of 10 times, including twice in a row!  While this is not where I want to be, it marks a bit of progress, and gives me hope that I may be able to hit my goal sometime soon.

I also found another drill that I decided to try.  In this drill (found on pool.bz originally), you put the object ball on the spot, and the cue ball against the side rail, parallel with the object ball.  You can start on either side of the object ball.  The point of this drill is to sink the object ball, then replace the object ball and move the cue ball one diamond up the rail.  Each time you miss, you shoot again from the same spot.  Each time you sink the object ball, you move the cue ball one diamond further up the rail.  The last shot is taken from the diamond that is parallel with the object ball on the other side from where you started - 17 shots in all.  In the video where I first saw the drill, the 17 shots were made with only three misses.  My first attempt at this drill included 14 misses, for a success rate of 17/31, or 55%.  It is a great drill for getting familiar with the difficult shots that you sometimes need to take from the rail, though.